PINOY FOLKS

2010-07-02T22:15:00.003+08:00

I'm BACKKKKKKKK!!!! I forgot this Blog and lost my account too... I'm glad to retrieve it now!

Filipino Street Food... Anyone?

2009-03-31T18:02:00.019+08:00

I'll be featuring some foods that is uniquely pinoy. Please take note of its names too.. Filipino ingenuity at its best.

Chicken is one of the best source of street food. see drawing below:

The only part that's inedible (hence no commercial value) on a chicken are its feathers.

Chicken neck (aka Kurbata) is sold either fried or grilled.

Chicken feet (Adidas™) and curdled chicken or pork blood, cubed and grilled (Betamax)

Chicken intestines (aka Isaw / IUD) and barbecued pig ears (Walkman) are great served as 'pulutan'.

Chicken head (Helmet)

Kwek - kwek (quail egg) and Tokneneng (penoy, egg. or balut) boiled, covered in orange colored flour and fried.

Fishball, Day-old chick, kikiam, and Squid / Chicken Ball.

and finally, street food that doesn't include chicken or pork:

Bibingka (rice cake)

Puto Bumbong - purple-colored sweet cooked in tubes that are placed on a steamer-cooker. When cooked, they are removed from the bamboo tubes, spread with butter and sprinkled with sugar and niyog (grated coconut).

And what a good way after consuming the above delicacies, than with these 'pantulak':

The Samalamig or Palamig, from the root word lamig meaning cold, are prepared beverages that contain sago (tapioca pearls) and gulaman (gelatin), and are usually flavored with syrup from a wide variety of fruit extracts. As the name suggests, it is used to refresh and nourish everyone's thirst, especially during the hot Summer season. Usually served in plastic cups and small plastic bags used for ice, this typical Filipino beverage is being sold everywhere and to anyone who wants to satisfy the need to quench their thirst at anytime of the day. In a country filled with junk and low nutrition food, the samalamig provides the necessary vitamins and minerals needed to fill the nutrient deficiencies of the Filipino people.

How to eat Balut - A delicacy in the Philippines

2009-03-31T16:21:00.007+08:00

BALUT is a fertilized duck egg with a nearly-developed embryo inside that is boiled and eaten in the shell. They are common, everyday food in some countries in Southeast Asia, such as in the Philippines, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Popularly believed to be an aphrodisiac and considered a high-protein, hearty snack, balut are mostly sold by street vendors in the regions where they are available. They are often served with beer. The Filipino and Malay word balut (balot) means "wrapped" – depending on pronunciation.

Preparation

Balut are most often eaten with a pinch of salt, though some balut-eaters prefer chili and vinegar to complement their egg. The eggs are savored for their balance of textures and flavors; the broth surrounding the embryo is sipped from the egg before the shell is peeled and the yolk and young chick inside can be eaten. All of the contents of the egg are consumed, although the whites may remain uneaten. In the Philippines, balut have recently entered haute cuisine by being served as appetizers in restaurants: cooked adobo style, fried in omelettes or even used as filling in baked pastries.

Balut-making is not native to the Philippines. A similar preparation is known in China as maodan (Chinese: pinyin: máodàn; literally "feathered egg"), and Chinese traders and migrants are said to have brought the idea of eating fertilized duck eggs to the Philippines. However, the knowledge and craft of balut-making has been localized by the balut-makers (magbabalut). Today, balut production has not been mechanized in favor of the traditional production by hand. Although balut are produced throughout the Philippines, balut-makers in Pateros are renowned for their careful selection and incubation of the eggs.

Fertilized duck eggs are kept warm in the sun and stored in baskets to retain warmth. After nine days, the eggs are held to a light to reveal the embryo inside. Approximately eight days later the balut are ready to be cooked, sold, and eaten. Vendors sell cooked balut out of buckets of sand (used to retain warmth) accompanied by small packets of salt. Uncooked balut are rarely sold in Southeast Asia. In the United States, many Asian markets occasionally carry uncooked balut eggs, though there is not much demand for them in the U.S. The cooking process is identical to that of hard-boiled chicken eggs, and baluts are enjoyed while still warm.

Duck eggs that are not properly developed after nine to twelve days are sold as penoy, which look, smell and taste similar to a regular hard-boiled egg. In Filipino cuisine, these are occasionally beaten and fried, similar to scrambled eggs, and served with a vinegar dip.

Steps in eating Balut

1. Crack a small hole on the more rounder part of the shell (if you hit a hard white piece, then you did it wrong).
2. Crack it a little more until the hole is the size of a bottle cap.
3. Sprinkle whatever what seasoning you would desired sip the juice.
4. Don't be afraid to eat the small little duck inside, just eat it like a boneless chicken thigh, dip the yolk in some lime juice and eat!

Francis Magalona is dead

2009-03-06T12:59:00.004+08:00

MANILA, Philippines - Master rapper Francis Magalona, 44, passed away Friday.

Vic Sotto confirmed the news over GMA's noontime show Eat Bulaga and asked for a minute of prayer for the eternal repose of the singer-composer's soul.

Magalona's battle with leukemia was made public last year. In a public statement last April 14, he admitted he was battling with the malady.

A blood drive was subsequently announced for the singer.

Unknown to the most, the 44-year-old singer-composer recently survived a delicate medical condition days before he was dispatched from a hospital.

"Akala ko kasi magki-Christmas ako sa ospital, e, because I had a very, very, very close brush with death last December 4. I went into septic shock and it was a very scary moment," he said in an earlier interview.

It was announced last year that Magalona was scheduled for a bone marrow transplant.

"My doctor said I'm in remission right now after my third chemo cycle. So, my next move would be to do the bone marrow transplant and I'm very happy to announce that I was able to find a match. One of my sisters from the States we have the same tissue typing so she would be my donor," he added. -

Source:
Amita O. Legaspi and Mark Joseph Ubalde, GMANews.TV

World's Worst Cultural Mistakes

2009-03-04T15:58:00.003+08:00

Don’t let blowing your nose or taking off your shoes land you in hot water when you travel

By Sallie Brady

Touching Someone

Where It’s Offensive: Korea, Thailand, China, Europe, the Middle East.

What’s Offensive: Personal space varies as you travel the globe. In Mediterranean countries, if you refrain from touching someone’s arm when talking to them or if you don’t greet them with kisses or a warm embrace, you’ll be considered cold. But backslap someone who isn’t a family member or a good friend in Korea, and you’ll make them uncomfortable. In Thailand, the head is considered sacred — never even pat a child on the head.

What You Should Do Instead: Observe what locals are doing and follow suit. In Eastern countries remember that touching and public displays of affection are unacceptable. In places like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, men and women are forbidden from interacting, let along touching.

Knowing Your Right from Your Left

Where It’s Offensive: India, Morocco, Africa, the Middle East.

What’s Offensive: Many cultures still prefer to eat using traditional methods — their hands. In these cases, food is often offered communally, which is why it’s important to wash your hands before eating and observe the right-hand-is-for-eating and the left-hand-is-for-other-duties rule. If you eat with your left hand, expect your fellow diners to be mortified. And when partaking from a communal bowl, stick to a portion that’s closest to you. Do not get greedy and plunge your hand into the center.

What You Should Do Instead: Left-handed? Attempt to be ambidextrous — even children who are left-handed in these cultures are taught to eat with their right hand — or at least explain yourself to your fellow diners before plunging in.

Keeping Your Clothes On

Where It’s Offensive: Scandinavian countries, Turkey.

What’s Offensive: Wearing bathing suits, shorts and T-shirts, underwear, or any other piece of clothing into a sauna, hammam, or other place of physical purification. In some cultures, a steam room or a sauna is considered a place of purity and reflection, where the outside world (i.e., your clothes) should be left outside. In some Scandinavian countries it’s common for entire families to sauna together in the nude.

What You Should Do Instead: Sitting on a folded towel is considered acceptable. If you’re too modest to appear naked, strip down, but wrap yourself in a towel.

Getting Lei'd Off

Where It’s Offensive: Hawaii.

What’s Offensive: Refusing or immediately removing a lei.

What You Should Do Instead: Leis in the Hawaiian Islands aren’t just pretty floral necklaces that you get when you check into your hotel or show up at a luau. They’re a centuries-old cultural symbol of welcome, friendship, and appreciation. Never refuse a lei — it’s considered highly disrespectful — or whip it off in the giver’s presence. If you’re allergic to the flowers, explain so, but offer to put it in some place of honor, say in the center of the table, or on a statue. Note that closed leis should be worn not hanging from the neck, but over the shoulder, with half draped down your chest and the other half down your back.

Looking Them in the Eye … or Not

Where It’s Offensive: Korea, Japan, Germany.

What’s Offensive: For Americans, not making direct eye contact can be considered rude, indifferent, or weak, but be careful how long you hold someone’s gaze in other countries. In some Asian nations, prolonged eye contact will make a local uncomfortable, so don’t be offended if you’re negotiating a deal with someone who won’t look you straight in the eye. If toasting with friends in a German beer hall, your eyes had better meet theirs — if they don’t, a German superstition says you’re both in for seven years of bad luck in the bedroom.

What You Should Do Instead: Avoid constant staring and follow the behavior of your host — and by all means, look those Germans straight on.

Drinking Alcohol the Wrong Way

Where It’s Offensive: Latin America, France, Korea, Russia.

