Philippine Fail Blog

I came across this blog today, and think you might enjoy it. It's written by an American-born Filipino who has come here to live and work (apparently, he runs a business). He is quite frustrated, to say the least, and says he blogs to let off steam:

After the culture shock adjustment, I’ve decided to remain here and continue with business despite the frustrations. I’m not unhappy here at all. And this blog helps me vent the frustrations I deal with daily in this country. 

The purpose of this blog is partially for my own personal therapy and venting my frustrations. Many of the comments by readers completely agree and identify with my posts. This blog is just one of many which express the same frustrations and opinions. 

I really don’t believe this blog will help native Filipinos. I have come to the conclusion they are helpless because on the most part, they are completely shut down and closed off to real progress or change. On the same note, I am certain it won’t hurt them any more or less than they hurt themselves every day with their crab mentality, hypocrisy, and senseless thirst for revenge against each other for even petty little bullshit things. 

They do not listen or care about criticism of any kind. So this blog is not necessarily here for the native Filipino.This blog is primarily here for ME and those from outside of Philippines who must live here or stay here long term and are as frustrated and as mind-boggled as I am about the level of idiocy, stupidity, and absence of logic and reason in Philippines. 

It is therapeutic to release the anger and frustrations of having to live here. This blog also serves as informative to foreigners looking to come here. They need to know what they’re getting themselves into, and what to expect in order to make an informed decision. Foreigners be warned. What you will experience here will shock and confuse you! 

Language warning: Don't go there if a bit of raw language will offend you. The guy is letting off steam.

Naming the Enemy

The horror in London is yet another example of how insane is the enemy we face in Islamic extremism.

It's particularly frightening to be facing an enemy that is insane. During the Cold War, there was some comfort in knowing that the leaders of the Soviet Union were rational human beings. But today's enemy, as we have seen so many times, on 9/11, at Fort Hood, in Boston, and today in London, is simply batshit crazy.

The greatest danger we face, though, I think may come from our leaders – the political and media elite – who refuse to admit who and what the enemy is. I quite understand the danger of condemning all Muslims, but the elite have gone overboard in the other direction – e.g., referring to the Fort Hood atrocity as ‘workplace violence’.

We’ll probably hear this termed ‘just another street mugging that went too far.’

I intend to write more about this point, but I think that what Islam needs is a Reformation. Until then, this guy is probably right -- we will never be safe.

Abuse of Powerlessness?

A couple weeks ago, I commented in this post that people who believe in big government invariably argue that the failures of big government are caused by it being not big enough (e.g., the stimulus failed because we should have spent more, public schools suck because we’re such skinflints, etc).

The outrageous abuses of power by the Internal Revenue Service? Right on cue, the ‘progressive’ Daily Beast tells us:

The IRS isn’t too powerful .... It’s too weak. And Obama must not let Republicans weaken it even more.

How silly of me to call it an ‘abuse of power’.

The Malditas Got a Whole Lot Better Very Suddenly

The Philippine women’s soccer team, the Malditas, are playing in the opening round of qualifying for the Asian Cup. Their first opponent, in a game played in Bangladesh yesterday, was Iran, a team ranked thirty spots above the Philippines (Iran was ranked 52, Philippines 82). To defeat a team ranked that far ahead would be considered a fair-sized surprise, but not earth-shattering. The earth was if not shattered at least dented a bit though by the nature of the Philippine victory – the Malditas scored three times in the first four minutes and won 6-0.

Obviously, something remarkable has happened to the Philippine team, and what it seems to be is an infusion of Americans. All five of the Philippine goals (there was also an own goal by Iran) were scored by players recruited from US college teams.

The Philippine team made a trip to a tournament in Los Angeles last fall/winter, and while there held a tryout camp to which they invited a number of Fil-Ams (including Kathleen Houk, who decided not to attend). I don’t know how many of the team members came from that camp, but the team used to have only a few Americans.

But now: I went through the lineup listed in the linked article and ten of the eleven starters and two of the three subs are from US college teams.

On the downside, it’s unfortunate that the Philippines isn’t producing more home-grown talent, but maybe a few wins will build enough interest here to get more schools playing soccer and more girls playing sports of all kinds.

By the way, here’s a pic from the game. Can you imagine wearing a uniform like the poor Iranian women are forced to wear, while playing ninety minutes in tropical heat and humidity? Even if they got trounced, I salute them for surviving the game.

