Pala-isip

Here's an interview on Bongbong Marcos by the Manila Bulletin on Feb 26, 2011. Some very interesting bits about the life of his father Ferdinand Marcos and his views on the current political situation in the Philippines. Here's some excerpts. MANILA, Philippines — Twenty-five years ago, he was on the other side of the battlefield, the one who firmly stood by the side of his father, former President Ferdinand Marcos, until the very end of the latter's 20-year rule brought about by the world’s first peaceful people uprising. Today, amid the commemoration activities for that uprising that has come to be known as EDSA Revolution, Senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” R. Marcos, Jr. has chosen to move on and reduce the experience to a painful memory. “I have found myself a career. Once in a while your thoughts go back to the things that happened but only in a nostalgic sense. Tapos na so you get on with your new life and that’s really where we are. Those after effects have become ripples...

Former Canadian Defence Minister Paul Hellyer Exposing the truth regards to UFO / Unidentified Flying Objects & Extraterrestrial Life. Recorded at the April 2008 X-Conference at the National Press Club, Washington D.C Disclosure Project was set up and headed by Dr. Steven Greer in 1993. To date, four hundred such witnesses have been identified throughout the world and spanning every branch of the armed services, the NRO, DIA, CIA, NASA, the former USSR, and other agencies and countries. High-level witnesses include Doctors, Scientists, and Government Officials testimonies.

From GMA New s. MANILA, Philippines – What started off as a lively discussion on popular social networking platform Twitter ended up becoming a confrontation session between participants of the 1986 People Power uprising. Senator Gregorio Honasan lashed out at Apo Hiking Society member Jim Paredes regarding comments the latter made on the "agenda" of various Edsa players. Honasan was one of the leaders of the Reformed the Armed Forces Movement (RAM) whose attempt to stage a coup against then President Marcos served as a prelude to the 1986 People Power revolution. Paredes himself is also considered an Edsa 1 personality, being one of several artists who sang "Handog ng Pilipino sa Mundo," (The Filipino's gift to the world)—regarded as the anthem of the bloodless uprising. On Friday, February 25, Honasan was one of the "Twitterviewees" (read: interviewees on Twitter) in the virtual discussion organized by Newsbreak together with its newest blogger @I_Am...

Are you crazy for Justin Bieber? You're in luck, if you have the dough, you can bid for a clip of his hair that he gave Ellen Degeneres. Here's the item on Ebay , as of this writing, there's 61 bids and it's up to $7,000. Proceeds go to charity.

This is what we should do in the Philippines.

From the Philippine Daily Inquirer . HONG KONG – (UPDATE 4) The court should impose a lower sentence on Congressman Ronald Singson who has been charged with possession of illegal drugs and be allowed to go back to the Philippines, his lawyer said Wednesday. At the resumption of the hearing before Judge Joseph Yau of the Wan Chai District Court No. 4, John Reading, who is pushing for a reduction on the two-year jail term that his client is facing, cited the mitigating factors that should influence the court to impose the lesser penalty for Singson such as: • pleading guilty to drug trafficking and public expression of remorse; • Undergoing rehabilitation; • Prospects of expulsion from the Philippine Congress; and • Wide media coverage of the case in the Philippines. Reading said his plea for considerable reduction in sentence was based on evidence of his client’s good character and statement that he has no intention to commit the same crime again here. Reading also said the aggravating ...

This guy is doing a vocal cover of the Guns N' Roses song Sweet Child of Mine and he sounds a lot like Axl Rose.

A heartbreaking commercial of McDonalds in the Philippines.Shown on the year 2009.

Best Dad ever!

From Philstar. Excuse the football terminology: “hat trick” is the best I can describe Beijing’s edgewise diplomacy which pulls out a mutually satisfying outcome from an impossibly annoying situation. China, as is known, has a 4,000-year experience in statecraft. The wisdom shows in this recent complication over the execution of three Filipino drug mules originally scheduled for this week. The complication is entirely the Philippines’ own making. Although we were officially informed in September the executions will happen after due review by China’s supreme court, we still chose to make a grand spectacle about our official pleading for commutation of the sentences. President Aquino then committed two blunders in quick sequence: he admitted to boycotting the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony and then linked this to the effort to save the lives of the drug mules. Manila was to be sure, playing to the domestic audience, fearful of a repeat of the turbulence that followed Flor Contemplacion’s exe...