What’s Offensive: Every culture has different traditions when it comes to drinking etiquette. Fail to consume a vodka shot in one gulp in Russia, and your host will not be impressed. Refill your own wine glass in France without offering more to the rest of the table, and you’ve made a faux pas. In Korea, women can pour only men’s drinks — not other women’s — and if you want a refill, you need to drain your glass. And if you’re in Latin America, never pour with your left hand — that’s bad luck.

What You Should Do Instead: Until you’re culturally fluent, leave it to your pals to pour.

Blowing Your Nose

Where It’s Offensive: Japan, China, Saudi Arabia, France.

What’s Offensive: Some cultures find it disgusting to blow your nose in public — especially at the table. The Japanese and Chinese are also repelled by the idea of a handkerchief. As Mark McCrum points out in his book Going Dutch in Beijing, the Japanese word hanakuso unpleasantly means nose waste.

What You Should Do Instead: If traveling through Eastern and Asian countries, leave the hankies at home and opt for disposable tissues instead. In France as well as in Eastern countries, if you’re dining and need to clear your nasal passages, excuse yourself and head to the restroom. Worst-case scenario: make an exaggerated effort to steer away from the table. Let’s hope you don’t have a cold.

Removing Your Shoes…or Not

Where It’s Offensive: Hawaii, the South Pacific, Korea, China, Thailand.

What’s Offensive: Take off your shoes when arriving at the door of a London dinner party and the hostess will find you uncivilized, but fail to remove your shoes before entering a home in Asia, Hawaii, or the Pacific Islands and you’ll be considered disrespectful. Not only does shoe removal very practically keeps sand and dirt out of the house, it’s a sign of leaving the outside world behind.

What You Should Do Instead: If you see a row of shoes at the door, start undoing your laces. If not, keep the shoes on.

Talking Over Dinner

Where It’s Offensive: Africa, Japan, Thailand, China, Finland.

What’s Offensive: In some countries, like China, Japan, and some African nations, the food’s the thing, so don’t start chatting about your day’s adventures while everyone else is digging into dinner. You’ll likely be met with silence—not because your group is unfriendly, but because mealtimes are for eating, not talking. Also avoid conversations in places a country might consider sacred or reflective—churches in Europe, temples in Thailand, and saunas in Finland.

What You Should Do Instead: Keep quiet!

Road Rage

Where It’s Offensive: Hawaii, Russia, France, Italy, around the globe.

What’s Offensive: Honk on Molokai or fail to pay a police officer a fine, a.k.a. bribe, on the spot when you’re stopped for speeding in Russia, and you’ll risk everything from scorn to prison time. Remember, too, that hand gestures have different meanings in other countries — a simple “thumbs-up” is interpreted as an “up yours“ in parts of the Middle East.

What You Should Do Instead: When driving abroad, make sure you have an international driver’s license; never, ever practice road rage; and keep your hands on the wheel.

Cristeta Comerford (Filipina)To Remain White House Chef

2009-01-29T13:48:00.005+08:00

Today Michelle Obama announced that Cristeta Comerford will stay on as White House executive chef, putting to rest all the speculation surrounding the decision.

Cristeta Comerford took the job in 2005 and is the first woman and first minority to serve as executive chef.

"Cristeta Comerford brings such incredible talent to the White House operation and came very highly regarded from the Bush family," Michelle Obama said in a statement released by the transition team. "Also the mom of a young daughter, I appreciate our shared perspective on the importance of healthy eating and healthy families."

Comerford is a naturalized U.S. citizen from the Philippines who studied French cooking in Vienna, Austria, and specializes in ethnic and American cuisine.

She's come a long, long, long way, this former hotel "salad girl." Before she was hired as an assistant chef in the White House in 1995, before first lady Laura Bush promoted her to White House executive chef last week, Cristeta Comerford -- "Cris" to her neighbors and co-workers here in the Washington area, "Teta" to her large but tight-knit Filipino family in the Chicago suburb of Morton Grove -- was in charge of a salad bar.

"That's what I called her, 'salad girl.' She prepared Caesar salad, Cobb salad," says Juanito Pasia, Cristeta's older brother, trying not to laugh. It was Juanito who drove Teta -- then 23, newly arrived from the Philippines -- in his blue Ford van to and from work at a Sheraton Hotel near Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. "Can you believe it?" he asks, giving another hearty laugh. "Can you believe this is happening?".

How Birds Can Down a Plane?

2009-01-16T16:13:00.006+08:00

Early reports suggest that a bird strike caused a jet plane to crash in the Hudson River near Manhattan today, leaving questions about how a little flying animal could down a big airliner.

More than 200 people have been killed worldwide as a result of wildlife strikes with aircraft since 1988, according to Bird Strike Committee USA, and more than 5,000 bird strikes were reported by the U.S. Air Force in 2007. Bird strikes, or the collision of an aircraft with an airborne bird, tend to happen when aircraft are close to the ground, which means just before landing or after take-off, when jet engines are turning at top speeds.

The incidents are serious particularly when the birds, usually gulls, raptors and geese, are sucked into a jet engine and strike an engine fan blade. That impact displaces the blade such that it strikes another blade and a cascade can occur, resulting in engine failure.

A 12-pound Canada goose striking an aircraft going 150 mph at lift-off generates the force of a 1,000-pound weight dropped from a height of 10 feet, according to Bird Strike Committee USA.

Today's incident, which occurred just after US Airways flight 1549 (an Airbus 320) had taken off with more than 150 passengers and crew members from LaGuardia Airport in New York, en route to Charlotte, N.C., involved a flock of geese, according to CBS News. Reports indicate no deaths or serious injuries as of this writing.

Large aircraft are certified to be able to keep flying after impacting a 4-pound bird, however 36 species of birds in North America weigh more than this, according to the committee. Even smaller birds, such as starlings, can cause engine failure.

The greater the difference in the speed of the plane and the bird, the greater the force of the impact on the aircraft. The weight of the bird is also a factor, but the speed difference is a much bigger factor.

Flocks of birds are even more dangerous as they can result in multiple strikes.

Delicate birds, delicate aircraft

Dale Oderman, associate professor of aviation technology at Purdue University in Indiana says birds can be very dangerous to aircraft, particularly in the first several thousand feet after take-off, where the birds are flying.

"Obviously, geese or another large bird would be much more hazardous than a little black bird," Oderman said. "The speed at which the two are moving causes the bird to get ingested into the engine. And the engine is very delicate to withstanding a major impact."

He added: "It just shuts the engine down."

Basically, if the birds get too close to the engine's intake, it's like a vacuum - the birds just get sucked in.

"The initial stages of a jet engine are made up of a lot of compressor blades. Those aren't very big and they can be very easily damaged," Oderman told LiveScience. "Even if one of those things breaks off, then the one blade will go through the rest of the engine and it's like shrapnel to the engine."

And in the case of the Hudson River crash, the birds apparently took out both engines.

"Apparently in this particular case it seems both engines were hit. If it was a flock of birds they flew thought it wouldn't be a surprise to me," Oderman said.

Airports, Oderman said, take several precautions to keep planes safe from birds. For instance, they often don't plant many trees nearby, as these are nesting areas for birds. Since La Guardia is right on the water, he noted, there are a lot of water birds around.

Bird strike remains

Bird strikes are on the rise, according to the committee. After a bird strike in the United States, the remains, called snarge, are sent to the Smithsonian Institution's Feather Identification Laboratory to identify the species, according to WikiPedia.

Bird and other wildlife strikes to aircraft result in more than $600 million in damage a year, according to Bird Strike Committee USA. Five jet airliners have had major accidents involving bird strikes since 1975, the committee says. In one case, about three dozen people died.

NASA worries about bird strikes, too.

During the July 2005 launch of Discovery on mission STS-114, a vulture soaring around the launch pad impacted the shuttle's external tank just after liftoff. With a vulture's average weight ranging from 3 to 5 pounds, a strike at a critical point on the shuttle - like the nose or wing leading thermal protection panels - could cause catastrophic damage to the vehicle.

NASA put safety measures into place in 2005 to reduce the odds of bird strikes with the shuttle. The agency particularly wants to avoid bird strikes to the shuttle's fuel tank that could damage the heat shield during launch and landing.

For instance, NASA has a special during launch countdown where they can stop to wait for birds to pass. And during landing, NASA has a sound cannon that they fire to make sure the runway is clear from birds to make sure shuttle isn't damaged during landing.

Major flaw revealed in Internet Explorer. Affects all versions

2008-12-17T11:40:00.004+08:00

The major press outlets are abuzz this morning with news of a major new security flaw that affects all versions of Internet Explorer from IE5 to the latest beta of IE8. The attack has serious and far-reaching ramifications -- and they're not just theoretical attacks. In fact, the flaw is already in wide use as a tool to steal online game passwords, with some 10,000 websites infected with the code needed to take advantage of the hole in IE.

Virtually all security experts (as well as myself) are counseling users to switch to any other web browser -- none of the others are affected, including Firefox, Chrome, and Opera -- at least for the time being, though Microsoft has stubbornly said it "cannot recommend people switch due to this one flaw." Microsoft adds that it is working on a fix but has offered no ETA on when that might happen. Meanwhile it offers some suggestions for a temporary patch, including setting your Internet security zone settings to "high" and offering some complicated workarounds. (Some reports state, however, that the fixes do not actually work.)

Expedient patching or switching are essential. Security pros fear that the attack will soon spread beyond the theft of gaming passwords and into more criminal arenas, as the malicious code can be placed on any website and can be adapted to steal any password stored or entered using the browser. It's now down to the issue of time: Will Microsoft repair the problem and distribute a patch quickly enough to head off the tsunami of fraud that's about to hit or will it come too late to do any good?