A Record Is Set in Nenana!

I posted yesterday about the Nenana Ice Classic. I figure the two or three human beings and numerous spambots who visit this blog have been waiting in breathless anticipation for the outcome, so here it is, from the Alaska Dispatch:

After hanging on to set a record, the Tanana River ice in Nenana finally gave way Monday afternoon at 3:41 p.m. local time, netting a Kenai couple $318,500. Warren and Yvonne Snow were declared the winners when the river began flowing, tripping a clock mounted to the familiar black-and-white tripod.

The ice broke three hours later than the previous record, set in 1964. Al Gore was unavailable for comment.

In other Global Warming news, a Democrat Senator took the opportunity presented by the tragic tornadoes in Oklahoma to make political points, blaming the tornadoes on Republicans (emphasis added):

“So, you may have a question for me,” Whitehouse said. “Why do you care? Why do you, Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, care if we Republicans run off the climate cliff like a bunch of proverbial lemmings and disgrace ourselves? I’ll tell you why. We’re stuck in this together. We are stuck in this together. When cyclones tear up Oklahoma and hurricanes swamp Alabama and wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, the rest of the country, for billions of dollars to recover. And the damage that your polluters and deniers are doing doesn’t just hit Oklahoma and Alabama and Texas. It hits Rhode Island with floods and storms. It hits Oregon with acidified seas, it hits Montana with dying forests. So, like it or not, we’re in this together.”

Of course, as we noted here only a week or so ago, the number of tornadoes in the US is at a near-record low this year.

Why Isn’t ‘Pitiful’ the Opposite of ‘Pitiless’?

I have just finished reading Piccadilly Jim, by P. G. Wodehouse, my favorite author. I’ve read almost everything Wodehouse ever wrote (and that’s a lot – he was extremely prolific), and I thought I had read this book.

I was wrong – though, in my defense, it's easy to mix up Wodehouse stories. Almost all his stories have similar plotlines: boy and girl are in love (though sometimes one or both don’t know it for a while), some major obstacle is in their path (feuding families, girl’s father disapproves of boy, the girl is on the stage, etc), all is overcome, everyone lives happily ever after.

Along the way, this very simple plotline becomes incredibly complicated, with all sorts of subplots and usually many imposters; in Picadilly Jim, the title character impersonates someone (because the girl hates Jim), and then ends up impersonating himself as the person he’s impersonating (if you follow me), because he's helping the girl kidnap a child (but their intentions are good) while someone impersonating an English nobleman tries to steal a secret formula (Jim knows the guy's an imposter but can't say so because Jim's an imposter too -- except not really).

If these plots sound like every old-time musical you ever saw, that’s probably because Wodehouse had his greatest early success as a writer for Broadway musicals; his collaborations with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern are considered classics. He later said that his novels and stories were musical comedies without the music.

But the thing that makes these stories great is the language. I honestly believe that, Shakespeare aside, no one has ever mastered the English language to the degree Wodehouse did (and Shakespeare was nowhere near as funny – though maybe I just don’t get his jokes).

Wodehouse clearly loved words, and often used obscure words, or new formulations of words (referring to an unhappy person as “clearly not gruntled”). Wodehouse characters, especially the heroes, are very prone to making high-flying speeches, often using obscure or archaic words. I mentioned one in this post, in which Jim used the word “yestreen”.

Later, Jim is thinking of something he had done several years before (the thing for which the girl hates him), and Wodehouse writes:

He found himself recoiling in disgust from the man he had been, the man who could have done a wanton thing like that without compunction or ruth.

It is the first time I have ever seen “ruth” used. We are all familiar with “ruthless” of course, but I had never seen it minus the “-less”. Though the context makes the meaning fairly clear, the dictionary tells us that it is a noun meaning “compassion or pity”.

(And, yes, there is an entry for “ruthful” too – though it's listed as archaic).

Which – having taken the long way around, gets us to the title. If “pitiless” means harsh and unfeeling, then shouldn’t “pitiful” mean compassionate and caring – instead of meaning an object worthy of pity? Let’s get this fixed, okay?

