Define Irony

On the same day that the United States is trying to deport an 89-year-old Nazi prison guard for engaging in torture and following orders he shouldn't have, President Obama says that CIA agents will not be charged for engaging in torture and following orders they shouldn't have.

The Brick Factor

This is something that you have to be careful about, now that many electronics are being sold with an electronic umbilical cord still attached to their manufacturer: The manufacturer could come to the conclusion that you should no longer be a customer, and suddenly you are in posession of a very expensive paperweight.

Look what happened when online bookseller Amazon decided that one of their customers (apparently because he returned too many items for a refund) was too much of a pain in the ass, and cancelled his account and banned him from future purchases as well.

As you may already know, Amazon's electronic reader, the Kindle (and newer Kindle 2) is linked to the owner's Amazon account where the inventory of purchased books is managed. In addition, although there are a few other sources, it is primarily the only way to buy books for the device. When this user's Amazon account was closed, he also lost access to all the books he had purchased, as well as the ability to shop for new material.

This situation brings the bigger picture of Digital Rights Management (DRM) to the forefront. When you purchase any form of media from a company, do they have the right to deny you access in the future (presuming it was not purchased on a subscription basis)? The above mentioned user ended up with a $360 device that was totally worthless to him. He couldn't even access books he had already paid for.

Your IPod, your Wii and Playstation, even your computer (via Windows)... they are all very similar to your cable box now (except that you shelled out hundreds of dollars to have them in your living room): Step out of line, and somebody back at headquarters might just flip a switch and you are out in the cold.

Preemptively Foiling Burglaries In The Philippines

I never thought of this... but it is funny and might just work as a way to keep burglars from considering my house as a target in the future. Posted by First Sergeant Mike on my Yahoo CDO Group:

If you remember when I first moved to Mega Heights, I borrowed a pistol and fired three shots into the ground about 2 a.m. When the neighbors came out, I was scouring the ground. "No blood. I missed him THIS time, I'll get him next time." Things were peaceful in Mega Heights for the next six years.

I think that "the crazy Kano who lives on the corner has a gun and almost killed a burglar" story would be on every tongue and in every ear in the village by mid-morning the next day.

Funny

In case you didn't know it, "teabagging" not only refers to what some people around the country will be doing tomorrow to protest President Obama's raising of their taxes with his middle-class tax cut... or something... but in ruder circles (i.e. everywhere except in certain Republican grassroots meetings) it also rather humorously refers to [mouse-overperforming oral sex on somebody's testicles so mom doesn't have to read if she doesn't want to].

With that in mind, enjoy this double-entendre-laden video discussing tomorrow's teabagging festivities.

Boy, You Couldn't See This One Coming

I couldn't find an example of myself writing it, but know that I thought it several times, so I'll just quote Andrew Sullivan expressing my thoughts:

At several points in the last few years, as I gamely tried to convince conservatives that they should be concerned about the scale and scope of the Bush-Cheney surveillance state [...] I was ridiculed as an hysteric. When forced to defend basic civil liberties against a presidency claiming unprecedented war powers within the boundaries of the US and potentially against American citizens, I found only one argument got through. What if Hillary Clinton got this kind of power? And the pathological partisanship of the right briefly faltered for just a little before the full-bore Bush-backing denialism kicked back in.

So what happened? After the Department of Homeland Security spent the last 8 years with its eyes turned inwards looking for terrorists on American soil, it has started looking for terrorists on American soil in a place where the right wing would rather they not look: Within the right wing.

All of a sudden, that terrorist surveillance program isn't as apple-pie flavored as it used to be, is it? Well, let's just comfort those folks over there on the Far Right with some words that might seem very familiar to them: "You don't have anything to worry about if you haven't done anything wrong."

Want a real laugh? Wait until those ex post facto idiots see the new "No Fly List".

Overseas Insurance

I've been thinking about it, especially now that I'm married, especially after seeing what has happened to Thomas Hunt. One commenter said it happens all the time to guys in Asia; I've personally never seen it before and didn't realize it was that easy to be left alone in a situation that dire.

I guess it's time to get some health insurance.

I never had any before because (a) I was told that the insurance my company offers wouldn't cover me in Asia, (b) the money I would spend on an American insurance plan in a single year alone would cover the cost of a brain transplant, two heart transplants, and a sex change here in The Philippines.

If anybody reading can tell me: Is there any way to get medical insurance in The Philippines for Epril and me that just covers medical expenses after they go over 50,000 pisos ($1,000) that won't cost me more than $100 per month?

I really know nothing about health insurance and all those different limits and coverage areas and drug benefits or what-have-you. I tried studying it a couple of times and my mind derailed.

The Sad Story Of Thomas Hunt

A man named Thomas Hunt is dying.

The unfortunate part is that he is an American, dying in The Philippines, with no money.

In The Philippines, everyone is treated equally in a hospital: No money, no treatment.

If you want to help, you can start by going here to read about the situation. Also the chartiy group that Epril belongs to, Expatriates' Ladies Charity, is out there every day trying to raise the money to save this man's life. You can follow their efforts via the Yahoo CDO Expatriates Group. They've managed to keep him in the hospital instead of being put out on the street, are out buying medicine for him every day, and are finding people to donate much-needed A-negative blood.

It's a sad situation.

This Isn't Going To Help

The U.S. government is debating the prospect of bringing that lone surviving Somali pirate to American soil to be tried in a federal court, giving him the potential of facing life imprisonment in a federal penetentiary.

It begs the question: Which is actually worse? Spending your life penniless and starving on the streets of the most dangerous and lawless city on the planet, or spending it in an American prison?

Really, the only thing that is going to prevent these pirates from engaging in their activities is preemptively killing them as soon as they are sighted. Board them, execute them, and leave the bodies floating. Seriously: The only "downside" these pirates currently have to consider for their actions is a slight risk of getting killed. If that goes up to a likely risk of getting killed, they may (and I stress may given their circumstances) think twice about it.

---

UPDATE:

Heh.

Fact Check Of The Day: Amplifying The Stupidity

View From The Left: Racist Texas lawmaker thinks Asians should change their names to ones that Americans can understand.