Meanwhile, I'll reiterate my recommendation: Switch from Internet Explorer as soon as you can. You can always switch back once the threat is eliminated.

FROM SANDWICH BOARD TO DREAM JOB

2008-12-12T06:07:00.003+08:00

An out-of-work banker who became a symbol of the looming financial crisis by trudging Manhattan streets wearing a sign advertising "MIT grad for hire" has landed on his feet - scoring a well-paying job at an accounting firm.

In a more hopeful sign of the times, Joshua Persky got rid of his sandwich board and demonstrated that creative people can bail themselves out without any help from the government.

Jobless Rate Hits 26-Year High "I liked his resume. He had great business sense, great experience and great references," Elliot Ogulnick, his new boss at the Manhattan firm Weiser LLP, said yesterday. As for his unique brand of self-promotion, Ogulnick said, "I must admit, it was very innovative." Persky was hired as a senior manager for Weiser as of last week, just about a year after he was laid off by the investment bank Houlihan Lokey and some six months after he started handing out his résumé to passers-by on Park Avenue.

The road from the streets to his new office on West 50th Street was longer and more winding than he expected - but he never gave up hope. "It just took more time than I expected," he said yesterday. In his weeks as a walking classified ad, he got several job interviews. "The problem was, it was the time when Bear Stearns collapsed," he said. "I had a lot of interest, but then everybody stopped hiring."

So he tried a different tack. "The publicity I got from the sandwich board encouraged me to set up a blog to document my experience," said Persky, 49. A headhunter spotted the blog and brought it to Weiser's attention. "Obviously, I had vigorous interviews, but I think it was [the blog] which sealed the deal," Persky said. "It feels so great to be back at work. I went through some frustrating times, but every day I tried to be optimistic."

He posted the happy news on his blog and got cheers from around the world. Now the father of five - who declined to discuss his new salary - is looking forward to being reunited with his family.

His wife and youngest kids, 4 and 5, had moved to her parents' home in Nebraska to save cash. But they'll be returning to New York after the end of the school year. "We're looking forward to being back together," he said. "It's hard being a telephone dad.

"There is all this holiday spirit around me, all these holiday parties, and I've got such a lot to be grateful for myself. It's like I'm celebrating twice this year."

Spectacular Sky Show: Venus, Jupiter and the Moon

2008-12-01T19:52:00.008+08:00

As the sun goes down in the evening, step outside and look southwest to see a celestial phenomenon. We wont see this spectacle for another 44 years, because next they'll gather like this will be on November 18, 2052.

You’ll find the bright planets Venus and Jupiter near the place the sun went down, with a waxing crescent moon nearby. They’re low in the sky – but beautiful both November 30 and December 1. With the exception of the sun and moon, Venus is the brightest light in the heavens, and Jupiter is second-brightest.

The Venus/Jupiter conjunction happens when these objects have the same right ascension on the sky’s dome. It’s as if they cross the same line of longitude in the sky and – for a brief time – beam north and south of one another on the sky’s dome. A conjunction of the two brightest planets won’t happen again until March of 2012. During this particular Venus and Jupiter conjunction, these two brilliant worlds appear 2 degrees apart. That’s about the width of your finger at an arm length away.

It’s possible – but extremely rare – to see two planets appear to merge into a single point of light. The last time two planets met up at the same spot on the sky’s dome was in the year 1818, when Venus passed in front of Jupiter. Tonight and tomorrow night, look for Venus, Jupiter, and the crescent moon in the west after sunset.

Conjunctions of two planets are fairly common. The planets often meet and appear close together the sky’s dome. But an occultation – or covering over – of one planet by another is very rare. Two planets won’t meet again on the sky’s dome for another 247 years – or until Venus occults Jupiter in the year 2065.

The Venus/Jupiter conjunction in right ascension takes place on November 30, 2008 at 7 p.m. Central Time (1:00 Universal Time on December 1).

Six Techniques for Remembering Dreams

2008-11-27T15:19:00.003+08:00

By: Dayna Davis

Even though I remember a lot of my dreams, I tend to get hung up on the ones I don’t remember. I’ll sit up in my bed, trying my best to remember what I dreamt before it fades away. Sometimes I’m able to recall parts of the dream, but as much as I try, I just can’t remember all of it.

We dream about every hour and a half and the longest dreams last from thirty to forty-five minutes. One would think that so many dreams unfolding each time we sleep would leave a more lasting impression. So why don’t they? They can—if you’re willing to do a little work. If you want to tap into your subconscious and start recalling your dreams, these tips will help get you started.

1. Keep a Dream Journal
Writing our dreams down as soon as we wake is one of the best ways to remember them; it also helps us decipher them since we’re able to reference them at any time. Craig Hamilton-Parker suggests an experiment for remembering our dreams in his book, The Hidden Meaning of Dreams. Hamilton-Parker recommends investing in a long-lasting, hardcover blank book and resolving to enter at least one dream in it every night for an entire month. Once you’ve got your journal, he suggests drawing a line down the middle of the page; on the left side of the line, write your dream. On the right side, give your interpretation of it.

When writing down your dreams, don’t worry about grammar, punctuation, or the sequence of events. Concentrate on getting it all on paper as fast as you can before it fades away.

When the month is up, look back through your dreams. You’ll be amazed at what you remembered and you’ll have a lot more insight into what’s influencing your dreams.

2. Give Your Dreams a Title
If you wake up and don’t have time to journal, create a title for your dream and write that down instead. You should title dreams in your dream journal anyway, but this can be an effective way of remembering aspects of your dream without journaling right away.
Use the title of your dream as often as you can throughout the day, whether you’re telling others about it or just trying to remember more details. When you have time to go back, expand on the title as much as you can. This could give you more clues into what you dreamed.

3. Use Pictures Instead of Words
If the idea of journaling all your dreams is intimidating, try drawing them. If you’re better at images than words, this might be the best technique for you. Buy a sketchbook and keep it by your bed with a pencil nearby. When you wake up, draw images you saw in your dreams. They don’t have to be masterpieces of art, just stick figures or colors you remember.

Once you get all the images down, go back and try to connect them to reconstruct your dream. If you have time later on, look up the images in a dream journal to see what they might mean.

4. Create a Map
Have you ever seen one of those mind maps with all the bubbles connected to one another and words inside each bubble? That’s what this technique is all about. If you dream about running down a windy canyon road, but the only thing you really remember is the canyon, write the word “canyon” in a bubble, then start branching off and drawing other bubbles off of that. One of the bubbles can have the word “road” and one “running.” The more you remember about each part of the dream, the more bubbles you can add. Once you get it all mapped out, you may be surprised at how much you actually remember. By zeroing in on key words and not worrying about the sequence or plot, you may be able to fill in the gaps of your fuzzy dream.

5. Wake Yourself Up
In 1955, Eugene Aserinsky and Nathan Kleitman published a paper about rapid eye movements, or the REM phase of sleep. They found that REM sleep takes up about 20 percent of our nightly sleep and that dreams in this phase of sleep are some of the easiest ones to remember.

Try waking yourself up at different times of the night to remember more dreams. Set an alarm for early in the morning and when it goes off, challenge yourself to remember what you were dreaming.

Or, drink a glass of water before you go to bed. When you wake up to use the bathroom, see if you remember what you were dreaming. Once you get a feel for what time is the best for dream catching, you can make it a regular thing.

6. Get Yourself in the Right Mind Set
Before going to bed, say aloud, “I will remember my dreams tonight.” When you wake up, lay still in bed for a couple of minutes, eyes closed, and try to remember. Once you start remembering, sit still a little longer and try to reach for more. To get yourself motivated to remember dreams, it may also be helpful to read a dream book before going to bed.
We all dream every night; we just don’t always remember them. If we make a conscious decision to remember our dreams and try a few new techniques, we’re bound to get a little closer to our own dream worlds.

Japanese man makes airport home. The Terminal 2?

2008-11-24T18:04:00.006+08:00

MEXICO CITY – Hiroshi Nohara is on a layover at the Mexico City airport. It has lasted almost three months, and he has no plans to leave.

For reasons he can't explain, the Japanese man has been in Terminal 1 of the Benito Juarez International Airport since Sept. 2, surviving off donations from fast-food restaurants and passengers and sleeping in a chair.

At first, he frightened passengers, and airport authorities asked the Japanese Embassy to investigate why the foul-smelling man refused to leave. Now, he's somewhat of a celebrity, capturing Mexico's collective imagination with nearly daily television news reports on his life at the food court.

Tourists stop to pose with him for photographs or get an autograph.

The Tokyo native flew into Mexico with a tourist visa and a return ticket home, but he never left the airport. In an interview Thursday alongside the airport McDonald's, he said he had no motive for his extended stay and doesn't know how much longer he'll remain.

"I don't understand why I'm here," he said through a visiting interpreter originally hired by a television station. "I don't have a reason."

The embassy can't force him to leave, and since Nohara's visa is valid all Mexican officials can do it wait for it to expire in early March.

During his stay, Nohara's wiry goatee has grown into a scraggly mass. His red-tinted hair is speckled with dust and dandruff, and his cream-colored jacket and fleece blanket are dingy with overuse. He smells like he hasn't had a shower in months.

"He's a calm person, a nice man," said Silvia Navarrete del Toro, an airport janitor. "He just sits here and eats all day."