If you’re interested, by the way, you can read Piccadilly Jim online as it appeared in serial form in the Saturday Evening Post in 1916, or download it for your ereader at Project Gutenberg. I recommend the Post version, because it includes the original illustrations from the magazine

The Nenana Ice Classic

Nenana is a river town in central Alaska, where it gets really, really cold: the record is -69F. To amuse themselves, I suppose, workers building a railroad there almost a hundred years ago started a betting pool on when the river ice would break up. The pool has continued ever since. Records, back to 1917, of the time of breaking are here -- the earliest date is April 20 (in 1940 and 1998), the latest is May 20 (1964).

As of the time I am writing this (just before 2pm May 20 Philippine time, so late night -- I could look it up, but I'm too lazy -- on May 19 in Alaska) the ice has not broken. Thus, this is already the second-latest breakup of the past ninety-seven years, and in twelve hours or so might be the latest.

This picture was just posted at the official site (they update every thirty seconds) -- looks like it's getting close.

According to a geophysicist at the University of Alaska: "The Nenana Ice Classic is a pretty good proxy for climate change in the 20th century,"

Update: It's past midnight now, and it's still standing, so this is only the second time the ice has made it to May 20. Still questionable whether it will last to 11:41am to set the record. The excitement is building!

The Dynasties Roll On (Part 2)

The twelve candidates I identified in this post as having likely been elected on Monday are now officially the winners. As you will recall, no doubt, ten of the twelve are closely related to other top politicians. To complete our survey of the Philippine senate, let's look at the twelve holdover members (elected in 2010).

Ramon (Bong) Revilla – Father was a senator, wife is in congress, brother is a mayor, and sister is married to a governor.
Jose Ejercito, Jr. (aka Jinggoy Estrada) – Father was president and is the newly-elected mayor of Manila, his half-brother was just elected to the senate, and his father’s mistress is currently mayor of San Juan City Jinggoy, his father, and his half-brother have also all held the mayoralty of San Juan).
Pia Cayetano – Daughter of a former senator, her brother is also a senator, and his wife is a mayor.
Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. – Father was president/dictator, his mother is in congress, and his sister is a governor.
Ralph Recto – His grandfather was a senator, his father in congress, his wife (a popular actress) is a governor.
Vicente (Tito) Sotto – His grandfather and granduncle were both senators.
Sergio Osmeña III – His grandfather was president, his father was a senator as was a cousin; other relatives hold or have held many offices.
Teofisto Guingona III – His father was a senator and vice-president, his mother is a mayor, his grandfather was a governor and senator as well as holding other offices.

Four of the 2010 electees do not seem to have major family connections. Juan Ponce Enrile, the current Senate President and long a major figure in Philippine politics (he was Minister of Defense for Marcos and played a key role in the dictator's overthrow), was an illegitimate (though acknowledged) child -- his father is referred to as a ‘powerful regional politician and renowned lawyer.’ But that doesn't seem enough to make the cut for this list.

The others are: Miriam Defensor Santiago, Franklin Drilon, and Lito Lapid.

There are political dynasties in the US, of course -- the Bushes and Kennedys come to mind, but there are others. I'm sure the same thing is also true in most other countries -- it's hard to believe that there is anyplace where connections aren't helpful.

But the difference in the Philippines is that it is so pervasive. In toto, eighteen of the twenty-four members of the senate are scions of political families. Three-quarters -- a similar analysis of the US Senate would not come up with anything approximating seventy-five family-connected senators. In fact, I doubt that you would find anything similar anyplace other than the House of Lords or somewhere else where a hereditary principle is involved.

Is It Vote-Buying if the Bills Are Worthless?

There is a lot of vote-buying in Philippine elections – a very large portion of the electorate is very poor.  Exactly how much is something that defies quantification, but I will take the word of those who seem to know.

But this is apparently a new twist on an old game:

Fake peso bills were used by candidates from this province in a massive vote buying spree in last Monday's [mid-term] elections, a police report said. 

Senior Superintendent Isaias Tonog, police provincial director, told reporters that fake peso bills are now circulating in several towns of Northern Samar after [the] counterfeit money [was] distributed to voters by candidates. Voters were given P3,000 to P7,000.  

Tonog disclosed that P200, P500, and P1,000 fake peso bills have been retrieved by his men in the towns of Lavezares, Rosario, Lao-ang, and Pambujan as of yesterday and more fake peso bills have been reported in several other towns in the province. "I've been receiving reports that fake peso bills are now circulating in several municipalities and this could be in all towns of this province." [ … ] 

He said the proliferation of fake peso bills is hurting the economy because the business establishments are reluctant or do not anymore accept P200, P500, and P1,000 peso bills for fear they are bogus. 