Fil-Canadian Maria Aragon talks to Lady Gaga and invited her to Toronto to sing a duet. Here's the story on Winnipeg Free Press .

This is how you speed up your shopping.

This video was first tweeted by Lady Gaga saying "Can't stop crying watching this. This is why I make music. She is the future." This is 10 year old Filipino-Canadian talent Maria Aragon.

They say Manny Pacquiao uses steroids. Obviously, they didn't know that Datu Puti is more potent than steroids.

Amazing entrance by boxer Usman "Uzzy" Ahmed. Can't say the same about his exit though.

James Earl Jones can make anything sound amazing!

Criselda Yabes has published five books, including Sarena’s Story: The Loss of a Kingdom, which won the UP Centennial Literary Prize for Creative Non-Fiction. A journalism graduate of the University of the Philippines in Diliman, she worked as correspondent for the international press in Manila, covering politics and coups as well as other major events overseas. She was born in Quezon City, spent her adolescence in Zamboanga, and lived in Paris. She is currently based in Manila, often traveling to Muslim Mindanao, to complete a book on the military’s approach to the conflict. Here's the link to know more about Criselda Yabes . About the Prize The Man Asian Literary Prize was founded in 2007. It is an annual literary award given to the best novel by an Asian writer, either written in English or translated into English, and published in the previous calendar year. The judges choose a longlist of 10 to 15 titles announced in December, followed by a shortlist of 5 to 6 titles announced...

This is a short excerpt of the discussion notes that Angelo Reyes did on Feb 6, 2011, two days before he shot himself in the heart from PCIJ . Living life without honor is a tragedy bigger than death itself – Angie Reyes “Honor, truth, justice. Honor above all else. Pride goes with it, self-respect, sense of legacy. This is very, very important to me. Sometimes, I am accused of being arrogant. I like to have plenty – a healthy sense – of self-esteem. I react to affronts on this. There are two options available: to stonewall/fight the legal battle, or to come clean and make my own contribution to cleanse the system. Stonewalling, I am told, would result in a long, protracted legal battle. However, past cases are not being resolved either way, kept in state of limbo. People’s memories are short and all this will eventually fade into public disinterest, and eventually oblivion. So, not to worry. Coming clean, on the other hand, cannot be done without giving up something. I have decided t...

From Geek.com . After the announcement of the partnership between Nokia and Microsoft this morning workers voiced their concern with the deal by walking out of Nokia facilities. It is believed that as many as a thousand workers marched out today (or took the day off using flex time) so that the company would know that they don’t believe the partnership is in their best interest, even after CEO’ Stephen Elop’s startlingly frank “burning platform” memo earlier this week. Full story here .

From BBC News . Hosni Mubarak has stepped down as president of Egypt, after weeks of protest in Cairo and other cities. The news was greeted with a huge outburst of joy and celebration by thousands in Cairo's Tahrir Square - the heart of the demonstrations. Mr Mubarak ruled for 30 years, suppressing dissent and protest, and jailing opponents. He held out pretty long didn't he? Full story here . Here's a video from Aljazeera TV . >

William M. Esposo has a great article on Philstar on how investigations should done in the Philippine Senate, which currently is all about being in the limelight and is really turning into a circus. He said, "This sad development should also teach those who are conducting these legislative hearings that whether guilty or not guilty their resource persons deserve humane and decent treatment. Suspicion does not justify depriving any person of human dignity. Legislators should not be passing judgment or behaving like judge, jury and executioner. If the claim of Robles that Reyes was setup to be a fall guy is neither proved nor debunked, this probe will be haunted by controversy. Reyes is not without genuine admirers. He had a good reputation, especially among his contemporaries in the AFP and the Jaycees, until he shifted allegiance from former president Joseph Estrada, resulting in the ascendancy to presidential power of GMA. The GMA regime became the big blow to the image of Angi...

