Ben Kritz

Manila

Writer and Columnist at Freelance

Columnist at The Manila Times

to be loved is to be changed

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Articles

Vince Dizon is a mind reader

3 weeks ago | manilatimes.net | Ben Kritz

ON my schedule of topics for this week was an item that said, "Whatever happened to those Chinese trains?" The "Chinese trains" are the so-called Dalian trains purchased for some P3.8 billion in 2014 by the then-Department of Transportation and Communications under former president Benigno Aquino III's administration for use on the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) 3.
Opinions on nuclear power are not facts

3 weeks ago | manilatimes.net | Ben Kritz

NEXT week, the board of directors of the World Bank are supposed to meet to consider, among other matters, the lifting of a decadeslong ban on funding for nuclear energy. There is intense lobbying to convince the board to drop the ban, and a few days ago, I received a press release from one of the groups pushing hard in favor of nuclear power, an organization called the Energy for Growth Hub.
A midyear airing of grievances

3 weeks ago | manilatimes.net | Ben Kritz

EVEN though I was trying to disconnect for at least a little while over the weekend, it did not take long for the news about the postponement of the EDSA rehabilitation project to find me. More than one correspondent suggested that President Marcos read my column ("The EDSA nightmare is about to begin," May 29), wherein I urged the government to do exactly that until it got its act together and created a proper plan.
An example of actual innovation

4 weeks ago | manilatimes.net | Ben Kritz

SEVERAL times a week, every day of most weeks, I find a number of pitches in my email inbox from enthusiastic developers who believe they have created the next big thing, and are hoping to attract a bit of public attention. Some obviously do not actually read what I've written on certain topics; I get a lot of press releases from small modular reactor (SMR) startups, and lately, a surprising number from the bizarre world of solar geoengineering development.
The EDSA nightmare is about to begin

1 month ago | manilatimes.net | Ben Kritz

BEGINNING in the next two weeks, the government will undertake what will almost certainly be the most memorable construction project of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.'s term, the badly needed rehabilitation of EDSA.
The unasked questions about SMRs

1 month ago | manilatimes.net | Ben Kritz

ABOUT 10 years ago, the concept of "small modular reactors," or SMRs, began to appear in excited press releases from the tech-bro universe (Bill Gates was one of the early movers), and in equally excited news stories that were, for the most part, merely copies of what the press releases said. That excitement steadily built up, and has hardly been dented by a couple of significant reality checks along the way involving bankruptcies and canceled projects.
Keeping innovation in perspective

1 month ago | manilatimes.net | Ben Kritz

LAST month, in the European Investment Bank's (EIB) regular newsletter, there was an interesting article about a potential technological breakthrough in the elusive quest to make the concept of carbon capture — physically removing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air — an even remotely practical idea (spoiler alert: it's mostly not.). As the EIB is not generally in the habit of spreading foolishness in public, I thought the article was probably worth taking a closer look at.
Reviving the Makati Subway

1 month ago | manilatimes.net | Ben Kritz

THE recent topic of the failure of the Makati Subway project received a surprisingly strong response from readers, a few of whom took the time to ask some thoughtful and detailed questions about the case and what might happen next. Every message, otherwise detailed or not, included some version of, "Why are these local governments (mostly referring to the city of Makati) like this?
Fixing co-ops may just mean changing 'may' to 'must'

1 month ago | manilatimes.net | Ben Kritz

IT is Monday morning, and I have spent most of my free hours over the weekend whipping the hell out of my keyboard in pursuit of a draft of a novel I've been trying to start for a couple of years. It wasn't what I had planned on doing this weekend, but as other writers would agree, when that logjam that's been holding back a good idea finally breaks, jumping in and riding the flood is a compulsion.
Powerless in PH

1 month ago | manilatimes.net | Ben Kritz

YESTERDAY'S editorial in The Manila Times addressed yet another Big Idea to attract more foreign investment to the country, in this case a call from the Federation of Filipino Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry Inc. (FFCCCII) for a law allowing 99-year leases on land, such as is done in other, more economically successful countries like Singapore and Malaysia.