P3000-P7000, by the way, is about $75-$175. This is more than I had thought -- I had been told that votes were being bought for twenty-five to fifty bucks. But I guess if you're handing out bogus bills, it doesn't matter if you get a bit lavish.

BMI v. WHR

According to this article, Body Mass Index (BMI), used by most doctors, may not be all that accurate as a gauge of health. A study found that a much simpler measure, the ratio of your waist to your height (WHR?), bears a much stronger correlation to lifespan.

Measuring the ratio of someone's waist to their height is a better way of predicting their life expectancy than body mass index (BMI), the method widely used by doctors when judging overall health and risk of disease, researchers said. 

BMI is calculated as a person's weight in kilograms divided by the square of their height in metres, but a study found that the simpler measurement of waistline against height produced a more accurate prediction of lifespan. 

People with the highest waist-to-height ratio, whose waistlines measured 80 per cent of their height, lived 17 years fewer than average. 

Keeping your waist circumference to less than half of your height can help prevent the onset of conditions like stroke, heart disease and diabetes and add years to life, researchers said. 

For a 6ft man, this would mean having a waistline smaller than 36in, while a 5ft 4in woman should have a waist size no larger than 32in. [ … ] 

Researchers from Oxford Brookes University examined data on patients whose BMI and waist to height ratio were measured in the 1980s. 

Twenty years later, death rates among the group were much more closely linked to participants' earlier waist-to-height ratio than their BMI, suggesting it is a more useful tool for identifying health risks at an early stage.

A common complaint I’ve heard about BMI is that a muscular person (not me, obviously) will have a higher BMI than the charts say s/he should because muscles weigh more than flab. So working out at the gym can actually raise your BMI, despite the workouts' health benefits.

The article raises another reason why waist size might be a better indicator, though:

Measuring someone's waist is important because it accounts for levels of central fat which accumulates around the organs and is particularly closely linked to [conditions] like stroke and heart disease. 

She said: "If you are measuring waist-to-height ratio you are getting a much earlier [prediction] that something is going wrong, and then you can do something about it.

The standard ranges for BMI, which is measured by dividing weight (in kilograms) by the square of height (in meters), are as follows:

Since anything involving the metric system seems to throw Americans into a tizzy, another advantage of the WHR is that it doesn’t matter which form of measurements you use.

Here’s a chart from Wikipedia with characterizations of various ratios:

To simplify matters, here are a BMI calculator and a WHR calculator.

My BMI, by the way, is 20.4 and my WHR is 0.46 (I think -- I don’t have a tape measure handy).

Goal of the Day. Or Maybe the Week. The Month?

Alex Colon scores from the mid-field line in a 5-1 win for Deportivo Quito over Cuenca.

The Dynasties Roll On

Philippine Senators are elected to six-year terms, with half the Senate (12 of the 24) elected every third year. Of the twelve candidates who currently appear to have won (counting isn’t complete), ten are closely related to other high-ranking politicians. They are:

Grace Poe -- Adopted daughter of two major movie stars, one of whom (Fernando Poe) very nearly won the presidency in 2004.
Alan Peter Cayetano – Son of a former senator. His sister is also a senator, and his wife is a mayor, who also took over his congressional seat when he moved up to the senate.
Francis (Chiz) Escudero – Son of a former congressman and cabinet member, grandson of a mayor, great-grandson of a governor.
Loren Legarda – Married at the time she entered politics (later annulled) to the governor of Batangas, Antonio Leviste. Other Levistes held the governorship previously and at least one congressional seat (although I can’t figure out the exact relationships).
Nancy Binay – Her father is vice-president and a former mayor of Makati (a big piece of metro Manila); her mother is also a former mayor of Makati; her brother is the current mayor; her sister is in the congress.
Juan Edgardo (Sonny) Angara -- Father current senator (term-limited), aunt former representative and governor, uncle new governor.
Benigno (Bam) Aquino – Almost too many to mention. His cousin is the current president and his aunt was president. We’ll leave it at that for the moment.
Aquilino (Koko) Pimentel III – Son of a senator.
Cynthia Villar – Wife of a senator, sister of a mayor, mother of a congressman.
JV Ejercito-Estrada – His father was president and former mayor of San Juan (another big piece of metro Manila) and was just elected mayor of Manila; his mother (who was the father’s mistress) is the current mayor of San Juan; his half-brother is also a senator; various other relatives hold office, including a cousin who is a governor.

