Political views a top priority in choosing life partners, says study

By LAUREN ACURANTES

In this case, opposites do not attract.

A recent study done by researchers in the United States suggests that similar political and social views take a strong precedence over a person’s looks, personality and even religious views, when choosing a life partner.

This intriguing result was reached after a group of researchers from Rice University studied the “physical, personality and behavioral traits of more than 5,000 married couple in the United States.”

Participants were given a set of traits that ranged from physical attributes to beliefs and ideologies, and were then asked to rate the said traits from zero to one, depending on how strong they felt on the match with their spouse – one, of course, pertaining to a perfect match.

The only attribute that ranked slightly higher than having similar views was “the frequency of church attendance.”

Clearly, spouses are no longer heavily concerned about the way they look and act around their chosen partner, but is it also possible that these partners started out having varying political views and just eventually adopted the views of the more dominant partner? After all, the survey was conducted on people who were already married.

The study does not answer this question.

Still, researchers believe this might help pave the way for singles to quickly weed out the losers from the winners, romantically speaking.

As study author, associate professor of political science, John Alford puts it, “…if you're looking for a long-term romantic relationship, skip 'What's your sign?' and go straight to 'Obama or Palin?' And if you get the wrong answer, just walk away.”

Simple, really.

Source: Yahoo! Health

137 studes finish Eteeap at USJ-R

147 studes finish Eteeap at USJ-R

 A TOTAL of 147 college students graduated from the University of San Jose-Recoletos (USJ-R) under its Expanded Tertiary Education Equivalency and Accreditation Program (ETEEAP).

The graduation ceremony was held recently at the USJ-R’s center for performing arts.

Rev. Fr. Enrico Peter A. Silab, OAR, USJ-R president, awarded the diplomas to the program’s eighth batch of graduates.

There were seven graduates from the college of art and sciences; seven from the college of education; three from the college of information, computer and communications technology; 46 from the college of commerce; and 84 from the college of engineering.

Majority of the graduates were Philippine-based employees and entrepreneurs, while there were also a number of overseas Filipino workers from Saudi Arabia, United States of America, Singapore, North Africa, Malaysia, Japan and the United Arab Emirates.

ETEEAP is an academic assessment and accreditation scheme that recognizes knowledge, skills and prior learning obtained by individuals from non-formal and informal educational experiences.

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Published in the Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on May 27, 2011.

GSIS drops requirement for yearly status reports on members

By Ronnel W. Domingo

Philippine Daily Inquirer

MANILA, Philippines—The Government Service Insurance System no longer requires pensioners to renew their status as active GSIS members yearly amid efforts to make transactions less inconvenient.

“This initiative is part of the continuing efforts of the new Board to provide more responsive service to its members and pensioners,” said Robert G. Vergara, GSIS president and general manager.

“We don’t want to impose unnecessary hardship on our more than 300,000 old-age and survivorship pensioners,” Vergara said.

Related to this, the GSIS has signed a memorandum of agreement with the National Statistics Office to collaborate on keeping up to date the pension fund’s roster of pensioners and survivor-beneficiaries.

Under the MOA, the GSIS will provide the NSO with an initial list of all its old-age and survivorship pensioners living in the country—and following that, a monthly report—which will serve as database for NSO.

The NSO will then match the data with its own records and submit to the pension fund a report on who are already deceased or who have re-married, in the case of survivorship pensioners.

This will then be the basis of the GSIS in labeling or tagging the status of pensioner in its database.

However, some pensioners need to renew their active status during their birth month for one last time lest their pension will be discontinued.

These include those whose active status are suspended as of April 30 and those whose monthly pension are about to be suspended due to their failure to renew such status in February, March, or April.

Further, pensioners living abroad would still be required to renew their active status via video call or through the use of Skype, a web-based software that allows users to make telephone calls over the internet free of charge.