On Tuesday, State Rep. Betty Brown (R) caused a firestorm during House testimony on voter identification legislation when she said that Asian-Americans should change their names because they’re too hard to pronounce.

The Truth-Is-Dumber-Than-You-Realize Reality: What Ms. Brown was discussing was voter registration, where the misspelling of a name can lead to disenfranchisement: For example, someone with the name that sounds like "chang" could spell it "Chiang" or "Cheng" or "Jiang". Using the reasoning skills of a 5-year-old, she figured that if Asians would just settle on a single spelling for a single name, things would be so much easier.

Yeah. Well.

It's not racist... unless Ms. Brown would not also have suggested to Mr. Smythe, Mrs. Johnsson, Miss Foxx, and Mr. Browne that they change their names as well. (It's up to you to decide whether she would or would not have suggested that.) It's just the kind of idiotic and uneducated thing that falls squarely in the "asking-for-trouble-no-matter-how-well-you-explain-yourself" category that local politicians (especially from Texas) always seem to blindly wander into.

In other words, in this case, checking the facts doesn't lead you to think that Ms. Brown is any less retarded than you were led to believe — she is — just that she probably didn't intend to come across as a racist while engaging in her massive stupidity.

Daily Report: Holy Week Summary

Holy week is over... but summertime sure isn't. As they say: It's not the heat, it's the humidity. They were thinking of the jungle when they said that. Temperatures here are in the low-to-mid 90's only, but it's sticky hot.

Fortunately, I'm surrounded on all sides by cool natural spring pools for my bathing pleasure. Work improved immensely for unknown reasons over the last week, and I was meeting all of my minimums by noontime, and then taking off to the pools and rivers in the afternoon. At the same time, the girls were all up at 3:30 a.m. to do Jesus-related things, and then slept all day.

On Friday, of course, was "sacrifice day". Epril and her friends went 1500 feet up a mountain into the pre-dawn sky in the annual Catholic tradition of sharing in Jesus' suffering on Good Friday. As you can see, at this hour, even the camera was bleary-eyed.

Epril said she nearly passed out from exhaustion during the climb, but as you can see in this strike-a-pose-for-Jesus moment with Lherma, Inday, and Susan, she is looking mmm-mmm-good.

Epril and the crew after about 3½ hours of walking into the upper reaches of the troposphere. I would have just about been waking up now.


Tyson has almost doubled in size in the
past 2 weeks. But he still gets carried
everywhere by his mommy. People
think Epril is carrying around a baby
when she does this.

We're hopefully going to get Tyson's
ears and tail done this week. Then
he'll look dorky for the next 6 months
with his ears all wrapped up.Anyway, we spent the rest of the weekend swimming. Jams and Maggie came by on with their friend Alfred (a merchant marine captain) on Saturday and took us up to Cahoulugan Pool Resort for the afternoon. The drink of the day was an old standby Filipino favorite: One bottle of gin mixed with one bottle of Rose's Lime Juice... straight. (Yes, you're right to shudder at the thought.) Surprisingly, if you mix about one part of that mixture with one part 7-Up, I discovered that it's not too bad.

On Sunday, Susan's new boyfriend (a family driver for some Koreans) came by and took the girls out to the beach. I'm not a fan of the nearby beaches (except for Agutayan Island), so I stayed home and worked.

Tyson is a biter, we're learning. Actually, he just walks around with his mouth open and wraps it around anything and everything he comes into contact with. He doesn't really chew or bite down much. He's just tasting stuff, I think. I've had a tough time convincing everybody to give him a little smack whenever he does that, but when I explained that while he is a cute little 4-kilogram pup with small teeth wrapped around their thumbs now... in a year, he is going to be 40 kilogram dog with big teeth wrapped around their arms, then they got the picture.

Fact Check Of The Day

Right Wing Fantasy: President O flies a pizza chef from St. Louis, Missouri, to the White House in order to have him cook a pizza just for him.

How much does Obama love his pizza? So much that he is willing to fly a chef 860 miles to Washington D.C. to make him a personal pizza.

Hey, you guys know what says you are really sincere about this whole Global Warming thing that you want to use to justify an economy crushing cap and trade program? Jetting a dude across the country to make you a freaking pie.

And you know what says you have a real solid handle on the economic concerns of citizens who are struggling through the recession? Jetting a dude across the country to "hand toss your dough".

Stupidity Meets Reality: The pizza chef was already in D.C. on personal business at his own expense, and just made a side trip to the White House to make a pizza... and Obama even paid for the ingredients out of his own pocket.

Remember kids: Check your facts. There really are people out there who actually get paid to make you stupider.

---

UPDATE:

I'll make this a standing order on this blog: If you come across any really clear-cut, simple and obvious examples of people getting caught twisting facts in order to mislead their readers or to create false conclusions, pop them into the comments section, and I'll put up the best ones in their own "Fact Check Of The Day" post.

Critical Thinking And Open-Mindedness

A perfect primer to rational thought, scientific method, and the false arguments presented by people who want you to think like they do.

Update on Thailand

(I was going to add this as an update to the post below, but it got too long.)

The protesters accomplished what they set out to do in Pattaya: Managed to force a red-faced Thai government to quickly and fearfully shuttle their big brothers from Korea, China, and Japan out of the country with all due haste. Now the red shirts have moved their protest back to Bangkok.

The Thai government has called out the army, and tanks are once again in the streets of Bangkok... but things aren't working out quite right as the red shirts seem to be having picnics and parties on top of the tanks. (Lots of photos at ThaiVisa.com.) One person commented that the problem is that the current government didn't take any legal action against their own supporters, the yellow shirts, after they shut down the Bangkok international airport last November, which pissed off the army. Interesting thought, that.

Ultimately, I predict that the red shirts (the conservatives) are going to run government instead of the current yellow shirts (the liberals) once there is another election: The country, more or less, is two-thirds conservative (mostly in the rural north) and only one-third liberal. The only reason that the government is "yellow" right now is because the liberal yellow shirt protestors made themselves enough of a pain in the ass, and conservative red politicians ran a dirty campaign in the last election (which they would have won without the need to cheat), and the surpreme court ruled tossed them out of office. I wouldn't be surprised to see Thaksin voted back into the Prime Minister's office (if he isn't dead first) within the next 10 years.