The other two, the only ones without family connections, both of whom are current senators being re-elected, are former military officers who achieved fame by leading coups -- Antonio Trillanes, who led a coup attempt against Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (he was elected in 2007 while in jail); and Gregorio (Gringo) Honasan, who led one against Corazon Aquino. In both cases, they were freed by the next president.

(Note: The twelve existing senators are covered in this post). 

With the continuing election and re-election of the same families, there is little likelihood of any substantive reform in the Philippines. The same policies of protectionism and crony capitalism as have long been practiced here by the intermarried business and political elite will continue.

Until something changes, nothing will change.

Made in the USA (Kinda)

There was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal a few days ago, about how new perfumes (excuse me, ‘fragrances’) are developed. Apparently it has little to do with the fragrance; they start with designing the really important things – the bottle and the box – and choosing the name.

And only then, pretty much as an afterthought, do they actually concoct the fragrance.

The article details the steps taken in the development of a new fragrance, Living Colorfully, for Kate Spade. As I say, it was interesting. But the really, really interesting part (to me) was this: The fragrance is blended in France, the bottles are made in China, and the boxes in Taiwan. All these items are then shipped to LA, where the fragrance is put in the bottles and the bottles are put in boxes.

And then we get the final step: They put a label on the box reading, “Made in the USA”.

Bad Customer Service and Short-Term Contracts

Customer service in Filipino stores is atrocious. It’s not easy to have really bad customer service when you are as over-staffed as these stores are, but somehow they manage it. Restaurant and fast-food service is terribly slow (20-30 minutes is normal wait time for a meal in a ‘real’ restaurant, and fast food places generally have long lines that seem to never move). Supermarket check-out lines are also long and slow-moving. Employees are frequently unable to answer the simplest questions.

I’ve been most bothered by it, recently, in grocery shopping. At the store where I shop most often, the checkout lines are, as mentioned, absurdly long, with usually only about half of the lanes open (at peak hours). The store is, like most Philippine retail outlets, heavily overstaffed by Western standards, and there will be dozens of people stocking the shelves (or pretending to stock the shelves while chatting with each other) while customers stand in line. Often some of the lanes will have no baggers, slowing things further, as the cashier bags items (again, despite the many people stocking shelves).

(In case you are going to ask why I continue to shop there, the answer is that all the alternatives are exactly the same).

I’ve heard a number of reasons given for the Philippines’ customer service deficiencies, all of which I agree with at least somewhat. Here are a couple that are often suggested among expats discussing this issue:

• Filipino customers don’t know any better. Customers in these stores have never experienced good customer service, so their expectations are low and they won’t complain. 
• There’s no competition. Most business categories in the Philippines (including retail) seem to be organized on a cartel basis, so that ‘competitors’ have no incentive to improve their processes in such a way that they differentiate themselves. Foreign competitors who would introduce better practices and shake up the cartel, are excluded by the government's protectionist policies.

No doubt these are a big part of it, but I think it has mostly to do with the wide-spread Philippine practice of hiring employees on short-term contracts, in order to avoid paying benefits. The law apparently says that temporary employment cannot exceed six months, so contracts are shorter.

The ways that such a practice impact customer service are pretty obvious:

• Poor training. What’s the point of putting a lot of time and effort into training people who will be gone soon?
• No cross-training. If initial training is a waste of time, that goes double for cross-training. In a US supermarket, stockers are cross-trained to work the check-out lanes during peak times.  
• Lack of knowledge. Inexperienced and untrained employees are of course less able to answer customer questions or deal with problems.
• No incentives. An employee who has no hope of getting a promotion, and in fact knows s/he will be laid off in a few months, has no reason to care much about the company or the customer.

As employers in the US seek ways to avoid Obamacare, this practice might spread; but it seems the preferred way of avoiding benefits in the US is through part-time employment. Most temporaries there are just for seasonal work or specialists called in for projects (e.g., consultants).

Yestreen

I came across a word today that is totally new to me.