Various stalls in the food court give Nohara free snacks and drinks, sometimes even throwing in hats or coffee mugs with store logos to get free publicity during his frequent television appearances.

Strangers often buy him pastries or hamburgers; he prefers the latter.

He sits with the interpreter, talking and laughing for hours, at a small table covered with cups of cold coffee, packets of ketchup and sandwiches wrapped in foil.

Stroking his facial hair, Nohara said the 2004 film "The Terminal," starring Tom Hanks as an Eastern European man stuck in a New York City airport, was not his inspiration. But he acknowledged the similarities.

"My life," he joked, "is 'The Terminal 2.'"

e=mc2: 103 years later, Einstein's proven right

2008-11-21T18:00:00.004+08:00

PARIS (AFP) – It's taken more than a century, but Einstein's celebrated formula e=mc2 has finally been corroborated, thanks to a heroic computational effort by French, German and Hungarian physicists.

A brainpower consortium led by Laurent Lellouch of France's Centre for Theoretical Physics, using some of the world's mightiest supercomputers, have set down the calculations for estimating the mass of protons and neutrons, the particles at the nucleus of atoms.

According to the conventional model of particle physics, protons and neutrons comprise smaller particles known as quarks, which in turn are bound by gluons.

The odd thing is this: the mass of gluons is zero and the mass of quarks is only five percent. Where, therefore, is the missing 95 percent?

The answer, according to the study published in the US journal Science on Thursday, comes from the energy from the movements and interactions of quarks and gluons.

In other words, energy and mass are equivalent, as Einstein proposed in his Special Theory of Relativity in 1905.

The e=mc2 formula shows that mass can be converted into energy, and energy can be converted into mass.

By showing how much energy would be released if a certain amount of mass were to be converted into energy, the equation has been used many times, most famously as the inspirational basis for building atomic weapons.

But resolving e=mc2 at the scale of sub-atomic particles -- in equations called quantum chromodynamics -- has been fiendishly difficult.

"Until now, this has been a hypothesis," France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) said proudly in a press release.

"It has now been corroborated for the first time."

For those keen to know more: the computations involve "envisioning space and time as part of a four-dimensional crystal lattice, with discrete points spaced along columns and rows."

Michael Jackson sued by Arab sheikh in UK court

2008-11-18T11:38:00.003+08:00

LONDON (AP) — The son of an Arab monarch took the King of Pop to court Monday, charging that Michael Jackson took $7 million as an advance on an album and an autobiography that he never produced.

Lawyers for Sheikh Abdulla bin Hamad Al Khalifa say their client paid Jackson expenses as an advance on the book and joint recording project with the sheikh, who is an amateur songwriter. Jackson claims the money was a gift.

Al Khalifa, 33, was due to testify at London's Royal Courts of Justice Wednesday. Jackson's lawyer Robert Englehart said he was seeking permission to have Jackson testify by video link from Los Angeles.

A lawyer for Al Khalifa said the royal first spoke to Jackson, 50, by telephone while the singer was on trial in California following his 2003 arrest on child molestation charges. Attorney Bankim Thanki said that Al Khalifa wanted to work with Jackson on rebuilding his career. Jackson's finances fell apart after his arrest and he was desperately short of cash.

Al Khalifa's first payment, for $35,000, went toward paying the utility bills at Neverland, Jackson's 2,500-acre (1,000 hectare) ranch and miniature amusement park in California, Thanki said. When Jackson was found innocent of the molestation charges in June 2005, Al Khalifa footed $2.2 million in legal bills, the lawyer said.

Al Khalifa said he believed the money would be repaid once Jackson's career recovered from the damaging trial.

"I saw the payment as an investment in Michael's potential," the sheikh in a statement he read out in court. "He said he would pay me back ... through our work together."

Al Khalifa moved Jackson and his entourage to Bahrain almost immediately after the trial, setting up a recording studio for him in Manama, the Gulf state's capital. The sheikh, who is the governor of the Bahrain's Southern Province, supplied Jackson with $500,000 in cash to subsidize his lifestyle and splashed out on a $350,000 European vacation for Jackson and his associates in February of 2006, Thanki said.

"The costs even included the expenses of bringing out Mr. Jackson's hairdresser," he said.

The lawyer said Jackson and the sheikh became close friends and at one time both lived in a palace in Abu Dhabi owned by Al Khalifa's father, Sheikh Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, Bahrain's king. The singer stayed nearly a year in Bahrain as a guest of the son, but the relationship soured when Jackson repudiated a business deal Thanki said they had agreed to.

Jackson's lawyers say the pair never entered a valid agreement and that Al Khalifa's money was given freely.

Thanki acknowledged that Al Khalifa gave some gifts to Jackson but said that most of what the singer received was part of a business deal.

The gifts, he said, "were essentially personal effects — watches, jewelry."

Thanki said the sheik was wealthy but that paying Jackson's bills had taken a big bite out of his finances.

"Some of the payments were staggering by any standards," Thanki said, saying the expenditure "should not be regarded as loose change for my client."

As for Jackson, he still appears to be in difficult financial straits.

Last week he was forced to give up the deed on Neverland, which is named for the mythical land of Peter Pan.

The trial is being held in London because the parties had agreed to take any disputes over their deal to an English court, Al Khalifa's representatives said. The trial is due to wrap up by the end of the month.

Mystery solved: How bleach kills germs

2008-11-14T22:24:00.004+08:00

Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology Associate Professor Ursula Jakob (L) and Jeannette Winter, Ph.D. in an undated photo courtesy of the University of Michigan. Bleach has been killing germs for more than 200 years but U.S. scientists have just figured out how the cleaner does its dirty work.

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Bleach has been killing germs for more than 200 years but U.S. scientists have just figured out how the cleaner does its dirty work.

It seems that hypochlorous acid, the active ingredient in bleach, attacks proteins in bacteria, causing them to clump up much like an egg that has been boiled, a team at the University of Michigan reported in the journal Cell on Thursday.

The discovery, which may better explain how humans fight off infections, came quite by accident.

"As so often happens in science, we did not set out to address this question," Ursula Jakob, who led the team, said in a statement.

The researchers had been studying a bacterial protein called heat shock protein 33, which is a kind of molecular chaperon that becomes active when cells are in distress, for example from the high temperature of a fever.

In this case, the source of the distress was hypochlorous acid or hypochlorite.

Jakob's team figured out that bleach and high temperatures have very similar effects on proteins.

When they exposed the bacteria to bleach, the heat shock protein became active in an attempt to protect other proteins in the bacteria from losing their chemical structure, forming clumps that would eventually die off.

"Many of the proteins that hypochlorite attacks are essential for bacterial growth, so inactivating those proteins likely kills the bacteria," Marianne Ilbert, a postdoctoral fellow in Jakob's lab, said in a statement.

The researchers said the human immune system produces hypochlorous acid in response to infection but the substance does not kill only the bacterial invaders. It kills human cells too, which may explain how tissue is destroyed in chronic inflammation.

"Hypochlorous acid is an important part of host defense," Jakob said. "It's not just something we use on our countertops."

Lindsay Lohan Admits Her Relationship With Samantha Ronson

2008-11-11T08:55:00.005+08:00

LOS ANGELES, Calif. -- Lindsay Lohan is finally speaking at length about her relationship with celebrity DJ Samantha Ronson.

Though she first confirmed she and Samantha are a couple during a phone-in to syndicated radio show "Loveline" in late September, in a new cover story for the December issue of Harper's Bazaar, Lindsay tackled the question again, revealing more about her feelings for the DJ.

"I think it's pretty obvious who I'm seeing," Lindsay told the magazine, which hits newsstands November 18. "I think it's no shock to anyone that it's been going on for quite some time... She's a wonderful person and I love her very much."

Lindsay, who recently wrapped up an abbreviated four-episode arc on "Ugly Betty," told the magazine that her family, with the exception of her father Michael Lohan (who publicly criticized Samantha), has been supportive of her relationship.

"It's never really come up as an issue," the actress said. "We're close; we've been through a lot. They're supportive of me whether I'm with a guy or a girl. They're just supportive of me as a person."

And sister Ali Lohan, who originally denied to the press that Lindsay was in a homosexual relationship when rumors about the couple first surfaced, has also offered Lindsay her blessing.

"Ali's known Samantha for a really long time. And she's like, 'Whatever it is, I support you. I probably won't ever do what it is you're doing, but I'm happy for you,'" Lindsay said. "Ali's very mature. I've told her that it's okay to like a boy or a girl if you're comfortable with it and it's something you believe you want to do. And I told her not to be afraid of who she wants to be."

While Samantha is the first woman Lindsay has admitted to dating publicly, when asked if she had previously "been with a girl" by Harper's, the actress replied, "I don't know, maybe."

Lindsay said she does not consider herself a lesbian, but as for whether she thinks of herself as bisexual, she told the magazine, "maybe."

"I don't want to classify myself," she continued. "First of all, you never know what's going to happen -- tomorrow, in a month, a year from now, five years from now. I appreciate people, and it doesn't matter who they are, and I feel blessed to be able to feel comfortable enough with myself that I can say that."

The star of the upcoming film "Labor Pains" also said she plans to get married some day, though she doesn't know whether it would be to a man or a woman. Lindsay also said she isn't ready to talk children.

"I don't know if I could really set a time because then it's like pressure to do it and failure if I don't," she said. "It shouldn't be about that. It should be about knowing that you're ready."

