Seventies Pinoy B-movie star Weng Weng has a cult following worldwide. (Don't believe it? Try a Google or YouTube Search.) Now Australian filmmaker Andrew Leavold has made a documentary on Weng Weng, the 2-foot 9-inch superspy.
I really really want to see this. With a filmography like For Y’ur Height Only, The Impossible Kid and D’Wild Wild Weng how can you go wrong?
From the site: Leavold's latest feature is a guerrilla documentary shot in Manila - The Search For Weng Weng (2007) is the ultimate history of Filipino B-films, and chronicles Leavold's obsessive quest to find the truth behind the midget James Bond of the Philippines.
I stayed home today, on account of it being Rizal Day, and a holiday in Rizal, where the factory is.
I was catching up on work, and the rain just sort of crept up on me. Looked out the window at the soggy garden and I thought, it sure would be nice to be a kid again and play in that rain.
And before I knew it, that's what I was doing. The baha had come in and turned downstairs into ankle-deep wading pool. I found myself saving furniture and shoving water out the door with the household. Nothing damaged in the end.
It wasn't quite the same. But oddly, just as much fun.
Oh, geekgasm. In around 17 hours, NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is scheduled to touch down on the red planet's north pole region. Its mission: study the ice beneath the soil to help us understand the region's past climate and check for carbon-containing molecules that could indicate life in the distant past.
But first it has to land intact. An immense challenge, as the clip explains.
The Phoenix Mars Lander is set to touch down at 0053 GMT. So by the time you read this at work Monday morning Manila time, we'll already know if it was a success or a $430 million write-off. Check here.
Some numbers: 294 - days since Pheonix launched from Earth 12,500 MPH - speed at which it will enter Mars' atmosphere, or 18 times the speed of sound 2,600 degrees F - heat caused by friction as the lander slows through the atmosphere 10 minutes - time for the radio signal from the lander to travel back to Earth
A new app from the American Social Health Association aims to spread Chlamydia on Facebook to raise awareness of the disease.
The Morph Monkey Facebook app looks fairly benign at the start. Users can select pictures of their friends to see what their combined child will look like. As the user goes to morph the images, a pop up box informs them that they’ve given their friend Chlamydia (video demo above).
It’s a clever way of spreading the message on Facebook, but I’m not sure how many people will be impressed by being tricked into running an app that is just a marketing tool with a health message. You can try it out here.
Satanist Richard "Nightstalker" Ramirez advises, "stay in school". Unabomber Ted Kacynzski wishes him the best of luck. And Charles Manson unexplicably attaches a photo of a barn.
In the late '90s, pop-culture historian Bill Geerhart had a little too much time on his hands and a surfeit of stamps. So, for his own entertainment, the then-unemployed thirtysomething launched a letter-writing campaign to some of the most powerful and infamous figures in the country, posing as a curious 10-year-old named Billy.
To his surprise, replies soon started pouring in. Everyone from Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld (on tree-fort diplomacy) to Oprah Winfrey, Mister Rogers, Janet Reno, and members of the Supreme Court had words of wisdom for Billy. ("I like the Egg McMuffin," wrote Justice Clarence Thomas when asked about his favorite McDonald's food. "Actually, I like almost everything there.") Responding to Billy's idea for a "Hustler for kids," Larry Flynt wrote back encouraging the fourth grader to "Hang in there. You'll be 18 before you know it."
As it turns out, no group hates to disappoint a child more than convicted killers, all of whom responded promptly to Billy's questions about dropping out of school. Their letters, published here for the first time, range from criminally insane to downright sensible, offering snapshots of the personalities behind some of America's most hideous crimes.
Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb.
I'm usually not big on forwards, but I think this is a great idea: Reduce corruption by enacting a law that provides the public access to government deals. The best way to fight rot is to expose it to the light.
----- Forwarded Message ---- From: Harvey Keh <harveykeh@gmail.com> Sent: Monday, March 10, 2008 4:27:30 PM Subject: Team RP: Do You Want to Know Where Your Money Goes?
Dear Friends and Fellow Filipinos,
Good day to you! :)
In light of the recent spate of scandals and allegations of corruption in our government, we at Team RP believe that the call for Truth and Accountability in our government should not stop in the investigations that are being conducted by our Senate, Ombudsman and our Judicial System but this should also be complemented with a push for a Philippine Access to Information Law that would help prevent future graft and corruption practices by many of our government officials from happening again. By enacting this law, ordinary Filipinos will now be able to access public documents which would narrate what kind of agreements our government enters into on behalf of the Filipino people and at the same time show us how our public funds are spent. This will increase transparency in our government and will further hold our government leaders and officials accountable for their actions.