From Philstar. Things took an unexpected and tragic turn Tuesday morning. Angelo Reyes, decorated soldier and controversial public servant, took his own life with a bullet to the heart. Outwardly tough and battle-scarred, Reyes was among the last persons one would expect to succumb to the temptation of suicide. But the last few weeks have been very severe on the man, the severity magnified by a popular culture entertained by trials by publicity and always ready to believe the worst of the best of men. The son of schoolteachers, Reyes had only known the life of a public servant. From childhood, he maintained a demonstrated passion to excel. Those who knew him well described him as a perfectionist. He took pride at being impeccably at his best. The perfectionist, however, worked in an imperfect system. If the accusations leveled against him are true, the perfectionist succumbed to the imperfections of the system. There was simply too much to gain from the imperfections, too little profit...

We should stop all these reckless barbers! How dare they cut hair for 30 years without a license!

These robbers were not afraid of the police. You know who they should be afraid of? Old people. Watch how the other bystanders were just looking around doing nothing while the lady in red came running to stop the robbers. They only came to help out once the old lady came in to stop the robbers. She's pretty good with her handbag. Four of the robbers were caught and police are still looking for the other two. Full story from The Telegraph .

From the Philippine Daily Inquirer. MANILA, Philippines—(UPDATE 4) Former Armed Forces Chief and Defense Secretary Angelo Tomas Reyes on Tuesday morning committed suicide by shooting himself in front of the grave of his mother at the Loyola Memorial Park in Marikina City. He was 65. A close friend of Reyes called the Philippine Daily Inquirer to break the news, while Colonel Boogie De Leon, a former administrative officer of Reyes when he was AFP chief, said Reyes was rushed to the Quirino Hospital at about 7:45 a.m. to revive him. Members of his family could not be reached for comment. De Leon said that Reyes’s son Jett called him up to inform him of the incident. Reyes, who earlier suffered a mild stroke before the congressional investigations on the alleged AFP financial irregularities, said he could not take anymore the smear campaign against his name and his family. “Not my family,” he said. Reyes, who loved his mother very much when she was still alive, earlier told the Philippin...

I love paper airplanes. It always reminds me of the time my friend and I were folding paper airplanes in school and fly them out of a window. The most memorable one was when one of the planes we made kept flying straight slowly until it landed on the roof of another building over 100 feet away. No matter how hard we try, we couldn't make another one fly that far. This isn't the one we made but it looks pretty cool.

The hardest part about e-recycling a laptop is separating their components. Plastic parts has to be separated with the metals and electronics and each laptop requires a different set of tools to disassemble. These Stanford students designed a laptop that completely disassembles in less than two minutes without tools.

Do you ever tell your kids pay attention to when they are going and stop playing their PSP or DS while walking? Their attitude is usually that of indignation that nothing could be more important to have their game interrupted. Well, this ten-year old kid in Italy apparently thought that nothing in the world is more important to have his PSP game interrupted, not even the end of the train platform which promptly led him right off on to the train tracks. Watch. Fortunately for him there was a 23-year old off duty cop who jumped down the tracks and dragged the kid back to the platform. Parents, you can now thank me for giving you a tool to show your kids the dangers of walking without paying attention.

If you've been following the news about Egypt, you've probably heard that Al Jazeera has been shot down by the Egyptian government because of its rather comprehensive coverage of the situation. The Egyptian government was so annoyed by the coverage that they shut down Al Jazeera's Egyptian office making it hard to get news from Al Jazeera about what's going on in Egypt. Al Jazeera has embarked on a creative way to get its news out by releasing its reports under a Creative Commons license. The contents are free to use by anyone with just an attribution. They can use the contents for both commercial and non-commercial use. They even set up a special CC website for it. Here's a sample of the video available on the site. Video courtesy of Al Jazeera .

PETA always uses shock value to put out its message, like the lettuce bikini campaign. Last year, it tried to get something called Veggie Love as a Superbowl ad, but was declined by NBC. This year, they did a compilation of outtakes from the audition of that ad. Here's the video.

CNN reports that Anderson Cooper was attacked by pro-Mubarak crowd. He said that he was punched 10 times in the head as he and his crew was surrounded by the mob. Here's the link to CNN's Twitter account reporting about the incident.

The following originally appeared as winners of a "Worst Analogies ever written in a High School Essay Contest" in the Washington Post Style Invitational " He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it. Joseph Romm, Washington She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again. Rich Murphy, Fairfax Station The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't. Russell Beland, Springfield McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty Bag filled with vegetable soup. Paul Sabourin, Silver Spring From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene h...