And, Linsday added, "I still need to be in charge of taking care of myself and getting my sh** in line and buying a house."

In fact, the 22-year-old admitted that prior to her 2007 rehab stints, she used up a lot of money while living at the Chateau Marmont hotel - money that could have gone to permanent digs,

"I was living here [at the Chateau] for almost two years. Who blows that much money on a hotel?" she said. "I could have bought a house!"

Now however, with rehab behind her and her relationship with Samantha making her happy, Lindsay suggested she is on the right track.

"Now I feel clear. That's my past, and I'm a different person now. I have goals and I'm working to achieve them. I'm not hanging out with people who are out every night getting f***ed up," she said. "And... I think that I'm happy."

Obama is the New US President

2008-11-05T12:17:00.005+08:00

Obama elected president

Obama wins California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington, giving him 324 electoral votes to McCain's 124 (AP). He will be the 44th president of the United States. After a tight battle against Republican Sen. John McCain, Obama has become the first African American president in the history of the United States.

Obama is set to address his supporters from Chicago's Grant Park.

Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware will be accompanying Obama to the White House as his vice president. Biden made his first unsuccessful bid for president in 1988, and again this year before dropping out. A six-term senator, Biden is the chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. One of his adult sons from his first marriage is currently serving in Iraq.

On June 4, Obama won the Democratic presidential nomination, beating Sen. Hillary Clinton in a tight primary race. The 47-year-old Democratic senator from Illinois stepped into the national spotlight in 2004, delivering the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention.

By now, Obama's personal history is well-known: He was born in Hawaii, the son of a white mother and Kenyan father. Obama's father returned to Kenya when Obama was two years old, leaving him to be raised by his mother and her family, including his beloved grandmother, "Toot," who died one day before her grandson was elected one of the most powerful leaders in the world.

After graduating from Columbia University, he went to Harvard Law School, becoming the first African American president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004, where he sits on several committees, including Foreign Relations, Homeland Security and Veterans' Affairs.

Obama and his wife, Michelle, have two young daughters, Malia and Sasha

Solar system like ours found

2008-10-28T14:01:00.002+08:00

WASHINGTON — For the first time, astronomers think that they've found evidence of an alien solar system around a star close enough to Earth to be visible to the naked eye.

They say that at least one and probably three or more planets are orbiting the star Epsilon Eridani, 10.5 light-years — about 63 trillion miles — from Earth. Only eight stars are closer.

The host star, slightly smaller and cooler than our sun, is in the constellation Eridanus — the name of a mythological river — near Orion in the northern sky.

Epsilon Eridani is much younger than the sun, about 850 million years old compared with 4.5 billion years for our system.

"This really is a system like our solar system was when it was five times younger than it is now," said one of the discoverers, Massimo Marengo , an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "It's like a time machine for our solar system."

"This system probably looks a lot like ours did when life first took root on Earth," said Dana Backman , of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. , the lead author of a report to be published Jan. 10 in The Astrophysical Journal .

SETI chose Epsilon Eridani as one of the first targets in its long — but so far vain — search for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence in 1960. The suspected planets are too far away to be detected directly, so their presence has to be inferred by indirect measurements. Their star is so near, however, that some astronomers think that they may be able to see its planets with better telescopes within the next decade.

One of the planets, a gas giant 1 { times heavier than Jupiter, was discovered in 2000 by Barbara McArthur , an astronomer at the University of Texas in Austin . She measured the slight wobble in the star's position as the planet swung around it. Further observations by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2006 confirmed its existence, McArthur said at the time.

Now Backman's team has deduced the presence of at least two more planets, after space- and ground-based telescopes separately revealed two belts of rocky asteroids and an outer icy ring circling Epsilon Eridani.

The inner asteroid belt is about 280 million miles from its host star, the same distance as our own ring of asteroids orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. The second belt is about the same distance as Uranus is in our system.

Finally, a wide, third ring of icy objects extends billions of miles beyond Epsilon Eridani, resembling the so-called Kuiper Belt of mini-planets outside Pluto.

In 2002, Alice Quillen , an astronomer at the University of Rochester in New York state , reported that unusual clumps of material in the outer ring probably indicated the presence of a Saturn -size planet in a Pluto-like orbit. Her finding hasn't been confirmed, but "I still think there is a planet out there of this size," Quillen said in an e-mail.

According to Marengo, the gaps between these belts were created when clouds of dust and rocks consolidated into planets, as happened in the early days of our solar system. He likened the process to the formation of Saturn's famous rings, which are separated by spaces cleared out by little moons.

"The easiest way to explain the gaps is to say there are planets there," Marengo said. "It's the same way as the rings of Saturn are kept stable by the moons of Saturn ."

"I think these rings are probably telling us about how systems clear out after planets have formed," Quillen said. "It's pretty exciting to catch such a nearby system in this critical stage."

Marengo raised the possibility that more Earthlike planets might exist in the space between Epsilon Eridani and the inner dust ring.

"The inside belt is cleared, like in our solar system," he said. "There could be terrestrial planets inside, but we can't detect them yet."

Arrested for virtual murder

2008-10-24T15:07:00.009+08:00

TOKYO: A 43-year-old Japanese woman whose sudden divorce in a virtual game world made her so angry that she killed her online husband's digital persona has been arrested on suspicion of hacking, police said Thursday.

The woman, who is jailed on suspicion of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data, used his identification and password to log onto popular interactive game "Maple Story" to carry out the virtual murder in mid-May, a police official in northern Sapporo said on condition of anonymity, citing department policy. "I was suddenly divorced, without a word of warning. That made me so angry," the official quoted her as telling investigators and admitting the allegations. The woman had not plotted any revenge in the real world, the official said. She has not yet been formally charged, but if convicted could face a prison term of up to five years or a fine up to $5,000.

Players in "Maple Story" raise and manipulate digital images called "avatars" that represent themselves, while engaging in relationships, social activities and fighting against monsters and other obstacles.

The woman used login information she got from the 33-year-old office worker when their characters were happily married, and killed the character. The man complained to police when he discovered that his beloved online avatar was dead.

X-rays detected from Scotch tape

2008-10-23T22:50:00.003+08:00

NEW YORK – Just two weeks after a Nobel Prize highlighted theoretical work on subatomic particles, physicists are announcing a startling discovery about a much more familiar form of matter: Scotch tape. It turns out that if you peel the popular adhesive tape off its roll in a vacuum chamber, it emits X-rays. The researchers even made an X-ray image of one of their fingers.

Who knew? Actually, more than 50 years ago, some Russian scientists reported evidence of X-rays from peeling sticky tape off glass. But the new work demonstrates that you can get a lot of X-rays, a study co-author says.

"We were very surprised," said Juan Escobar. "The power you could get from just peeling tape was enormous."

Escobar, a graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles, reports the work with UCLA colleagues in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

He suggests that with some refinements, the process might be harnessed for making inexpensive X-ray machines for paramedics or for places where electricity is expensive or hard to get. After all, you could peel tape or do something similar in such machines with just human power, like cranking.

Very Short yet powerful Movie

2008-10-21T11:45:00.008+08:00

This 3-minute animation is short but conveys a powerful message! It's about a dream of a flightless bird (Kiwi) to fly and his determination to achieve his dream---no matter what happens.

The 3-minute movie:

Some dreams are worth DYING for... :(

Ten Reasons Why you're not Rich

2008-10-12T07:45:00.003+08:00

Many people assume they aren't rich because they don't earn enough money. If I only earned a little more, I could save and invest better, they say.

The problem with that theory is they were probably making exactly the same argument before their last several raises. Becoming a millionaire has less to do with how much you make, it's how you treat money in your daily life.

The list of reasons you may not be rich doesn't end at 10. Caring what your neighbors think, not being patient, having bad habits, not having goals, not being prepared, trying to make a quick buck, relying on others to handle your money, investing in things you don't understand, being financially afraid and ignoring your finances.

Here are 10 more possible reasons you aren't rich:

You care what your car looks like: A car is a means of transportation to get from one place to another, but many people don't view it that way. Instead, they consider it a reflection of themselves and spend money every two years or so to impress others instead of driving the car for its entire useful life and investing the money saved.

You feel entitlement: If you believe you deserve to live a certain lifestyle, have certain things and spend a certain amount before you have earned to live that way, you will have to borrow money. That large chunk of debt will keep you from building wealth.

You lack diversification: There is a reason one of the oldest pieces of financial advice is to not keep all your eggs in a single basket. Having a diversified investment portfolio makes it much less likely that wealth will suddenly disappear.

You started too late: The magic of compound interest works best over long periods of time. If you find you're always saying there will be time to save and invest in a couple more years, you'll wake up one day to find retirement is just around the corner and there is still nothing in your retirement account.

You don't do what you enjoy: While your job doesn't necessarily need to be your dream job, you need to enjoy it. If you choose a job you don't like just for the money, you'll likely spend all that extra cash trying to relieve the stress of doing work you hate.

You don't like to learn: You may have assumed that once you graduated from college, there was no need to study or learn. That attitude might be enough to get you your first job or keep you employed, but it will never make you rich. A willingness to learn to improve your career and finances are essential if you want to eventually become wealthy.

You buy things you don't use: Take a look around your house, in the closets, basement, attic and garage and see if there are a lot of things you haven't used in the past year. If there are, chances are that all those things you purchased were wasted money that could have been used to increase your net worth.