Pattaya Is In The News Again

I lived in Pattaya for 5 years, and it was never anything more than a concrete morass of hookers, drunks, thieves, queers, and violent gangs.

Only now that I'm gone does the place become interesting.

Another Broken Campaign Promise By Obama?

President Obama originally promised to revivify the Freedom of Information Act, and release secret memos crafted by legal counsel for The Bush White House: Memos that could show lots of Executive Branch employees and appointees guilty of some serious charges relating to torture and human rights violations. Now, the new President may be changing his mind about that.

Why? We really didn't know until now.

It turns out that Senate Republicans have threatened to filibuster (i.e. block) each and every person that President Obama wants to appoint to the executive branch if those memos are released. It's like President Obama threatening to veto everything the Senate passes unless Republican Senators fire all of their Senate aides whom he dislikes.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Get rid of the filibuster. It's nothing now except an abused and misused tool that hurts government.

Easter In The Philippines

It's Holy Week here in The Philippines, so everyone is dusting off their whips and 400-pound crosses for a great week of misery, pain, spaghetti dinners, and long walks up really steep hills at 4 in the morning.

Easter is the most important holiday in the Catholic Church, and the Catholic Filipinos take Easter and crank it up to 11.

Easter in The Philippines is never dull. First you've got the guys who nail themselves to crosses. Real nails, real blood. Then you've got all the flagellants. Real whips, real blood. Then you've got the rest of the country who just does Via Dolorosa up the biggest hill they can find. Real steep. Real cramps.

But also, of course, Easter is a time for family, vacations, relaxing your aching feet on a sandy tropical beach, and lots of yummy food.

But don't try mentioning The Easter Bunny, Easter baskets, or chocolate eggs: Nobody here has ever heard of them. If you want to talk about an Easter parade without blood (fake or otherwise), a crown of thorns, and Roman soldiers, nobody will know what you're talking about. The only reason kids might be crawling around the back yard on their hands and knees in this country is if they have a cross strapped to their back that weighs more than they do.

So welcome to Holy Week Philippines style, everybody. I'll be sleeping in, and the heaviest thing I'll be carrying is my coffee mug and the steepest thing I'll be climbing is the stairs to my office... but I'll buck it up and manage to make it through several lashings of Ma Nila's fantastic spaghetti dinner.

Daily Report: Sweating and Freezing

My bike was finished. I told Mechanic Jun to drive it the 15 miles to my house in Jasaan to see if any kinks needed to be worked out.

Yes, there were kinks. I don't have my bike yet.

Puppy Tyson is doing well. He seems to be naturally house trained: He always goes out an open door and pees on the cement walk or in the grass. Of course if he finds the door closed, the floor is fine... so he's not batting 1000.


Tyson still has his new-dog smell. He
likes to swim when the water isn't too
cold, and riding on motorcycles is also
high on his list of enjoyable activities.For reasons I can't understand, Tyson's breath always smells like poo... and he won't drink the schnapps I offer him. He chews on everything, just like any dog, but he's a fast learner, and realizes that when we make "the buzzer sound" he's doing something wrong and stops. He's playful and happy and waddles around and is all roly-poly in the grass.


Epril beating the heat with
the freezing cold spring
water.It's the hottest time of the year here in Mindanao. We went swimming today at the most secret of the five pool resorts in Jasaan: Out this crazy steep dirt road about half a mile out into the jungle, but actually quite close to the other pool resorts. We brought Tyson with us as well. We found out that he can swim just fine, but the natural spring water is so goddamned cold the little guy was almost in shock after 10 seconds of exposure, and didn't stop shivering for an hour afterwards. I really can't understand how water coming out of the ground can be a colder temperature than any air temperature that The Philippines has seen in the last million years. And the earth is supposed to get warmer as you go down too... especially in a volcanic place like Mindanao.

Mayor Jardin of Jasaan was also hanging out there at the pool resort, so we chatted for a bit. He might be getting the road up there paved, which would be great... although it's the bad condition of the road that keeps the resort quiet and under-occupied, compared to other resorts on a Sunday afternoon, packed with hundreds of screaming kids and karaoke singers.

Mike and Emilyn Bird had a baby girl yesterday, and brought it home today. Total cost of a normal uncomplicated vaginal delivery in The Philippines: $450. And that includes everything including the optional First Class service: Mike left the house with $500 in his pocket on Saturday morning, and came home with $50 in his pocket on Sunday afternoon. Food for the family, flowers, drinks, taxi, diapers... all of it. Not bad.

Epril and I stopped by to visit the newborn tonight. She had such a bright red face that I suggested Mike nickname her Cherry. He might. The women cooed and awwed inside, while Mike and I sat out on the porch and got drunk. I think I lost my phone in the process since I can't find it now. It was a worthless 8-year-old Nokia, so I'm not worried about that, but losing all my friend's phone numbers would really suck. I hope it turns up.

Just To Prove There's A Club For Everything

Don't ask me why, but one thing that I really find cute on a girl is what I've always called a "crooked smile"... especially on Asian girls. It's actually a common thing: The lateral incisor (second tooth away from the top front) is slightly back and behind a more prominent canine, creating little fangs. (Even the crown princess of Japan has it.) Little did I know, I'm not alone in that particular oral fixation.



It's called "yaeba" and apparently it's a becoming pretty popular look in Japan right now. Heh: It's been popular with me for years.

It's All About Fact Checking

I think I'm going to add a new pet peeve to my blog quiddity: Now joining the fight against hypocrisy will be the fight to get people to check facts.

Of course many people don't have the time to delve into even the most simple details of an issue of the day. That's understandable. But if that is the case, people should be willing to admit to themselves that they don't know enough about something to make a decision about it. If you want to form your opinion on an issue based soley upon the opinion that your favorite blogger happens to have about that issue, it's like driving down a road with your eyes closed based upon somebody's opinion that the road is "pretty straight". My new tag line: Good luck with that.

Personally, I've gone slack-jawed trying to figure out this whole bank bailout and auto bailout and regulations and stuff. I've seen tons of opinions from the blogs that I read, but I wouldn't deign to chime in on my blog about the issue because even though I have lots of opinions, I don't have any real facts.

