Got Amy some dahlias at the farmers market.
(Dahlias.jpg uploaded by brownpau.)
how now brownpau
Got Amy some dahlias at the farmers market.
(Dahlias.jpg uploaded by brownpau.)
Back in the Philippines, six years after Joseph Estrada’s impeachment and popular ouster for corruption, the Sandiganbayan has finally delivered its verdict on the accused ex-President — guilty of plunder, though not guilty of perjury, and his co-accused son and ex-Senator has been found not guilty of complicity. The sentence is life imprisonment.
As expected, Erap and his lawyers are denouncing the verdict as biased and politically motivated — although one wonders why they previously made such a big show of submitting themselves to the court and having faith in a “not guilty” verdict while simultaneously calling the Sandiganbayan a biased “kangaroo court created to convict him.” The only contradiction more deafening than is this constant bragging that his true innocence is already decided “in the court of public opinion.” Ironically, it was via an unconstitutional court of public opinion that he was ousted in the first place, and an equally unconstitutional uprising that attempted to unseat his equally corrupt successor later on, and so the cycle of Philippine politics continues.
More from the BBC on his “prison,” pertinent text from Amee, and links from Manuel Quezon III. Update: And a hat tip with more links from MLQ3. Piece of historical trivia for you: I made the “kalbong Erap” image above in Photoshop with some help from a photo of Stone Cold Steve Austin’s head.
NASA/JPL’s Saturn probe Cassini has just completed a close flyby of Saturn’s oddly shaped black and white moon, Iapetus. I’ve been watching the raw image stream for photos of the moon, and there’s an especially striking sequence of wide angle shots from a close pass over the equatorial ridge, a giant mountain range which gives Iapetus its distinctive “walnut” shape. I pasted the ridge sequence images into ImageReady last night, and was able to make a simple flyover GIF animation: (Click to see it larger.)
Just for context, the highest of those mountains are up to 13 km high (8 miles or 42,650 feet in imperials), 1.5 times the height of Mt Everest on Earth.
More info from this JPL press release, and I note belatedly that Emily of the Planetary Society weblog also animated the flyover, beating me to the upload punch by a night. She has also stitched photos of the transition from light to dark on Iapetus.
Also posted to Slashdot.
Update: On a suggestion from someone in that Slashdot thread, I submitted this animation to NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day, and it got posted as a link below the 3D stereogram, which is pretty cool. More here, plus LOLIAPETUS.
Earlier this year, with Deathly Hallows on the horizon and me not having read any Harry Potter books yet, I resolved to finish them all and see what I was missing in the world of contemporary British children’s fantasy literature.
I didn’t have the time to crack open a bunch of hardcovers, however, so I went for audio books from the library, ripped from CD to listen to on my iPod Shuffle. (Did I mention my wife works for the library? It’s awesome.) In this manner I was able to hear Jim Dale read every Harry Potter book in sequence, almost back to back, from March to July, while riding the Metro or walking between home and work or washing the dishes or doing other things which needed my hands and visual attention.
Some quick general thoughts on the whole series:
Lest I sound too negative, I must hasten to point out that I was pleased with Harry Potter overall, suffered no doubts or conflicts about my Christian faith and reading about sorcery and witchcraft in children’s fiction, and thoroughly enjoyed listening to the books. At the end of it all, I still regard the first book as one of the best ones of the series.
Taken with Amy’s camera (a Canon Powershot SD450) in the Mary Livingston Ripley Garden (right near where we got engaged). I forgot what kind of flowers these are, but they have a fried egg kind of color, don’t they? And look at the little square buds.
Stanley Karnow is better known for his work on “Vietnam,” but his book on the Philippines “In Our Image” of course touches closer to home for me. Just the first chapter provides an excellent and comprehensive nutshell summary of the Philippines under Spanish rule, from Magellan to the Spanish-American war, a skillful encapsulation of over five centuries of history that omits no necessary details. From there, he gets into the meat of the topic, the story of the Philippines as United States colony, later a commonwealth, and later independent republic still under the American thumb.
Karnow traces a common thread through Philippine history of colonizers and governments favoring wealthy families at the top of the social stratum, dynasties holding power over the lifeblood resources and industries of the economy — sugar being a prime export in colonial days. This fueled a continuous culture of feudal aristocracy which widened the gap between the country’s rich and its struggling lower classes. Since the granting of full independence in 1945, politics in the Philippines has been more a proxy struggle between conflicting dynasties rather than an actual expression of the will of the people, backdropped always by the economic influence of United States foreign policy.
Little sympathy is shown towards William McKinley, American president when the US was victorious over Spain in a war which unexpectedly landed the Philippines right in America’s lap. Karnow depicts McKinley as a bumbling, indecisive leader who appointed secretaries on the basis of loyalty rather than skill or merit, but fought and won the Spanish-American war thanks in part to a fiery young Republican Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, who would later be a war hero for his work with the Rough Riders in the Philippines, and still later a President — though the position he desired more, Governor-General of the Philippines, was never granted him.
Names abound in this history with which most Filipinos would be familiar from their streets and neighborhoods: Cameron Forbes, governor-general of the colony and origin of the name of Forbes Park; William Howard Taft, another governor-general who would later be US President and Chief Justice and have an avenue named for him; Daniel Burnham, architect and urban designer of such classics as Union Station, Flatiron Building, and Baguio City, where a park is named in his memory; and of course, Douglas MacArthur, General “I Shall Return” himself, worshipped as a hero and highway namesake in the Philippines, though given rather less heroic treatment in Karnow’s portrayal of him as an initial failure in his defense against the Japanese invasion, and a better artisan of public relations than of military genius.
There are areas where Karnow displays a marked pro-Communist bias, depicting Hukbalahap rebels more as noble underdog fighters defeated by CIA-installed President Magsaysay, while glossing over the Huks’ rural atrocities and murder of a former First Lady. (His later coverage of contemporary Communist insurgents is a bit more balanced, however.)
The section on Ferdinand Marcos is surprisingly scant for what could be considered the darkest years of Filipino history, though what he does cover is enough to illustrate politics as proxy for oligarchic conflict. Marcos installed his own allies in positions of power and wealth, and the 1986 EDSA Revolution against him was just as much a reclamation of power by displaced dynasties as it was an overthrowing of a corrupt dictator.
The book was finished in 1989, and there the history ends — before Pinatubo and the ending of the US military bases agreement by the Philippine legislature, a contentious event which would have made an interesting closing chapter had Karnow written “In Our Image” just two or three years later. Still, for what he was able to cover, Karnow offers an excellent, detailed, comprehensive story, only slightly marred at points by un-subtle bias.
Above, a screenshot of consecutive Metblog posts on Twitter which I found funny for some reason. So you’re viewing two Metblogs entries (1,2) posted via Twitterfeed to Twitter uploaded as a screenshot to Flickr, which I’m now going to post to my own weblog. There’s something distinctly OMGWEB2.0 about it all.
Speaking of which, Twitter announced the launch of a new “Explore” section. At the time of this writing there’s only Blocks in there, but it’s an interesting feature, somewhat reminiscent of the old GeoCities neighborhoods and streets back in the day.
Liquidation sale at the Watergate Hotel before they start renovating.
(WGHsale.jpg uploaded by brownpau.)