You don't understand value: You buy things for any number of reasons besides the value that the purchase brings to you. This is not limited to those who feel the need to buy the most expensive items, but can also apply to those who always purchase the cheapest goods. Rarely are either the best value, and it's only when you learn to purchase good value that you have money left over to invest for your future.

Your house is too big: When you buy a house that is bigger than you can afford or need, you end up spending extra money on longer debt payments, increased taxes, higher upkeep and more things to fill it. Some people will try to argue that the increased value of the house makes it a good investment, but the truth is that unless you are willing to downgrade your living standards, which most people are not, it will never be a liquid asset or money that you can ever use and enjoy.

You fail to take advantage of opportunities: There has probably been more than one occasion where you heard about someone who has made it big and thought to yourself, "I could have thought of that." There are plenty of opportunities if you have the will and determination to keep your eyes open.

Cambodian couple saw home in half to avoid messy divorce

2008-10-11T16:33:00.004+08:00

To some of you this will be madness; to others, blissful sanity:

An estranged Cambodian couple married for nearly 40 years have split their home 50-50 — sawing it in half to avoid the country's complicated, expensive divorce laws, the BBC tells us. Moeun and Nhanhy Rim also divided their land into four parcels — one for each of them and their two children.

Moeun Rim has carted away his fixer-upper and relocated elsewhere in Prey Veng province, about 60 miles outside the capital, Phnom Penh.

The last straw? Rim accused his wife of neglecting him when he was sick.

Although they have split up, they're still legally married, a local lawyer says.

Philippine Oil Well starts its production

2008-10-11T07:23:00.007+08:00

After numerous delays, the Galoc oil field off northwest Palawan has finally produced oil, boosting the country’s hope to become 60-percent energy self-sufficient by 2010.

First discovered in 1981 and appraised in 1988, the Galoc field was left undeveloped due to the risks associated with its development and the then low price of oil.

Delays in the delivery of the first oil mean that its operators have missed this year’s oil price rally. Global crude oil prices are now around $89 a barrel, well off highs near $150 a barrel in mid-July.

In a joint statement, Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes and Jeff Davison, chief operating officer of service contract operator Galoc Production Co. (GPC), said the first well opened at 10:45 a.m., with first oil on board the vessel by 11:20 a.m.

GPC had repeatedly missed its first oil targets this year due mainly to bad weather.

Based on the consortium’s timetable, flow testing would be conducted over the coming weeks to stabilize production. Upon stabilization, production is expected to reach 20,000 barrels a day from the two wells.

6 percent of oil demand

For the remainder of 2008, production should average around 17,000 barrels a day.

“We are expecting to get 20,000 barrels a day in the first 90 days of commercial production. That will provide for 6 percent of the daily oil demand of the country,” Reyes said.

Independent appraiser Gaffney, Cline and Associates had estimated the production rate at the Galoc field to reach 23,000 barrels a day, on average, for the first year of production.

The Galoc field, 65 km northwest of Palawan, holds oil reserves estimated at 10 million barrels.

The new crude will raise the Philippines’ domestic oil output by some 70 percent to 42,500 bpd, a welcome addition to the country, which imports nearly all of its requirements.

But Galoc’s crude, also called Palawan Light, could find it hard attracting customers as it has a higher sulphur content than most Asia-Pacific grades, at 1.64 percent.

It is also coming on stream at a time of weakening oil demand in Asia, even as Vietnam has started selling first cargoes of its new light sweet Song Doc crude.

Reduction in imported oil

In June, Reyes said Galoc’s output would be aimed at local refineries.

Malacañang officials hailed the extraction of oil from the Galoc field saying this would reduce the country’s dependence on imported oil and save the country millions of dollars.

“The President is optimistic that this new development will positively impact on the administration’s efforts to reduce the country’s annual oil importation of $6 billion, and in turn will also contain the increasing cost of food and other commodities,” Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said, reading from a statement.

This, he added, would translate into $1.4 billion foreign exchange savings for the Galoc oil well’s lifetime of three to five years.

The country imported some $8.8 billion worth of oil last year, up from $8 billion the previous year. The total imports reached 120.1 million barrels in 2007.

GPC owns 58.29 percent of the Galoc contract area covered by Service Contract 14C, while Australian firms Nido Petroleum Ltd. and Otto Energy Ltd. hold 22.28 percent and 18.28 percent, respectively.

Other shareholders include local companies The Philodrill Corp. (7.03 percent), Oriental Petroleum and Minerals (4.96 percent), Linapacan Oil, Gas and Power (2.61 percent), Forum Energy (2.27 percent), Alcorn Gold Resources (1.53 percent), and PetroEnergy Resources (1.03 percent).

Vitol and European trader Trafigura will be the two main marketers of Palawan Light.

The Philippines also wants to drill oil from its Malampaya gas field off the Palawan coast and expects to start producing oil from its largest hydrocarbon discovery in less than two years.

Japan Plans to Build an Elevator into Space

2008-09-24T23:09:00.003+08:00

From cyborg housemaids and waterpowered cars to dog translators and rocket boots, Japanese boffins have racked up plenty of near-misses in the quest to turn science fiction into reality.

Now the finest scientific minds of Japan are devoting themselves to cracking the greatest sci-fi vision of all: the space elevator. Man has so far conquered space by painfully and inefficiently blasting himself out of the atmosphere but the 21st century should bring a more leisurely ride to the final frontier.

For chemists, physicists, material scientists, astronauts and dreamers across the globe, the space elevator represents the most tantalising of concepts: cables stronger and lighter than any fibre yet woven, tethered to the ground and disappearing beyond the atmosphere to a satellite docking station in geosynchronous orbit above Earth.

Up and down the 22,000 mile-long (36,000km) cables — or flat ribbons — will run the elevator carriages, themselves requiring huge breakthroughs in engineering to which the biggest Japanese companies and universities have turned their collective attention

In the carriages, the scientists behind the idea told The Times, could be any number of cargoes. A space elevator could carry people, huge solar-powered generators or even casks of radioactive waste. The point is that breaking free of Earth's gravity will no longer require so much energy — perhaps 100 times less than launching the space shuttle.

“Just like travelling abroad, anyone will be able to ride the elevator into space,” Shuichi Ono, chairman of the Japan Space Elevator Association, said.

The vision has inspired scientists around the world and government organisations including Nasa. Several competing space elevator projects are gathering pace as various groups vie to build practical carriages, tethers and the hundreds of other parts required to carry out the plan. There are prizes offered by space elevator-related scientific organisations for breakthroughs and competitions for the best and fastest design of carriage.

First envisioned by the celebrated master of science fiction, Arthur C. Clarke, in his 1979 work The Fountains of Paradise, the concept has all the best qualities of great science fiction: it is bold, it is a leap of imagination and it would change life as we know it.

Unlike the warp drives in Star Trek, or H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, the idea of the space elevator does not mess with the laws of science; it just presents a series of very, very complex engineering problems.

Japan is increasingly confident that its sprawling academic and industrial base can solve those issues, and has even put the astonishingly low price tag of a trillion yen (£5 billion) on building the elevator. Japan is renowned as a global leader in the precision engineering and high-quality material production without which the idea could never be possible.

The biggest obstacle lies in the cables. To extend the elevator to a stationary satellite from the Earth's surface would require twice that length of cable to reach a counterweight, ensuring that the cable maintains its tension.

The cable must be exceptionally light, staggeringly strong and able to withstand all projectiles thrown at it inside and outside the atmosphere. The answer, according to the groups working on designs, will lie in carbon nanotubes - microscopic particles that can be formed into fibres and whose mass production is now a focus of Japan's big textile companies.

According to Yoshio Aoki, a professor of precision machinery engineering at Nihon University and a director of the Japan Space Elevator Association, the cable would need to be about four times stronger than what is currently the strongest carbon nanotube fibre, or about 180 times stronger than steel. Pioneering work on carbon nanotubes in Cambridge has produced a strength improvement of about 100 times over the last five years.

Equally, there is the issue of powering the carriages as they climb into space. “We are thinking of using the technology employed in our bullet trains,” Professor Aoki said. “Carbon nanotubes are good conductors of electricity, so we are thinking of having a second cable to provide power all along the route.”

Japan is hosting an international conference in November to draw up a timetable for the machine.

Stranger than fiction

“Riding silently into the sky, soon she was 100km high, higher even than the old pioneering rocket planes, the X15s, used to reach. The sky was already all but black above her, with a twinkling of stars right at the zenith, the point to which the ribbon, gold-bright in the sunlight, pointed like an arrow. Looking up that way she could see no sign of structures further up the ribbon, no sign of the counterweight. Nothing but the shining beads of more spiders clambering up this thread to the sky. She suspected she still had not grasped the scale of the elevator, not remotely.”

Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony

2008-08-10T10:19:00.005+08:00

For those who missed the opening of the Beijing Olympics Ceremony, here's the video hosted by Youtube uploaded by our friend and partner site, DCRJ, of Pinoy Biscuits for the complete videos of whole event, please visit his channel @ PB youtube Channel

First Part of the Opening Ceremony video. Enjoy!

Philippine wins Gold! - 2008 World Hip Hop Dance Championship

2008-08-05T20:37:00.009+08:00

The Philippine All Stars won the gold medal at the 2008 World Hip Hop Dance Championship Sunday at Planet Hollywood, Las Vegas, USA

Message from Philippine All-Stars:

Yey! We won the Gold in the Adult Division of the 2008 World Hip Hop
Championship! ALL GLORY TO GOD!!! Thanks to all your prayers!