Generally, when I come across obscure/archaic words, I discover upon looking them up that they are obscure and archaic for good reason. But this is a perfectly good word and deserves to be resurrected.

The word, as you may have guessed from the title, is 'yestreen'. It is of Scottish origin and means 'last night' (yester e'en). Great word, huh?

I found it in a 1916 novel by P. G. Wodehouse, Piccadilly Jim, in a passage in which the title character is trying to remember what he had done while drunk the night before. He remarks to the butler:

“Well, it’s a funny thing, but I can’t get rid of the impression that at some point in my researches into the night life of London yestreen I fell upon some person to whom I had never been introduced and committed mayhem upon his person.”

When I type 'yestreen' in Microsoft Word, spellcheck suggests that perhaps I might mean 'eyestrain'.

Immigration and Databases

I have rather mixed feelings on the subject of immigration. I am strongly in favor of legal immigration, and think it should be easier for qualified immigrants to enter the US; at the same time, I am strongly opposed to illegal immigration. My opposition to illegal immigration is, as I see it, a part of my support for expanded legal immigration; if the US has too many immigrants now (an arguable point that depends on the question "How many should we have?" – something we as a country have not even debated, much less defined) then that diminishes the number we can allow in legally. And, frankly, I’d rather have immigrants who start off respecting the laws of their new home, therefore I'd rather have more legals and fewer illegals.

(Note: If you read this blog, you know by now that I don't worry about PC terminology: 'illegal' is a perfectly good description, as far as I'm concerned, for a person who is in the country illegally).

With all that said, I can’t see any feasible way that all the illegals currently present can be deported in anything approximating a humane manner, even assuming that that was the best thing to do. So I’m perfectly willing to accept some form of amnesty (short of full citizenship) for those already in the country – as long as it is preceded by a thorough securing of the border.

A major part of securing the border is, in my opinion, making it impossible (or as nearly impossible as can be) to get a job if you are in the country illegally, backed by extremely strong penalties for employers who hire illegals. It’s a workable supply-side solution: if there are no jobs, then there’s no reason to sneak across the border.

Therefore, I don’t have any objection to the intent of this:

The immigration reform measure the Senate began debating yesterday would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S., in what privacy groups fear could be the first step to a ubiquitous national identification system. 

Buried in the more than 800 pages of the bipartisan legislation is language mandating the creation of the innocuously-named “photo tool,” a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security and containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license or other state-issued photo ID. 

Employers would be obliged to look up every new hire in the database to verify that they match their photo. 

This piece of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act is aimed at curbing employment of undocumented immigrants.

Such a database would give the government immense power over each of us, because they would know everything about us. 'Knowledge is power' and all that.

It would begin, of course, as described above, with only our social security number and age tied to the biometric data. But how long would it be before your full job history, already tied to the SS#, is added to the database? And your police records would be added the next time there is a terrorism outrage or a mass shooting. And soon your taxes, your school records, your voting history, your donations to political causes, what books you checked out of the library, your marriages and divorces … and everything else.

I don’t think of myself as a paranoid, but in light of the IRS scandal, I’m not in much of a mood to trust the government to not use every tool it has to quash opposition. And this would be quite a tool.

If you are a Democrat, and are thinking right now: “Barack Obama would never use such a database against his political enemies” (even after the IRS revelations), then consider that sometime in the relatively near future, perhaps as soon as 2017, there will be a Republican president. Do you want that power to be in the hands of Ted Cruz, or Bobby Jindal, or Mike Huckabee?

Perhaps I'm overreacting. But I think this is just a realistic assessment of the way government power has steadily advanced for almost a century now.

Small Earthquake

Was awakened rudely this morning when my bed moved. It was about 9:40am, so I had to reluctantly admit that I should be up anyway.

It was a 4.2 quake on the Tanon Strait between Cebu and Negros.

The Philippines sits on several fault lines, which is why we have so many volcanoes (the islands are mostly of volcanic origin), but I must admit that I haven't felt much in the almost-year that I've been here -- I think one or two other little shakes. This one felt a bit stronger, but I think that's because it was fairly close, not because it was such a big quake.

The lines on the map are the major fault systems, so I guess this wasn't on a major fault. Looking at the map, though, it would appear that probably Cebu and Negros were once a single island and are moving apart, so there must be some sort of a fault there. But that's totally speculative. For that matter, it looks like Negros might have been part of Iloilo (the island just to the west of it).