The facts are out there if you look. Most respectible articles on the internet have the common courtesy to provide links to any facts they cite. (If they don't, alarm bells should go off.) The problem is that nobody reading the article bothers to click on those links to see what the author is talking about, and how he or she formed his or her opinion. What's most interesting is that oftentimes the facts found at the links that the authors provide as their source of information are read so selectively that the contradiction to the author's entire dialectic can be found in the very link he or she is citing. Authors will often do this with the knowledge that nobody actually will click on the link to "fact check" them.

Which brings me to today's example of more right wing exaggeration:

George Will is one of my favorite columnists, but when it comes to climate change he has this incredible tendency to twist facts to fit his conclusions. (See here for last month's example of George Will's same brand of chicanery.)

In today's column, George Will said,

Reducing carbon emissions supposedly will reverse warming, which is allegedly occurring even though, according to statistics published by the World Meteorological Organization, there has not been a warmer year on record than 1998.

(George Will then provides a link to those statistics.)

Reading this above sentence on its own, what opinions can you make? That global warming peaked in 1998? That climate warming has come and gone throughout history no matter what efforts man makes? I wouldn't blame you if that is what you thought.

But then you check facts: You click on the link (.pdf file) that George Will provided. You look at the same charts that he looked at. What do you see? This:

(I put the arrow and "1998" in there myself for clarity.)

Now, George Will is one of the best Republican authors and pundits in the country, so when he plays fast and loose with the facts, he's a little more subtle: 1998 is indeed the warmest year on record, just like he says. But, looking at those charts, does the impression that the quote above gave you about global warming stay the same... that global warming peaked in 1998?

This is a slightly more sophisticated version of what I've been complaining about these last few days: That Right Wing writers take a fact, form a misleading opinion about it, and then publish that opinion without giving the reader those selfsame facts. It's perfectly legal. It's a perfectly sensible way to win over the hearts of an uninformed populace. This approach has been around since the beginning of time. But let's admit it's not honest; it's withholding information from people because you know that you have a losing argument when you have all the facts lined up against you. But, as I said: On many issues, it's the only approach some people have.

Please everyone: Check facts. Look it up. Find things out. Educate yourselves. If you come to a conclusion different than your friends or me: Cool. At least your opinion is informed and you have the facts that you can use to say, "This is why I think this way." Once you have that, then by all means, welcome to the debate.

Word Of The Day: Panglossian

Definition
Adjective meaning to be blindly or naively optimistic.

Example
Yesterday, in a congressional district of New York State that has been overwhelmingly Republican since the time of the Romans, one of the most well-known and experienced Republican politicians in New York State narrowly lost [probably, pending recount] a special election for a seat in Congress to an unknown Democrat with no political experience, who has been living in this district for less than 10 years. When asked to comment on this, the Panglossian National Chairman of the Republican Party, Michael Steele, had this to say:

"[We] went toe-to-toe with the Obama Democratic machine that looked invincible in the Northeast just a few months ago and showed that our party can and will be competitive in areas of the country where our party hasn't won recently."

Synonyms
Polyannaish, roseate, sanguine.

Obama Breaks No Tax Pledge. I've A Better Idea.

Candidate Obama said he wouldn't raise taxes on anybody earning under $250,000 per year... but today President Obama signed a 62-cent-per-pack tax increase on cigarettes.

I know it can be argued that a sin tax isn't an income-specific (i.e. sub-250) tax: If Obama raised the gas guzzler tax so that buying a new Lamborghini was more expensive, anybody who buys a Lamborghini, whether they are earning 30 thousand or 30 million dollars per year has to pay it. But, how many people would argue against the fact that raising taxes on Lamborghinis effects almost exclusively people making more than $250K? Well, it has been demonstrated that cigarette taxes are a regressive tax almost exclusively borne by the poor: Rich people simply do not smoke much, just as poor people don't often buy Lamborghinis.

So: While President Obama could use semantics to claim that this isn't a tax increase on the sub-250 crowd, the fact is that in practice this a broken campaign promise.

Now, let me give you my position on this: If you are a smoker, you should not be eligible for free government health care when cigarettes finally put you in the hospital. Your choice to voluntarily engage in something that is almost certainly guaranteed to increase your healthcare burden should vitiate your ability to walk into a hospital with neither cash nor insurance and be treated for smoking-related health problems. You should have to live with your choice... and eventually suffer with your choice as well.

I see the cigarette tax as being sort of the same thing: Smokers with no health insurance are paying extra taxes to the government on the basis that they will eventually cost the government a certain amount of money through their habit. Unfortunately, this method catches up the many (majority of?) smokers who actually have health insurance, forcing them to pay the government for medical expenses they are able to cover responsibly on their own. (I'll leave out of the equation those smokers who have no insurance, but who have enough money in their bank accounts to pay the hundreds of thousands of dollars to get medical treatment for emphysema and lung cancer; how many people can that be?) This tax therefore isn't fair to the smokers with health insurance.

So, my solution is this: If you can prove you have health insurance, you shouldn't have to pay the tax on cigarettes. Simple enough? As soon as you lose your health insurance, you start paying the tax. Get your health insurance back, stop paying again.

And, just for the record, I do smoke 1 or 2 cigarettes per day.

---

UPDATE:

An interesting point at this link: Given that smokers die at a younger age, they participate much less in social security, Medicare and Medicaid than the average American. It's therefore possible that smokers, on average, are a net zero on expense to the government.

And When Nate Silver Talks...

America's best political statistician, Nate Silver, crunches the numbers for the 2010 elections, and makes the following determination:

All is not lost for the Republicans, however. While a popular president can help his party to stem its losses, his party nearly always loses at least some seats at the midterms. Since World War II, the president’s party has lost an average of twenty-four House seats in the interim elections, gaining ground on just two of sixteen occasions. My statistical model shows that Obama will need to sustain an approval rating in the range of 65 percent to avoid losing any ground in the House. (The Senate, where the Democrats can take advantage of at least five Republican retirements, might be a different story.)