Thank you to Hip Hop International and to all our supporters all over the world. Watch out for our own footages of the event. We are currently experiencing technical difficulties. Please bear with us.

Winning Moves:

Moon Landing Anniversary

2008-07-17T08:59:00.012+08:00

On 20th day of this month marks the 39th anniversary of first manned landing in the Moon.. (July 20, 1969) and this event will be remembered FOREVER..

And so are the crews:

* Neil A. Armstrong - Commander (First man on the Moon)
* Michael Collins - Command Module Pilot
* Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr. - Lunar Module Pilot

Here's the video of the Apollo 11 Mission: From Takeoff to Splashdown

Overall, there are 12 men have reached the moon surface before the manned lunar missions was discontinued.

Future manned missions would be on the Planet Mars about 3 decades from now (2030 - 2040)

Fastest Tetris Player in the World

2008-07-11T14:08:00.004+08:00

In my younger days, my highest Tetris record is 999,999... i dunno my record now but I'm an amateur to this player.. this guy is soo wicked!

Historic Hostage Rescue

2008-07-05T17:44:00.003+08:00

Bob Orr provides an in-depth analysis how Colombian government officials were able to outsmart FARC guerilla forces into handing over hostages held captive for over 5 years.

Well, just in case situation didn't go as planned, there is the Plan B, where about 2,000 government soldiers and 39 attack helicopters in the vicinity to force the rebels to hand in the hostages.

Top 10 Easy Paths to Self Destruction

2008-07-03T17:45:00.004+08:00

10. Sacrifice Sleep

Inadequate sleep (less than 7 or 8 hours a night) has been tied to many different health problems, including obesity, diabetes and cancer. Mental fatigue is also as big of a risk factor for vehicular accidents as alcohol. And just think of all the time you'd have for destructive behavior if you shunned the zzz's altogether!

9. Ignore the Doctor

Many Americans agree that their health is hardly worth finding thirty minutes among 526,000 for that once-per-year physical exam. It's a good tactic if early disease detection and important medical consultation are going to get in the way of your Tommy Lee lifestyle. If you don't want to hear the doctor tell you our other tips for self-destruction are unhealthy, just don't go.

8. Dumb down your Brain

Reading, doing crosswords and tackling sudokus are all risky behaviors if you're looking to avoid Alzheimer's. The degenerative brain disease attacks almost everyone who lives long enough, though mind games and puzzles are known to ward off the effects.

7. Have a Lot of Sex

Most people agree that sex in itself isn't so bad, it's how you do it that could mean life or death. The smart self-destructor doesn't use protection, ignores the partner's sexual history and shuns the annual medical exam. Twelve million Americans contract sexually transmitted diseases every year, many of which can leave the victim infertile. Killing yourself and preventing new births: there?s a two-fer!

6. Drive a lot

If people wanted to increase their chance of surviving 'til a ripe old age, they'd fly everywhere. Driving kills more people aged 1 to 35 than anything else, a statistic that could drop to near zero if everyone just stayed home. But how fun would that be? So hit the road, forget the speed limit, yak on your cell phone?or worse, eat?and don't buckle up if you're anxious to become part of this popular statistic.

and for the Top 5, Click below...

5. Drink a Lot

The occasional drink of alcohol, especially wine, can be beneficial to your health, many studies suggest. But if you're looking to do yourself in, overdo the two-drink-per-day limit and imbibe heartily. Besides alcoholism of course, too much booze causes liver damage, diabetes and is the root cause of nearly 100,000 deaths per year.

4. Stress Out

Creating more stress in your life is a great way to invite all kinds of diseases to attack the body. When you're chronically stressed, the adrenal glands are forced to work overtime and eventually exhaust themselves, inhibiting the immune system. So go ahead and worry about everything from the color of your socks to whether dinner will be ready on time. Your hormones won't know what hit them.

3. Watch TV

Not only is television entertaining, it can keep us on the couch for hours at a time several days per week. The average American spends a full 9 years of his life glued to the boob tube, years that could otherwise be spent exercising. Resist the urge! Being an obese, sedentary TV-addicted couch potato makes for speedy self-destruction, though you may be a little smarter (if you watch those nerdy science channels).

2. Smoke

They don't call them cancer sticks for nothing: Tobacco-related illnesses are America's number two killer, and the most preventable. But if you're bent on putting the kibosh to healthy living, go ahead and light up; just one cigarette will immediately increase your blood pressure and decrease the circulation to your extremities. Imagine what you could do with a pack.

and the # 1. Eat Junk

Last year, at least 400,000 Americans managed to kill themselves based almost solely on what they ate. Heart disease is the country's number one killer and, while some of that comes from genetics, most of it's due to the fat-laden, sugar-heavy junk we put in our bodies. Looking for the most effective, probably most enjoyable way to do yourself in? Have another doughnut. And make it cream-filled!

source: LiveScience

Round 9 Knockout Video

2008-06-30T11:13:00.006+08:00

Round 9 Video of Pacquiao - Diaz Fight

Pacquiao Fight -- Spectators View

2008-06-30T08:28:00.007+08:00

Pics here are taken by our friend in Las Vegas, Darwin aka Rastaman in his Blog,
---> http://pinoyrastaman.blogspot.com

Pacquiao and The Science of Knockout

2008-06-28T09:54:00.009+08:00

According to Science and human anatomy, this is how a knockout occurs...

Accoding to Manny Pacquiao, this is how a knockout is executed:

On June 28, in Las Vegas, (June 29, Sunday, in Manila) brace yourselves for the biggest fight of the 2 boxers! For Manny it will be a historic win, (5 world titles in 5 weight division, the only Asian to do that) --- but for Diaz, he'll be a hero if he stop the Mexican executioner, a revenge for his country.

Manny Paquiao:

“This will be my hardest-fought battle," said Pacquiao. “It's been over three
years since I have changed weight divisions and I will be doing it against the
lightweight division's world champion. I saw how he took the fight to Erik
Morales in his last title defense and I'm expecting to see the same firepower
out of him when we meet. But this is my drive for five. Five world titles in
five different weight classes and I will not be denied. I am fighting for
history, for destiny and for my people of the Philippines ."

Davia Diaz:

"Manny Pacquiao has beaten many great fighters, especially Mexicans like
Morales, Barrera, Marquez, Larios and Solis. That's why they call him “The
Mexicutioner," said Diaz. “I will shock the world and beat Pacquiao at his own
game, power for power. He's a great champion but he's fighting in my division –
lightweight. I have worked too hard for this world title and I will not give it
up to him."

Wow! this is one hell of a fight!!!

Sony has lost over $3 billion on the PS3

2008-06-27T11:27:00.006+08:00

Think you paid too much for your Playstation 3? Don't expect any sympathy from Sony.

In the company's fiscal 2008 annual report, Sony revealed that they've now lost roughly $3.3 billion (that's billion with a B) on the Playstation 3 since its launch. That breaks down to $2.16 billion in 2007, followed by a notably smaller but equally daunting $1.16 billion loss in 2008.

The reason? Pricing the console below its production cost. That's right - that hefty $599 you paid for the PS3 back when it first launched was significantly cheaper than the cost of producing it in the first place, and while the retail price has come down some, the losses keep piling up.

Investors have reason to sweat. In a statement, Sony claimed "the large-scale investment required during the development and introductory period of a new gaming platform may not be fully recovered." They went on to note that they've invested a great deal of money into R&D for the console, a sum they might not be able to recoup if the PS3 "fails to achieve such favorable market penetration."

Sony fanboys should take heart, however. Losing money on hardware is relatively common in the video game biz, as companies routinely lower prices to sell more units and thus stimulate software sales. Sony's game division saw a 26% sales spike last quarter, a trend they expect will continue on the strength of strong exclusives like the recently released Metal Gear Solid 4 and the upcoming sequel Resistance 2.

But will it be enough?

Source: Yahoo! Games

A rendezvous with Disaster

2008-06-24T15:29:00.011+08:00

Google Earth voyage presentation of the ill-fated ship, Princess of the Stars. The ship left Manila on June 21 bound for Cebu not knowing that they're heading to a path of a Typhoon Fengshen (named Frank by PAGASA) The ship capsized near Sibuyan Island, Dozens of survivors were drifted ashore but about 700 are still missing.

Hope Fades in search of Survivors

2008-06-24T10:56:00.005+08:00

Hopes faded on Monday that more survivors would be found in what could be one of the Philippines’s worst sea tragedies as rescuers failed to find signs of life inside a capsized ferry that had held more than 800 passengers and crew members when a typhoon struck on Saturday.

Rescue officials said only 38 survivors had been rescued, including 28 passengers and crew members who came ashore Monday after drifting at sea since Saturday.

A total of 13 bodies believed to be from the ferry, Princess of the Stars, have been recovered, including nine that washed up on land on Monday.

The known dead from the ferry brought the death toll from the typhoon, named Fengshen, to at least 176, the Philippine National Red Cross said. Fengshen, packing winds of up to 121 miles per hour , struck the central and northern Philippines on Saturday, knocking down power lines, causing landslides, flooding rivers, and inundating entire communities.

Divers who beat against the hull of ferry on Monday in search of survivors heard nothing that indicated life.

“We just approached the hull of the ship, we got near and then banged, knocked in order for us to give a sign if ever there are still people inside,” Lieut. Col. Edgard Arevalo of the Coast Guard said Monday. “Unfortunately there was no response.”

