Gloria Resign?

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Remember the days of “Erap Resign?” Those days are back, as the “Gloria Resign” cries approach their peak, with the Philippines facing yet another classic case of “Meet the new leader, same as the old.” Embroiled in accusations of electoral fraud, low approval ratings, shaky public support, and with family members implicated in illegal gambling rackets, the office of the Philippine President once again exemplifies the cliché: “Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.”

If Gloria actually does resign, and snap elections are called, I fully expect the following to immediately declare their candidacy: Nene, Ping, Miriam, and of course, Imelda.

Nothing changes.

Update, 07/08/2004: “Gloria Resign” Calls Intensifying. Nothing changes.

Hillsong United/Reuben Morgan Spam

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Why no, “Ultradust,” I’d never heard of Hillsong United or Reuben Morgan (note: nofollow applied to link) before, until you pasted your unsolicited promotion into my comments (now deleted and blacklisted), for tickets to a concert I can’t even go to since it’s in the Philippines and I’m in Washington, DC. What did you do: just google for Filipino Christian blogs which you assumed would all be in Metro Manila? Thanks a lot; now whenever someone mentions Hillsong United, and Reuben Morgan to me, I’ll think of clueless weblog comment spam before anything else. What a great mental association to form.

Also see Spamhuntress on “Christian” spam. More in this entry’s comments.

RIP Teddy Benigno

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Filipino journalism lost a venerable institution last week, with the death of Teddy Benigno, most recently known as the Philstar columnist, but also AFP Manila Bureau Chief from 1962 to 1987, and Cory Aquino’s Press Secretary from 1987 to 1989. I’ve quoted from Teddy Benigno heavily when commenting on current events in the Philippines, and though I would later be at odds with his constantly dire “social volcano” predictions, I still respected him as a wonderfully accomplished and eloquent journalist. He will be missed.

More from Pinay New Yorker, Amando Doronilla, Neal H. Cruz, and Max Soliven via Pinoypress.net

Deep Throat

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Deep What? What Throat? I hadn’t been born yet when Watergate happened; I grew up in the Philippines, and the only reason I knew about Nixon when I was a kid was from seeing Rich Little’s Nixon-as-Jacob-Marley parody of him in Rich Little’s Christmas Carol. My whole experience of those days has been limited to just: (1) the looming sense of shadowy history whenever I walk by the Watergate Hotel, (2) that short scene in Forrest Gump when he calls in about the people in the office with their flashlights, and now, of course, (3) all the Deep Throat news coverage from W. Mark Felt’s recent revelation that he was the informant.

I guess I’ll need to read up on the Watergate Scandal in Wikipedia and rent a copy of All the President’s Men to keep up with the times. Other people appear to have had the same idea.

Lightning over DC

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Thunderstorm (7 June 2005)

Really nasty storm tonight: at times the lightning flashes were so frequent that the night was more filled with a continuous electric strobe than it was with darkness, and the thunder was a continuous rumble. I sat by the window with my camera, taking videos and stills. At one point, an especially bright arc was followed by puffs of smoke from where the Capitol Dome would be if I could see it.

My camera, unfortunately, was rarely fast enough to catch the closest, most beautiful strokes. Still, it was worth watching the show. Here were the best lightning photos I managed to snap:

Lightning over DC
Lightning over DC

Sudden Backlog

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I suddenly have a huge backlog of various things I’ve been doing, reading, watching, using, or following, which I haven’t been writing about; and suddenly I realize I’m behind on it all, with not much time to put out anything beyond linklog sound bites. That’s one of the problems with the interdisciplinary nature of a personal weblog: the buffet is so huge that it’s easy for the plate to fill up quickly. (Or maybe that’s just one of the problems with being a lazy writer.)

Here’s a quick dump of what’s been on my mind: Mars rover Opportunity, the Nokia 6600, Flickr photosets and post-to-weblog issues, Bruce Sterling’s Involution Ocean, Eric Scholler’s Fast Food Nation, American Beauty, Deep Throat, Teddy Benigno, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Imelda, and Apple going with Intel hardware. I’ll try to write about all of it this week sometime this year.

Saturday in Noo Yawk

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Amy and I went to New York today. The following activities commenced:

  • Got off the bus and ate everything-bagels at Port Authority.
  • Went down to DFN Gallery to look at still life paintings by James Moore.
  • Wandered around NYAA, photographing casts.
  • Wandered the wrong way down Franklin Street looking for Avenue of the Americas.
  • Had bison burgers and milkshakes with Stynxno and Cyrus at Georgio’s Country Grill.
  • Watched Revenge of the Sith at Ziegfeld Theater.
  • Wandered into the Body Shop at Radio City Music Hall and put Bergamot lotion sampler on my face, then left without buying anything.
  • Pinpointed the fuzzy geographic location of Bed, Bath, and Beyond on Avenue of the Americas (following previous fruitless wandering) with just a Google SMS search and a subway map.
  • Bought nothing at Bed, Bath, and Beyond and instead got everything we needed at TJMaxx.
  • Got lost in the twisty maze of 14th Street Station.
  • Took NJ Transit home.

And so ends our Saturday in Noo Yawk. Photos from today here.

Moving from S/E T300 to N6600

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For the past year and a half or so, my phone has been a Sony Ericsson T300. It came cheap when I upgraded my T-Mobile plan from “Prepaid” to “Get More,” such that the total rebate amount exceeded the amount I spent on buying the plan and phone off Amazon. I got what I paid for, however: a slow phone with poor signal reception, hard-to-press buttons, loose and wonky proprietary charge/headset ports, an extremely SMS-unfriendly interface, and a tendency to fly apart on impact (after multiple falls, admittedly). That, plus a Communicam attachment which snapped decent photos but took forever to upload them to anywhere, made the phone more curse than “communicator.”

When the T300’s charge port started consistently not working properly, I decided it was time for a change. I was torn between splurging on a Treo with PalmOS, or going back to my roots in a Nokia, but this AskMefi thread convinced me to go the Nokia way. The N6600 could perform most personal organizer functions I needed for half the price — but the most prominent disadvantage was that it had a keypad rather than a stylus or QWERTY keyboard. But hey, I’m Filipino; the numeric keypad is second nature.

T-Mobile had just phased out the Nokia 6600, and they were no longer in stock at the local retail store. The up side was that 6600s were going for much cheaper on eBay than ever before, so it wasn’t long before I had landed a decent secondhand unit and transferred my SIM to it.

Coming soon: thoughts on my first month with the Nokia 6600. In the meantime, I’m preparing my battered S/E T300 for a pity listing on eBay.

Update: Nokia 6600 review.

Deep Impact (Not the Movie)

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Another space probe to keep an eye on: JPL’s Deep Impact will be making headlines in about a month. On July 4th, the probe will launch a heavy projectile — an impactor — at Comet Tempel 1. Study of the resulting explosion and crater will help scientists learn about the composition and structure of comets, which may reveal clues as to the nature of the primordial solar system.

The mission hasn’t been problem-free, however: Deep Impact has a blurry high-res camera, though NASA says it’ll still produce the best comet closeups ever taken. (Update: Those images will be enhanced via a process called deconvolution.)

More stuff from the official site:

Space.com has a Deep Impact section with news and multimedia, along with a reminder of the last NASA mission to visit and land on a small celestial body: NEAR, which touched down on the asteroid Eros in Feb 2001. And I was posting about it back then. This weblog is starting to show its age.