Believe it, kids. This guy is right so often, it's scaryweirdamazing.

Daily Report: Beware, Family Photos Ahead

I'm not in a mood to type this morning, but a lot of pictures have accumulated over the last week, none of them taken by me — Epril and her sisters have been running around shutterbugging with the camera. I'll put up some of those photos for a change. Besides, my mother asked me to put up more photos of the family. (After the fact, I realized that almost everyone in these pictures is single and looking... so I figured I might as well play matchmaker while I'm here.)

Epril sitting in the street near her parents' house in Kimaya, a suburb of Jasaan.


Clockwise from darkest to lightest: My niece, Doreen; my little sister-in-law, Dimple; a more distant niece, Ivy; and baby Akieo, baby of one of Epril's cousins.


Two of Epril's best friends, Madeline and Fatima (both single and looking, guys).


My father in law, and his granddaughter, my niece, Doreen.


Epril's younger sister, Inday.


Epril's younger sister, Ednil (single and looking, guys).


Epril, older sister Susan (single and looking, guys), and Susan's daughter, our niece, Doreen.


Ivy graduated from sixth grade this week.


While Ivy's older brother David graduated from high school (single, gay, and looking, guys).


As did Epril's cousin, Lerma (single and looking, guys).


Dimple (in her new dress) got an award for being on the Dean's List in third grade.


Inday got an award for dancing.


I'll stick in some photos I took now:

School children at Dimple's school in traditional Philippines dress.


Dimple really has a lovely little school.


A sixth grade classroom at Kimaya Elementary School.


Dimple and her friends.


A panoramic view of sixth grade graduation.

New Craziness In Thailand

This time though, it's okay to chuckle.

The Committee has become alarmed at the deterioration of family values and family unity. One of the main evils of this problem is alcoholic beverages. The new proposal will require bars, convenience stores and entertainment centers that serve alcohol to adjust their closing times as follows:

All bars, shops and entertainment centers will closed based on a sliding window. Mondays close at 1:00AM, Tuesday 12:00 Midnight, Wednesday 11:00PM, Thursday 10:00 PM and Fridays at 9:00PM. Saturdays, Sundays and all official holidays, alcoholic beverages will not be allowed to be sold.

On April 16, another controversial law is being enforced. After that date, massage parlors can no longer employ anyone under the age of 40, and are required to register all employees as such. This will minimize the request by customers for "extra services" which can cause problems with marriages and minor wives.

Heh. Gogo bars closing at 9:00 at night. No booze at all on weekends. Massage parlors filled with 40-year-old ladies. Good luck with that.

I know you don't like to admit it, Thailand, but pretty much everybody lists "to get drunk" and "to get laid" as 2 of their top 3 reasons for visiting you.

Anyway, I give about

• 60% odds that the idea will never be implemented,
• 20% odds that it will be implemented and totally ignored by everyone,
• 10% odds that it will be implemented with exemptions for any place a tourist has ever gone to in Thailand or might possibly go in the future,
• 5% odds that it will be implemented in some heavily-watered-down but otherwise-country-wide form, and
• 4% odds that it will be implemented and everyone winds up with pre-paid booze cards that can be used anytime, anywhere.
• 1% odds that it will be implemented exactly as stated, and enforced vigorously.

The New Kid

Our new Doberman puppy arrived today. His name is Tyson... so named because it is hoped that he will grow up to be big, black, and menacing. (If he bites anybody's ear off, let's just hope it belongs to a bad guy.)

For now though, he's more or less just a splat on the floor.




And just as a warning, expect baby Tyson pictures on the blog. And no complaining about it: This is my house.

Communist Rebels Attack And Get Asses Kicked

The New People's Army here in Mindanao (celebrating 40 years of getting themselves pointlessly killed) today attacked an army outpost about 45 miles southeast of here. The surprise attack managed to kill 4 Filipino soldiers, 2 civilians caught in the cross fire, and 11 of their own members.

If you're a military organization with 40 years of practical training, and 4 kills is the best you can do when sneaking up on an unsuspecting backwater military outpost which is on a low alert level, while managing to get a bunch of yourselves exterminated in the process, you're crap.

It's Not Amusing Anymore

"Chicken Little" is a children's story about a chicken who had a pebble fall on his back, and was convinced the sky was falling. He ran around the barnyard yelling that the sky was falling, and got the other animals in quite a panic... until a wise squirrel uncovered the truth.

Recently though, some people on the far right of the political spectrum in America have actually become voluntary Chicken Littles. They search for a pebble to drop on themselves and then run around scaring everybody on purpose. They have been making a cottage industry out of this in recent days.

The best example to date is the "Global Currency Scare" thought up by the folks at Fox News (and one habitually off-the-wall hysterical congresswoman from Minnesota).

So what was the pebble? Most international finance is denominated in US dollars. China recently suggested that another currency might be better suited for this than the dollar. That was the pebble.

What did chicken little pretend it was? An imminent plan to do away with the American dollar and force you to use a single worldwide currency.

This wasn't a misunderstanding. This was a deliberate tactic to scare Americans, and then try to link that contrived fear to Democrats. (For another good example of this Chicken Little Ploy, check out the comments section in my Bob Basso post below.)

Is this tactic all the Republican party has left? No. They have something else too: In psychiatry, it is called Oppositional Defiant Disorder; in politics, it's called "whatever you do, I'll do the opposite... just because."

For a good example of this, look at last Sunday's (admittedly dumb) "turn off your lights to vote against global warming". The right wing folks urged everybody to go around their houses and turn on every light they owned during this simple-minded show of global conservation.

Is that really all The Right has? Petulance? It's not that they didn't make a point, or didn't have the right to counter-demonstrate; it's just that being low-brow and childish is an idiotic impression to attach to your own political party. (It didn't work with left-wing anti-war protesters either, but at least those guys had the intention of following up their idiocy with discussion, ideas, and debate.)

No discussion, no ideas, no reasoned debate with the Right Wing though: Just fear mongering, distortions and misdirection, and fingers-in-the-ears tantruming. They haven't learned, they haven't changed, they haven't improved. I'm a conservative in a lot of ways... but fuck all if I could ever be a Republican again. These people have nothing to offer anymore.

