These past few days, I have been thinking about relationships. Particularly those borne of romantic love.

I realized mainly two things:

1. The true value of a person to you is measured by how much you miss them when they are not with you

Sometimes we get irritated and yell at our loved ones, or perhaps wish they would stop bugging us about trivial things – such as television shows, laundry, food for dinner.

But then we feel empty when they are not around, as if a part of ourselves had wandered off, lost. Only then can we feel the void that only the loved one can actually fill.

2. The true value of a relationship can only be totally appreciated upon looking at the relationships of others

We oftentimes forget to stop for just a minute and thank God that we are still together, that we still love someone very much and that someone loves us the same way, perhaps even more.

We need to look at the people who allow themselves to be hurt and abused inside and out because of love, and be grateful that what we have is good, healthy and honest. That someone sincerely takes care of us and only wants what is best for us.

Love is never perfect. It is always a work in progress.

And we must work hard at it, always.

The death toll on the current flood situation in the general Central Luzon and Metro Manila areas have reached 41, as of Thursday night.

Factor in several thousand families who have lost a good portion of their homes as well as those who were injured by thunderstorm and flood-related incidents. A big, ugly number.

Tonight’s episode of Debate on GMA-7 was quite interesting: A discussion on whether or not the rule “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” should be applied into Philippine law so as to properly punish kidnappers and other criminals who have committed atrocities with similar gravity.

The opening statement that caught my attention was the one made by the Chairman of the Commission of Human Rights: “Before we are even born, each of us have our human rights.”

My dear man, I have no argument with you on that, but consider this: Do those kidnappers even act remotely human, when caught in the frenzy of their self-righteous delusions of grandeur and Utopia? Are they human enough to consider the countless innocent lives that they sacrificed for their pointless causes, which are more to the personal gratification of their insane, power-hungry leaders?

They have no right to call themselves human. Orcs, more like.

By the by, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” is NOT a quote from The Holy Bible.

It is from Hammurabi’s Code, with H-sama being a king of Ancient Babylon.

I saw this on the AIM ticker a few days ago and bookmarked it.

Here is a significant point of note: Nearly four out of five people opposed cloning, while one-third of those polled were against federal funding of stem cell research, according to the poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

President George W. Bush is pushing the United States Senate and several other relevant sectors to implement a total ban on cloning, embryo duplication, stem cell research or whatever else they call the process of creating duplicates of human genes/cells/embryos.

There are already countless fictitious hypotheses of what could happen when cloning is taken up to the level of duplicating actual beings – not only humans, but dinosaurs and other such animals, especially the extinct ones.

We have seen in movies such as Jurassic Park and Multiplicity the possibilities that could occur when such a thing as God-playing gets beyond human control. It is not pretty.

I am a science lover. So many things in my life reflect my affinity with this discipline, but since way back when my teachers have expressed time and again that there has always been a fine line between creating scientific pathways and God-playing. Sometimes the only thing that divides these two is ethics, but due to so many socio-cultural differences, the already-flimsy boundaries have been getting more and more blurred.

Note that I described science and all its myriad corollary forms as a discipline. Science as a whole is built upon a method of rational thought and by-the-number means of verifying educated guesses. It is based upon validity, and what exists to back up the level of validity that each activity aims to claim in the already extensive field of study and discovery.

By using the word discipline, I also meant validating one’s actions against his or her own mental check-and-balance. It is not so much as what we know and could do, but how we put what we know and do into use.

Surely, “into use” means not attempting to play God or tamper with the natural cycle of life, death and change.

During dinner tonight, we had an interesting conversation about how people grow to covet the forbidden things in life. The overall premise is that the more off-limits something is, the more attractive and appealing it becomes.

There is even an old saying that goes something like this: To get something done you can either do it yourself, pay someone else to do it for you, or forbid your children to do it.

Said discussion led to the extramarital affairs of military and police men in the Philippines. This is especially applicable to the younger ones who had attended the Philippine Military Academy and have assumed high ranks in the field so early in their careers.

Turns out that we know a fair number of cases of young officers seeking the company and challenge of more articulate, exciting career women, in lieu of their wives who have already been weighed down by the responsibilities of motherhood and maintaining a household at this point in their relationship.

This is the harsh yet undeniable reality.

This article was forwarded to a mailing list of which I am a member. It was, in a nutshell, about the Pope’s opinion on the current state of the Internet. He deems cyberspace to be a place of “both danger and promise.”

The Internet has given us human beings, with our limited perceptions and flawed faculties, the power to access and transmit a lot of information in so short a span of time and so easily.

Power in itself is neither good nor bad; it depends on who uses it and how he or she does so. Spider-Man realized after the death of his Uncle Ben that with great power comes great responsibility. Even if we are not superheroes, this adage does apply to us in a manner that whatever we have, we should never seek to abuse it or use it without regard for the consequences. Responsibility is about caution, foresight, moderation and, above all, consideration for the welfare of those around us and who rely on us.

I have been writing research and position papers on the Internet and its various facets ever since I was in high school. Time and time again, I could not help but stress that it is a double-edged sword. We just cannot use it mindlessly, as there always will be repercussions to our actions if ever we cross the line between what is freedom of expression and what is abuse of that freedom.

It is all over the news.

Anthrax and smallpox viruses are making their clandestine way into the Philippines, spreading through cunningly-disguised letter envelopes and inconspicuous-looking packages in the mail. Even the big Western honchos like the New York governor are not safe.

But I have to say “waging war” this way is much, much harder to detect and counteract than an all-out nuclear bombing or an attack similar to what happened at the World Trade Center last September.

Biological weapons such as airborne viruses do not manifest symptoms in the victims after a considerable time spent under “incubation,” a more high-falutin term for a virus/vector growing slowly but surely in a person’s insides until it’s too late for a preventive measure. Only then would the symptoms be outwardly expressed. Most of the time it would be too late to stop the infection from spreading, because it already has without people knowing that they also have virus inside them.

Biological warfare is literally spreading cancer-like diseases all over the population. Like nuclear explosives, viruses do not choose whom to infect. However, unlike nuclear weapons, these do not kill swiftly. Epidemic diseases make people suffer first, then finally kill them when there is no proper or sufficient medication. It is much more merciless and painful. If some would luckily not get infected, they get to watch their fellows suffering. A theatre of pain, free of charge.

Why did the world come down to this?

One would think that with all the scientific, logical and mathematical discoveries we have made, we would be much smarter and wiser and less prone to making innocents suffer for some stupid cause. We are talking about human life here. Lots of people, who call themselves leaders and visionaries, do not seem to have the proper respect for it anymore. Lives now become pawns, one as dispensable as the next.

If this is what modernization would ultimately bring to the global society, I would be very well lead to think that we are de-evolving back into our animal primates as we supposedly make “progress.”

It is a very sad thought.

Time and time again, I have met those who ask what’s the point in getting up early in the morning, before sunrise, when you have nothing to do at that time of the day.

My answer is that it gives a person a feeling of fulfillment to be up and about before the sun is. Does it not give you a feeling of…invincibility, and strength, when you are ahead of such a powerful celestial body in doing something? It’s like you are more alert than the sun itself in heralding the new day – and all its challenges.

Of course, there really is good reason to get up early when you keep on dreaming about sipping and savoring every drop of frothy, steaming-hot French Vanilla coffee.

You are driven to make that dream a reality ASAP.