asymptotes

The seasons of Christmas and Holy Week are good occasions for availing of the sacrament of confession. This video is a step by step guide on how to go through the process. See also my related blog entry on Peace and Joy in a Box : Why you should no longer neglect, delay or fear confession . Notes on this video 1. I first saw the Spanish-subtitled version of this video on Patrick Madrid's blog . 2. I don't know what the video means by indicating ¨Conscience¨ as one of the things you'll need for confession. Perhaps it refers to ¨sorrow for sins¨ which is the most important part of confession, but then I think this was covered by the other items ¨Desire to seek forgiveness¨ and the ¨Will to be better.¨ 3.Below is the text of the Act of contrition. You don't have to memorize it. You may bring a copy when you go to confession. Act of Contrition O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss

From the film The Nativity Story This is a collection of quotations from G.K.Chesterton's The Everlasting Man . In the chapter "The God in the Cave," Chesterton wrote about the uniqueness of the event in Bethlehem. Chesterton is a British writer known for his simplicity, wit and humor and  for defending the Catholic faith against secular philosophies. I provided the explanatory titles below. The Paradox of Bethlehem A Creator unable to reach his creatures A mass of legend and literature, which increases and will never end, has repeated and rung the changes on that single paradox; that the hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle. Upon this paradox, we might almost say upon this jest, all the literature of our faith is founded. The Child and the Strength that sustains the stars Any agnostic or atheist whose childhood has known a real Christmas has ever afterwards, whether he likes it or not, an as

I was lucky enough to have published two articles in Philippine Daily Inquirer's Young Blood column ( Lord of the Rings: Not Just Fantasy  in 2004 and  Faith and Reason  in 2005). I'm sharing below some guidelines that I tried to follow when I submitted my articles. It may be of interest to you to know that two other articles I submitted did not get published. I guess I broke one or two of the guidelines below. Now, age has caught up with me. I think I will have to wait until I'm sixty to publish another article. By that time, it will be published in the Highblood column.  Writing for Young Blood Select your topic well It is good to write about a topic you feel very passionate about. You could also write about a striking and unique experience. Current events and issues are also good sources of topics. For example, it may be a good idea to write about soccer while the World Cup is going on, or to write about your views on death as the All Souls’ Day approaches.

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For a proof, you may try asking the following persons: a student trying to finish his thesis a graduate student submitting a journal article for peer review an accountant at the end of the financial fiscal year an executive preparing a report for the board of directors or, you may take a look at your own experience of trying to beat a deadline!

A usual workday. Twenty-three emails in my inbox. Twelve of them forwarded. Four containing jokes. I, being a bit of a comic character myself, appreciate receiving jokes through email. How can I not welcome them after spending several hours in front of a computer trying to figure out how to get a computer program to work? They lighten up my workday. They help preserve my sanity. However, there are some jokes that instead of making my workday lighter dampen it altogether. I’m referring to “green” or obscene jokes. I have received them a couple of times, and I think I still will in the future. It’s not unusual for a person to receive a green joke, laugh at it for a while, and then start sending it to all the persons in his address book without thinking that some of them could be offended. Of course it’s not always out of malice that people send this type of jokes. When a person sends me a green joke, I would like to think that he is only trying to share something that he think

Fermat's Enigma by Simon Singh FAITH is reasonable, while science, to some extent, is founded on faith. These are two conclusions I made after pondering the relationship between faith and science. It was a "mathematical novel" I read recently that influenced me to undertake the exercise. The book, titled "Fermat's Enigma," was written by Simon Singh, a Ph.D. in particle physics at the University of Cambridge. It tells of the epic quest to solve Fermat's Last Theorem, regarded as the greatest mathematical problem of all times. I could say that the exercise led me to some rather startling discoveries. (Click here for a  brief explanation on Fermat's Last Theorem ) First, not everything in science has a proof. In fact, the whole of math, an abstract branch of science, is founded on statements that are so fundamental that they do not have proofs! These statements, called axioms, are either self-evidently true or else are assumed to be true. Perso

Fermat's Last Theorem (FLT) is perhaps the most famous mathematical puzzle of all time. It was formulated as a conjecture by Pierre de Fermat in 1637 and was only proven in 1995 by Andrew Wiles. FLT states that no three positive integers  a ,  b , and  c  can satisfy the equation  a n  +  b n  =  c n    [1] for any integer value of  n  greater than 2. A very interesting fact about FLT is how Fermat introduced it to the world. He wrote the following on the margin of the book Arithmetica : I have discovered a truly marvelous proof that it is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a fourth power into two fourth powers, or in general, any power higher than the second into two like powers. This margin is too narrow to contain it. With this seemingly casual and yet bold statement, Fermat issued a challenge to the great mathematical minds of his time (which included Blaise Pascal) and of the three centuries that follow. If Fermat lived in this Facebook generation

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In a previous blog post, I have posed the question " Has Stephen Hawking Killed God? "  and have answered it with an emphatic  “ No! ”.  In this follow up post, I discuss the appropriateness of Hawking’s choice of title and subtitle for his book. I would like to suggest to Hawking that he change the title of his book “T he Grand Design ”  because it betrays the book’s grand claim- the irrelevance of God in creation.  If he really wanted to take God out of the creation picture, he should not have associated the word “design” with his book, because this word implies “purpose” and “intelligence”.  And an idea as big and complex as creation would call for a Great Purpose and a Great Intelligence, thus reminding many of a Great Being.  He should have, instead, called his book “ The Grand Chance ” or “ The Grand Coincidenc e” because he suggests that human life is a product of mere chance. I also suggest that he change the subtitle of his book because it betrays the book’s

Stephen Hawking argues that God is not needed for creation in his new book, “ The Grand Design ” (co-authored with Lleonard Mlodinow). He writes, “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.” Has Hawking killed God? No, I certainly do not think so. Hawking explains that “because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing,” but he does not explain why there is gravity in the first place. He argues that “spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing” but he does not give a reason why spontaneous creation should necessarily happen. His axiomatic acceptance of the law of gravity and spontaneous creation seems to me as dogmatic as a theist’s acceptance of the

I began my graduate studies in computer science in 2003. After 3 years of part time study, I started groping for a thesis topic in Artificial Intelligence (AI). The experience was fun (and torturing- I had to change topics 3 times, but it was still fun… and torturing). I learned a couple of things along the way. I outline these things in this article. 1.Error feedback leads to perfection Neural Networks (NN) is an AI technique that mimics how a brain learns through billions of neurons and their interactions with each other. One of the most popular training (or learning) method for Neural Networks rely on informing other (digital) neurons about the error levels of the current output of the network. This is called the Back Propagation Algorithm. Lesson Many times we dread facing our faults, whether we discover them ourselves or others inform us about them. But come to think of it, knowing about our faults is one of the best ways to improve. I

Being a commentary on The Lord of the Rings. A portion of this article appeared in the Young Blood section of The Philippine Daily Inquirer on January 1, 2004 under the title: Lord of the Rings: Not Just Fantasy. "Above all shadows rides the Sun.” -J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings THE EPIC TRILOGY The Lord of the Rings will draw to a close with the showing of its last segment, The Return of the King. The past two installments have left the viewers fascinated and terrified with the discovery of realms beautiful and dreadful, characters admirable and detestable, tales delightful and mournful, set in a land called Middle Earth. Fantasy and Reality Fantasy, escape from reality, many would say. But this is not how J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of this epic trilogy, envisioned it to be. Tolkien saw fantasy as a plunge into reality rather than an escape from it. Fantasy provides the writer a greater degree of freedom to emphasize certain asp