Bob Basso Channels Thomas Paine

The latest internet phenomonon (limited, I suppose, to conservative political junkies) is one Bob Basso, whom I haven't bothered to read about, but I have watched his videos. While I like his schtick and agree with (much of) his point of view, his argument that our government is not representing America is quite weak: Fact is, it is not representing about 48% of America. That's Democracy, not tyranny.

He seems to be quite a fan of hyperbole and sophistry, but the actual issues he discusses are valid. My Ron Paul Republicanism (these days called Libertarianism) mindset agrees that the subjects he covers are important, but the way he makes them out to be Republic-shattering, liberty-killing, freedom-drowning events is a bit overdone — this guy really hates illegal immigrants... Wow.

Anyway, it seems that President O has heard, seen, or been made aware of these videos that Bob Basso has put out and has invited him to The White House. The third-hand quote purportedly made by The White House as the reason for the visit is "to discuss the disturbing nature of these videos." I'm guessing that quote more a canard to gin up publicity for this guy than it is an actual quote: White House comments usually reserve vituperative words like that for Mugabe and Kim Jong Il... not some guy in a powdered wig and lace stock fulminating on YouTube.

Anyway, here is the first of Bob Basso's videos. He does his act well and makes some good (if frantic) points about The Union.

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UPDATE:

The only source of this invitation to sit down with The President is from Bob Basso himself, reported soley via an often-wrong website. I suppose it should be taken with a 30-pound grain of salt.

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UPDATE II:

I suppose I should bulletize my opinions lest it be thought that I agree whole-heartedly with Mr. Basso, which I do not:

• I think that English should be learned by anyone who wants to be a long-term resident of America. I don't care one way or the other if English becomes the official language of America more than in a de facto sense.
• Mr. Basso says he is against "diversity", but I actually think he means he is anti-ethnicity. Big difference. I think that some people do "American hyphenate" themselves too quickly and too easily... but having/keeping/celebrating an ethnic heritage does not threaten America like Mr. Basso believes.
• I also don't think that the government should be the primary administrator of our healthcare system, but I do think that government should guarantee a minimum level of preventative and maintenance healthcare to all its citizens.
• As far as I'm concerned, ranting about activist judges who "ignore history" (for history's sake alone) is the same as ranting against scientists who ignore the Bible. Times change, opinions change, values change, laws change.
• As far as illegal immigrants go, I have no idea how to deal with fixing the problem: They do lots of jobs that need to be done at a salary that keeps certain goods and services affordable in America... yet they are breaking the law. But I'm not going to have a thrombo over it like this guy.
• The rest of it, I pretty much fully agree with.
• So the Second American Revolution this guy is asking for? Yawn. Lots of salient points, some even highly important that should be debated more fully in the American community. But somehow expecting that overthrowing one set of elected officials for another would result in the desired changes is silly. As I said above: This is the exact government that 52% of Americans want.

Daily Report: Dress For Dimple

I took 8-year-old little sister Dimple today to the mall in Cagayan De Oro to buy her a new outfit. Dimple was highly excited and was awake at 6 a.m. and all dressed up for the excursion... which didn't begin until 1:30 in the afternoon.

One thing you have to understand about Dimple is that she gets motion sickness just by grabbing the door handle of a car. So, for the jeepney ride to Cagayan, I rode with Dimple up in the front seat, with her sitting right next to the open side of the cabin (with a plastic bag nearby just in case). Success: Dimple enjoyed an emesis-free 40 minutes in the jeepney. (Epril and Ednil rode in the back.)

Once we arrived at Limketkai mall, Epril and Ednil wandered off while I took Dimple first to Jollibee for a hamburger (Dimple ate an entire hamburger, which impressed me), and after that it was off to buy Dimple an adorable little blue dress with a pink sash, matching hair band and pink shoes to go along. (She picked out the dress while I matched the shoes for her... as she was looking at sneakers to go with.) I also let her pick out a toy: A little Disney purse set or something... I can't remember exactly, just that it was 5 or 10 times the price compared to the no-name versions you can find at the local market. After that, I took Dimple for some ice cream, and we met back up with Epril and Ednil and then hopped in a cab to go from Limketkai mall to SM mall to do grocery shopping.

While in the cab, everything in Dimple's stomach wound up on Dimple's stomach. Shockingly, the little girl was unconscious too: It took several not-too-subtle slaps to the face to bring her round. The cab pulled over, and I fetched her out of the back seat and sat her on the trunk of the taxi until her head cleared. Then we put her in her new dress and continued on our way.

I've partially figured it out: Dimple goes into a trance or hypnosis by the movement of the vehicle... hence the not-waking-up thing. Why she then proceeds to throw up while in such a state, however, is a mystery.

Anyway, at SM we bought a case of diet root beer for me, and other bits and pieces for home maintenance that cannot be found in Jasaan (conditioner for Epril's hair topping the list). I also bought some chewable motion sickness tablets for Dimple. Then we took a taxi from SM to Jasaan with our booty. The meter was at 390 pisos when we got home (about $8) and 45 kilometers, but in advance we agreed to pay the taxi driver 600 pisos ($12) for the ride because he had to drive back an additional 30 kilometers before he would arrive in territory where somebody might use his services again.

I curled up in bed with my book: A collection of Sunday Times columns by Jeremy Clarkson.

New Tesla Sedan Coming To Market Soon-ish

Electric vehicles are just getting better, cooler, more sensible and economical, and hard to pass up.

With your new $50,000 Tesla Model S Sedan, you'll be able to go 2 hours down the highway and 2 hours back with lots of charge to spare for a total cost of $5, or 2.5 cents per mile, with an equivalent gasoline mileage (at $2.25 per gallon) of 90 miles per gallon.

But, the coolest thing about electric vehicles is the silence. I know on my electric scooter, it is the best feature. I can imagine how fantastic it would be going down the highway in a car that is making no more noise than it does when it is shut off, sitting in your garage.

Additionally, Tesla has designed the batteries to be swappable, so with infrastructure changes at gas stations eventually it will take less time to "recharge" than it will to "fill up."