In line with this, we are launching a Signature Campaign to help convince our lawmakers towards prioritizing the immediate passing and implementation of this law. Here is Team RP's petition on pushing for a Philippine Access to Information Law:
"Secrecy breeds irregularity, fraud and crime. It allows chicanery, graft and corruption. A democracy based on ignorance, on misinformation, on conjectures, on suspicion is doomed to fail. The more enlightened the people have, the more guarantee there is for their success in their collective enterprises, and in the fulfillment of their social aspirations and purposes."
From the de Venecia-Lozada expose, the Hello Garci scandal and the Spratlys mind-boggler to the North and South Rail questions, events of the recent past clearly highlight how very little we know about the workings of our government, how much difficulty is involved in getting truth to come out and how, albeit fundamental in any republican and democratic state that the government is accountable to the public, we Filipinos are in reality denied direct access to our government institutions and our public servants. As a country that prides itself with democracy, it strikes us with a disquieting reality that we Filipinos have no real access to information to empower us to properly and actively participate in governance.
We in TEAM RP believe that in order for there to be a responsible citizenry that can actively and meaningfully craft the future of the country, there is a need to give teeth to the policy of full public disclosure and the right of the people to be informed as contained in the fundamental law of the land. Moreover, we are aware that if people, especially those who have been bypassed by development, are unaware of laws and procedures for availing themselves of their entitlements or of mechanisms they can use to remedy their plight, then they will always remain poor.
Let us call on our lawmakers to make top priority the passage of a Philippine Access to Information Law which, subject to reasonable and clearly outlined conditions, ensures unfettered access of the people to information of public concern, including government transactions involving public interest.
We urge our lawmakers, let us not delay this any further. <END OF STATEMENT>
If you support our petition and call for the passage of a Philippine Access to Information Law, you can join and help us in any of the following ways:
a.) Sign our petition online by emailing "I Support the Campaign for a Philippine Access to Information Law" together with your complete name and contact information to team.rp.pail@gmail.com
b.) Forward this email to your friends and post this email in your website, blog, friendster, multiply or facebook account for all your friends to read.
c.) Volunteer for our campaign and help us get more Filipinos to sign our petition. If you want to volunteer and help, you can email Karen Naranjo at k_ren_naranjo@yahoo.com or you can send her a text message at 0918-9183685. We will send you copies of our petition so you can also help gather signatures in your school, office or organization.
Thank you for your time in reading this email. We hope that you will consider joining Team RP's movement for Truth, Accountability and Reform in our country.
May you have a pleasant day ahead! :)
Sincerely,
Harvey S. Keh
Chairperson
Team RP
Team RP is an organization of youth leaders and young professionals who working together for Truth, Accountability and Reform in our country. We are part of the Buong Bayan Isinisigaw Tama Na, Itama Na (BUSINA) Movement. We believe that complaining and lambasting our leaders is not enough but we should proactively work towards finding concrete ways to help solve our present problems. As such, Team RP believes that issues should always take precedence over personalities thus, our programs and activities are always geared towards helping build our democratic institutions and furthering the development of every Filipino. If you want to know more about Team RP or join Team RP, please email us at <mailto:team.rp.official@gmail.com> team.rp.official@gmail.com
Feeling overwhelmed by the hundreds of to-do's floating around in your head? Don't even know where to start?
Try here. NPR has a 4-minute podcast on David Allen's Getting Things Done system. I've been a huge fan of GTD since 2005. I'm not exaggerating when I say it's revolutionized the way I work.
If the podcast piques your interest, my GTD-related links are available here.
I've seen copies of Getting Things Done in Fully Booked. If your job requires juggling multiple projects simultaneously and you like taking a structured approach to things, I highly recommend picking it up.
There are some thought-provoking comments among the hundreds since the blog was posted on the 18th, like this one:
I worked briefly with CNN, 2 weeks, as an Arab I could not take it and turned down their offer. A phone call from certain lobbyist would interrupt live report story over the use of the word "occupied", the caller had his way when the CNN reporter used the word "seized" instead of occupied. They hated my selections for the Middle East news agenda which would place hot news of the longest occupation in history, Palestine on top. Their strict instructions to me included strict use of the title PLO chairman/leader instead of Palestinian leader/president Arafat, giving prominent weight to radical Hamas leaders and news. At the time they were undermining Palestinian secular Fatah and promoting their terrorist rivals Hamas. Really weird experience.
Just another little memo from the your-view-of-the-world-is-colored department.
Here's a firsthand account of a terrorist attack on a Kabul hotel that killed six, a Filipino OFW among them. For some reason the local news doesn't seem to have picked up the story.
An excerpt: "More people come to the basement, as the terrorists have infiltrated the gym and spa area. They have shot dead the spa manager, Zina a very pleasant Filipino Girl who was just doing her job working in Afghanistan to support herself and family abroad. The Terrorists move into the gym and shot an American dead in the face on the treadmill."
Here's the version from the Inquirer, which makes no mention of Zina.