Tornadoes: What a Difference a Couple Years Makes

As long as I just posted my first item on this blog about Global Warming, I might as well follow it with the second. A few days ago, I saw this item about a blessedly quiet tornado season in the US:

The USA in the past 12 months has seen the fewest number of tornadoes since at least 1954, and the death tolls from the dangerous storms have dropped dramatically since 2011. 

Just two years after a ferocious series of tornado outbreaks killed hundreds of Americans, the USA so far this year is enjoying one of the calmest years on record for twisters. Through Thursday, tornadoes have killed only three Americans in 2013; by the end of May 2011, 543 Americans had died. 

The seven people killed from May 2012 to April 2013 is the fewest in a 12-month period since five people died in September 1899-August 1900, according to Harold Brooks, research meteorologist with the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla.

Great news. As the article mentions, just a couple years ago, 2011, there was a terrible series of tornadoes (an especially bad one in Joplin, Missouri) that killed hundreds.

What isn’t mentioned in the article is that the Warmists used those tornadoes and those deaths to advance their cause.  Here's an egregious example from "a distinguished scholar at Middlebury College in Vermont." It's too stupid to quote, but you can read it for yourself. And the leftist website Think Progress had this:

In an email interview with ThinkProgress, Dr. Kevin Trenberth, one of the world’s top climate scientists, who has been exploring for years how greenhouse pollution influences extreme weather, said he believes that it is “irresponsible not to mention climate change” in the context of these extreme tornadoes.

Two years later, the silence of the Warmists is deafening. But I guess they’re too busy burning books.

(NOTE: I don't think one year of exceptionally low tornado activity is proof of anything. But the scientists who promote Global Warming should have likewise known better than to claim in 2011 that one year of exceptionally high activity was proof of their viewpoint. It's too bad they are so willing to cast their scientific training aside when it is convenient to do so to advance their political agenda.)

The Global Warmists Demonstrate Their Openness to Debate

One of the frustrations of the global warming debate is that there is none. Anyone who has any questions is derided as a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal, a science-denier, or worse. The academic establishment passes notes among themselves freezing out skeptics from publication in journals. “The science is settled,” intones the noted scientist Al Gore.

This extends to universities, which once were noted for being (or at least trying to be) places where ideas are openly discussed and examined. That is less true than it once was, in all areas, I’m afraid – especially in the Humanities and Social Sciences. But even in one of the hard sciences, Meteorology, the sign is out: “Questioning Authority Forbidden.”

Nothing could demonstrate the current state of meteorological thinking than this picture of two professors at San Jose State University.

The caption on the picture read:  This week we received a deluge of free books from the Heartland Institute. The book is entitled "The Mad, Mad, Made World of Climatism". Shown above, Drs. Bridger and Clements test the flammability of the book.

The picture appeared on the website of the Department of Meteorology and Climate Science. It has now, of course, been sent down the Memory Hole, but you can see it here.

How to Make Big Money While Retired Overseas

If you are an expat, or have thought about living overseas, you have probably at some point come across a magazine/website called International Living. They are frequently quoted in articles you'll find on other websites as well. I first came across them, if I recall correctly, after following a link for a Yahoo News article on 'The Ten Best Places to Retire Overseas' (no, Cebu City wasn't one of them).

IL sells seminars and books on how to live in various countries. I think I'll probably post more about them, but I'll tell you now that, while they have some worthwhile info, most of it is freely available from lots of other sources, so I'd recommend just taking their free stuff. Why pay for what you can get free elsewhere?

Here's an example of what they offer. I got an email from them a couple days ago about how to make money while living overseas. It starts like this:

"Income overseas expert Lori Allen had an interesting conversation with a gentleman on a flight recently. 

He was all set to retire, but money problems were getting in the way. 

Lori offered a suggestion that could mean an income of $10,000...$50,000...or even $200,000 and more a year. 

Keep reading...she’s going to share the strategy with you, too..."

And guess what this hot, hot idea was?

-- Dramatic Pause --

Sell stuff on Amazon!!!!!!!

What a great new idea -- you'd never think of something like that on your own, would you? No, that's the sort of stuff it takes an 'Income overseas expert' to come up with.

And they give away great ideas like this for only $850 at their seminars. If you ask nicely and pay me a hundred bucks I'll give you a link to their website so you can sign up.