Currently though, you can tack on 100 miles to the car's range with 45 minutes of charging. Tesla provides its cars with a 100-mile backup battery as well. That means you could travel 500 miles... 7 hours... to an overnight destination, with a 45-minute stop for lunch.

Assuming that your average new gasoline car gets 30 miles to the gallon, and is driven 12,000 miles per year, and gas costs $2.25 per gallon, the Tesla will save $600 per year over purchasing any other new car... and be cooler and cleaner than any other car on the road.

The only 2 problems I can see right now with owning an electrical car have to do with the rare times when you go on that above-mentioned 500-mile trip: That when you get to your hotel (1) you can't drive again for another 45 minutes or (2) you can't find a parking place that is close to an electrical plug. Other than that rare instance, what's the downside?

Philippines News Roundup

Here are the stories that have been making headlines in The Philippines this month:


Convicted rapist Daniel Smith had his
accuser recant, but only after US-PH
relations were strained.A Filipina woman accused a U.S. Marine of raping her, and got him convicted to a 40-year prison sentence. This rape victim became a cause célèbre for all those "America Out Now" groups, and this strained Philippines-America relations more than a little as anti-American protests abounded. Now? The rape victim says it was consensual. Never mind.


Legacy owner Celso de los Angeles Jr.
is doing his best to stay out of jail.
Good luck with that.The Legacy Bank was, for many years, a great way to double your money: You gave them x pisos, and they gave you postdated checks for 2x pisos. Legacy made their money from usurious microloans to poor people. Of course, the bottom was bound to fall out eventually. It did, when the owners started giving not-so-micro loans to themselves.


Overnight, Filipino Arnel Pineda went
from the obscure corners of YouTube
to the lead singer of Journey.In the ultimate "Rockstar", rags-to-riches, hometown hero homecoming story, Filipino Arlen Pineda played his first concert in The Philippines as the new lead singer of Journey. Close your eyes... maybe keep them open a bit even... and you'd swear you're in the presence of Steve Perry himself. (Pinoy singers seem to be all the rage these days.)

Daily Report:Not All Small Affairs Are Created Equal

I readjusted my understanding of the sense of community in The Philippines that I've been commenting on here lately. I think that a Filipino's desire to be "out and about" — mingling, chatting, participating, enjoying — is much more a self-centered operation than it is a desire to be a positive factor in the village. They ask not what they can do for their community.

Queenie was 9 years old when she died from leukemia yesterday. Her coffin was sitting in her parents' living room in a neighborhood of densely packed little houses on the outskirts of Jasaan. She had a simple bier surrounded by some relatives, photos, a paschal candle, and a few stuffed animals. Twenty people came to her funeral service.

It clears things up a bit, doesn't it? Five hundred people will show up for some nearly-pointless childrens' event, but only twenty will show up for a child's funeral. I suppose that these people have enough problems and enough grief in their own lives already. Filipinos probably learned early on that going over to their neighbor's to share in the grief doesn't accomplish much except to add to their own misery, and spread it like an infection. Happiness is what these people ask of their community; succor and solace are commodities this place seems to have in terribly small quantities.

Ugly

I love custom cars, hot rods, monster trucks. I've never seen an automotive fashion trend that I didn't find attractive.

Until now.

People are taking impossibly large rims (30 inches!) with low profile tires, and are sticking them on jacked up suspensions under 1970–1980 sedans. Monte Carlos painted bright colors seem particularly popular. (See Mom and Dad? I was just 20 years too early.)

Anyway, the moniker for these monstrosities is "Donks" and you can see more of them (should you want to) here.

Daily Report: Guests

Life is ongoing here in the jungle. We still climb out of bed in the morning to the cock crowing, and we still climb into bed at night to those little bastards next door barking.

I've filled up the little swimming pool on the roof, and now I've got constantly-frolicking naked natives to keep me company while I work. Downstairs is a constant cycle of cook-eat, cook-eat, wear-wash, wear-wash, play-eject, play-eject.

I was going to have the furniture maker build a few more small tables for the TV room, and a long bench for the front porch... probably at a cost of $30 or so. Kirko the houseboy came to me and told me he could build the tables and bench himself if I wanted. Having seen that the average Filipino guy can bung together a Queen Anne set out of bamboo and chicken bones in the space of an afternoon, I figured "sure." As Kirko and I went to the lumber mill to pick up the wood, he explained how his family used to own a lumber mill of their own. He then proceeded to name all the different types of woods on display in the mill, and all the types of trees within view. My confidence level rose quite a bit. (Cost for it all: $12.)

As you can see, the first table is finished.

Cousin-in-law Mike Bird is back in town from a brief sojourn to North Dakota, where he spent a month fitting out passenger planes to go to Saudi Arabia. His wife, Emelyn, is 14 months pregnant and Mike is back for the anticipated birth. Based on the lump-to-lady size ratio, it is going to be a tight squeeze. Mike is a bit of a giraffe, so it's not surprising his kid would match. Mike has spent his anticipatory days planting a garden of Chinese lettuces, kale, and Filipino pimentos. He also has a flock of chickens he tends to... and talks to them like they were puppies or something. I thought you were just supposed to make clucking sounds around chickens as you scattered feed. But then Mike desperately wants eggs... I suppose some pleading and coaching wouldn't hurt.

My motorcycle still isn't back from the shop yet after 5 weeks. Hell, after all this time I doubt it will even recognize me when it sees me. I've received daily updates to the we-fix-it-here-and-it-breaks-there drama that Mechanic Jun is suffering through. It seems like the end may be in sight... for the third or fourth time. With all the problems and missteps in this recent round of repairs, there's no way I'm even going to look at that bike without a guarantee of parts and workmanship (FWIW). Well, as I've said before, if it wasn't a turd of a bike to begin with, I wouldn't have dumped it in the shop, and broken the "do not break seal" in order to impose my supernal vision upon it. Common knowledge: Some turds don't take well to polishing.

The plants in my rooftop garden started to wilt. Overwatering apparently... vegetative version of the bloat. Not my fault though: It is Susan who waters them. She got some corrective advice from the older ladies with the greener thumbs, and it looks like things are on the mend now. Two little birds, brown with black heads (chestnut munia, after a bit of searching), are making a nest in one of the ferns. I see them coming in for a landing with bits of materiel in their beaks. Central booking sent a new gecko to my office after I accidentally squashed his predecessor. The new guy is twice the size of the old one, which is a good sign, because I think he is too big to fit in the track underneath the window, with its gecko-flattening apparatus. Hopefully he gets along with the munia. All I need now is an anteater to show up, and I'll have the proper level of coverage.

Daily Report: Small Affairs Writ Large

I think one of the nicest things about living out here in the jungle is that, without the latest headlining band playing at the colosseum, without the big sale at Macys, without the new restaurant opening or university speaker speaking or championship game kicking off... the small things in life tend to get more of the spotlight.

In the small town in upstate New York where I grew up, one the biggest events of the year was the Dairy Festival, with its parade of marching bands and majorettes, tractors and floats, beauty queens and politicians waving from the back of my father's yellow Cutlass, while we kids waved back from the grand front porch of the old Victorian house that had been converted to the local dentist's office.

Jasaan, if anything, finds much more divertisement in the local goings on. Jasaan crushes little upstate Bath in the number and variety of festivals, fairs, parades, and other civic events, but that doesn't stop them from piling on even more come-one-come-all excitement to daily life here.

So, it was with a bit of tongue-in-cheek anticipation that this evening Epril and I paid a visit to the local kindergarten graduation... the day's big event. We spent about 10 minutes there politely clapping as each child was lauded with their accomplishments over the loudspeaker: "Best writing. Best religion. Best teamwork. Best English." I challenge you to find a place in America where a kindergarten graduation can draw a crowd of 500 people.

Of course, the reason for that is that people in America have better things to do... like watch TV or work late or go shopping at Macys. But then, that is kind of the point: It is in this little town of no consequence or import where one can forget about Macys or The Giants and instead spend some time appreciating the spectacle of some wide-eyed little kids in their cute outfits having their special day.

A Summary Of Filipino History: A Book Report

I just finished my book on Filipino history. Unfortunately it was written in 1974, so the book ends with coverage of the fantastically successful and benevolent regime of Ferdinand Marcos and his beautiful and educated wife, Imelda, and the Filipino peoples' love for them. How did that work out, anyway?

The Philippines has very little in the way of history, primarily because governing forces in this country stopped history from happening whenever it had the chance. Essentially, you can know pretty much 95% of Filipino history by just studying the ten years 1895 to 1905, and World War 2. I'll summarize it:


Jose Rizal. His writings
and martyrdom were the
foundation of Filipino
independence.

Andres Bonifacio. He
started the revolution
for Filipino independence
from Spain.

Emilio Aguinaldo. He
finished the revolution
for independence and
was The Philippines
first president.

Manuel Quezon. Presi-
dent of The Philippines
during World War 2, and
first "official" Presi-
dent of The Philippines.

Manuel Roxas. President
of The Philippines at the
end of World War 2, and
first President of a free
and independent
Philippines.

Ferdinand Marcos. Pres-
ident of The Philippines
from 1965 to 1986.
Declared martial law and
ruled by dictat until
removed from power by
the election of the wife
of his murdered rival,
Corazon Aquino.The Philippines was a group of individual village/islands/nations until the Spanish came in the late 1500s. The Spanish used the diversity and differences between the villages/islands/nations to conquer the islands, getting one group of Filipinos to fight and subjugate the next. This went on for the next 300 years whenever discontent arose: Spanish-led Filipinos would put down unrest on islands they were not native to. Several potential revolutionaries rose during Spanish occupation, increasing in number and influence towards the end of the 1800's, but all were caught and killed. Most notable among these martyrs was a man named Rizal, one of the most brilliant Filipinos who ever lived. Read his thanatopsis, "Mi Ultimo Adios", written while waiting for his execution, here. It is one of the greatest pieces of revolutionary writing ever. (I can't read it without misting up.)

Eventually in 1897, one rebel, a fellow named Aguinaldo, was enough of a pain that even though his revolution (actually started by a man named Bonifacio) was beaten back, the Spanish bought him off and exiled him to Hong Kong.

Shortly after this, the Spanish-American war broke out. The American general sent to battle for The Philippines contacted Aguinaldo and told him that now was the time for the Filipinos to fight for independence. Aguinaldo came back and did all the fighting (and was declared the first President of The Philippines), but then at the last minute the Americans came in, staged a (literallyI couldn't find reference online, but according to the book, the Spanish did not want to surrender to the Filipinos, so requested the Americans come along at mid-morning fire their guns for a few minutes (not hitting anything), and the Spanish would surrender to them instead.) fake battle with the Spanish, who then surrendered The Philippines to the Americans.

Aguinaldo and his friends thought The Philippines was free, but the American government had other ideas, and (although a contentious decision in America) claimed The Philippines as a territory. The Filipinos fought the Americans from 1900 to 1901 over this, but it was a rather one-sided war and eventually the Filipinos gave in.

The Americans actually were pretty nice about running The Philippines (according to the book, which was really heavy on the "we love America" stuff), setting up the school system, improving infrastructure, and granting free trade with America. There was also a continual move by America towards Filipino independence from America. They were just about there when World War 2 started. A guy named Quezon was the president of the Commonwealth of The Philippines when Japan invaded just before independence, and he fled to America and governed from there, eventually dying in upstate New York before The Philippines was liberated.

The Japanese came in and tried to pretend they had liberated The Philippines, but nobody believed them, and native insurgencies continued unabated until the Americans returned. (There was an anti-Japanese rebel insurgency that continued for 20 years after the Japanese left that was eventually defeated.)

After the war, America helped rebuild much of the damaged infrastructure in The Philippines, and then President Truman gave it independence on July 4, 1946. Then, a succession of Filipino Presidents, starting with a fellow named Roxas, have added their little bit of progress to agrarian or economic or governmental reform of The Philippines to varying degrees of success.

But it wasn't until the brilliant Ferdinand Marcos came along and drove out all of the corruption from government, cracked down on the criminals, increased support for the arts and literature, and improved the lives of every Filipino (all with the help of his beautiful and brilliant wife), so that the modern shining success of The Philippines we know today could emerge.