The Philippine government has asked other countries, particularly the United States, for help in the recovery operations. A United States Navy ship from Okinawa, Japan, was expected to arrive early Tuesday near Sibuyan island, south of Manila, where the ferry sank, said Jesus Dureza, press secretary of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

Officials said helicopters on the Navy ship could help survey the general area for possible survivors.

Eleandro Madrona, a congressman of Romblon Province where the ferry sank, flew over the area on Monday afternoon, but reported seeing only a tugboat near the ship’s wreckage.

“I was thinking, where could these 700 people be?” Mr. Madrona said, according to The Associated Press.

Elsewhere, officials tried to assess the losses from the typhoon. Iloilo, a central Philippine province, was the worst hit, with fatalities approaching 100 as of Monday, officials said. It was too early to determine damage to agriculture and infrastructure, but officials said it could run up to billions of pesos.

Another concern was the welfare of the nearly 70,000 people across the country who were displaced by the typhoon and are now living in evacuation centers. On Sunday, Ms. Arroyo ordered all government agencies to help in the relief operations, while private companies have begun campaigns to collect donations of food, clothing and bottled water.

The president also ordered tighter maritime regulations. “Pending a review of Philippine Coast Guard protocols, no vessel sails if it would pass a possible typhoon path,” Ms. Arroyo, who is on a state visit in the United States, said in a video conference with her advisers on Monday.

The government has suspended the operation of all vessels of Sulpicio Lines, which owns the 24,000-ton ferry, which was capable of carrying 1,992 people.

Distraught relatives of the ferry’s passengers have trooped to the Manila office of Sulpicio Lines since Sunday, many of them blaming the company for the disaster. An advocacy group for crime victims, Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption, announced Monday that it was filing a class action suit against the company.

Officials of Sulpicio Lines, however, said that they tried to set in motion a rescue operation as soon as they learned that the ship had encountered problems. But “severe weather condition delayed the rescue efforts both from the sea and on air,” Carlos Go, the company’s chief executive officer, said in a statement on Monday.

“Our company also assures the families of all unfortunate passengers who perished in this incident that they will be properly compensated,“ Mr. Go added.

Coast Guard officials told reporters Monday that they cleared the ferry to leave Manila for Cebu, a city in the central Philippines, on Friday night because the initial forecast for Fengshen showed it would only hit the eastern part of the country, away from the ferry’s path.

But according to the government’s weather bureau, the typhoon changed direction on Saturday, moving toward the center of the country, running right into the ferry’s path.

Coast Guard officials said they advised the ferry to seek shelter, but that the boat’s engine failed after being battered by the strong winds and waves, thus leaving it even more vulnerable to the intensifying storm.

In a television interview, Senator Richard Gordon, who is also the chairman of the Philippine National Red Cross, quoted a survivor as he described what happened next. According to the survivor, “It was high noon but it was so dark, and there was too much rain and the waves were just too much for the ship,” Mr. Gordon said.

Sulpicio Lines is one of the country’s largest shipping companies, with 22 ships, both freight and passenger, plying the major routes of the Philippine archipelago.

Its ships and ferries have figured in many of the worst maritime disasters in the Philippines. In December 1987, an overloaded Doña Paz collided with an oil tanker off Mindoro Island, killing more than 4,300 people.

A year later, in October 1988, another Sulpicio Lines ship, Doña Marilyn, sank near Leyte province, killing 300 passengers and crew. In 1998, 200 died when the Princess of the Orient, also a Sulpicio liner, capsized near Manila during a storm.

Source: nytimes.com

How to 'look' busy at work

2008-06-21T08:35:00.013+08:00

1. Never walk down the hall without a document in your hands.
People with documents in their hands look like hardworking employees heading for important meetings. People with nothing in their hands look like they’re heading for the cafeteria. People with a newspaper in their hands look like they’re heading for the toilet. Above all, make sure you carry loads of stuff home with you at night, thus generating the false impression that you work longer hours than you do.

2. Use computers to look busy.
Any time you use a computer, it looks like "work" to the casual observer. You can send and receive personal e-mail, calculate your finances and generally have a blast without doing anything remotely related to work.

These aren’t exactly the societal benefits that the proponents of the computer revolution would like to talk about but they’re not bad either. When you get caught by your boss - and you will get caught - your best defense is to claim you’re teaching yourself to use new software, thus saving valuable training dollars.

3. Messy desk.
Top management can get away with a clean desk. For the rest of us, it looks like you’re not working hard enough. Build huge piles of documents around your workspace.
To the observer, last year’s work looks the same as today’s work; it’s volume that counts. Pile them high and wide.

If you know somebody is coming to your cubicle, bury the document you’ll need halfway down in an existing stack and rummage for it when he/she arrives.

It is not enough to pile lots of documents on the table. Put lots of books on the floor etc. Can always borrow from library. Thick computer manuals are the best.

4. Voice Mail.
Never answer your phone if you have voice mail. People don’t call you just because they want to give you something for nothing - they call because they want YOU to do work for THEM. That’s no way to live. Screen all your calls through voice mail. If somebody leaves a voice mail message for you and it sounds like impending work, respond during lunch hour when you know they’re not there - it looks like you’re hardworking and conscientious even though you’re being a devious weasel.

If you diligently employ the method of screening incoming calls and then returning calls when nobody is there, this will greatly increase the odds that the caller will give up or look for a solution that doesn’t involve you. The sweetest voice mail message you can ever hear is: "Ignore my last message. I took care of it". If your voice mailbox has a limit on the number of messages it can hold, make sure you reach that limit frequently. One way to do that is to never erase any incoming messages. If that takes too long, send yourself a few messages. Your callers will hear a recorded message that says, "Sorry, this mailbox is full" - a sure sign that you are a hardworking employee in high demand.

5. Looking Impatient and Annoyed.
According to George Costanza, one should also always try to look impatient and annoyed to give your bosses the impression that you are always busy.

6. Appear to Work Late.
Always leave the office late, especially when the boss is still around. You could read magazines and storybooks that you always wanted to read but have no time until late before leaving. Make sure you walk past the boss’ room on your way out. Send important e-mails at unearthly hours (e.g., 9:35pm, 7:05am, etc...) and during public holidays.

7. Creative Sighing for Effect.
Sigh loudly when there are many people around, giving the impression that you are very hard pressed.

8. Build Vocabulary.
Read up on some computer magazines and pick out all the jargon and new products. Use it freely when in conversation with bosses. Remember: They don’t have to understand what you say, but you sure sound impressive.

Ces Drilon and companions freed

2008-06-18T07:38:00.002+08:00

ABS-CBN senior correspondent Ces Drilon on Wednesday thanked all those who helped secure her release and two others late Tuesday night in Sulu.

"I want to thank everybody. Words are not enough to thank those who prayed for the professor, Jimmy, Angel, and myself," Drilon told reporters in Sulu before boarding a military chopper bound for Zamboanga City.

Asked how she felt, Drilon said: "Siyempre, masayang masaya (Of course, very happy)."

Senator Loren Legarda helped negotiate the release of Drilon, cameraman Jimmy Encarnacion and their guide Prof. Octavio Dinampo of the Mindanao State University late Tuesday night. Assistant camerman Angel Valderama was freed June 12.

They were all kidnapped by armed men, believed by authorities to be members of the Abu Sayyaf terror group, last June 8.

Drilon, wearing a white T-shirt and white jogging pants, looked tired and may have lost weight from their nine-day ordeal in the hinterlands of Sulu. She also had mosquito bites on her face.

"Giant ang lamok doon," she said.

Drilon and her companions were immediately brought from Sulu to Zamboanga City by military helicopter.

Philippine National Police (PNP) Chief Avelino Razon told dzMM Wednesday that Drilon and her companions underwent medical exam in Zamboanga City.

Doctors said Drilon was suffering from low blood pressure, presumably due to lack of sleep, and had many mosquito bites.

Razon said the Abu Sayyaf Group which the ABS-CBN crew tried to interview was the same group that kidnapped them.

He said Drilon was not hurt by her captors, contrary to earlier reports. He also said no ransom was paid.

Razon said the kidnappers threatened to behead their captives but this was not carried out.

He said the release of the ABS-CBN news team and their guide was due to the work of the negotiators and the "pressure of possible police-miltiary operations."

Loren helps

Legarda, a former ABS-CBN broadcaster, worked behind the scenes to help free the ABS-CBN crew and Dinampo, a Mindanao peace advocate.

"I just talked with Ces now. Ces is free, she is resting, and she will soon be in the hands of her family," Legarda told radio station DZMM early Wednesday morning.

Legarda said Drilon and her companions had to walk five hours before they were picked up by authorities and brought to the house of Indanan Mayor Alvarez Isnaji.

She said the military operations conducted by the Philippine military helped put pressure on the kidnappers to release their captives.

On Sunday, the military shelled rebel positions on Jolo but denied that the operation had anything to do with the kidnapping.

In a statement dated June 17, 11 pm, the families of the three ABS-CBN TV crew thanked Legarda, local officials of Sulu, and police and military officials for helping free the ABS-CBN team.

"There are people who gave us timely and valuable advice as we grappled with ways to secure the release of Ces, Jimmy, and Angelo. They wish to remain anonymous, but they know how eternally grateful we are to all of them," the families said, in a joint statement released by ABS-CBN corporate communications.

"Above all, the release of Ces, Jimmy, and Angelo could not have been possible without the help of Senator Loren Legarda and the cooperation of the people of Sulu and their local government namely Indanan Mayor Alvarez Isnaji and Vice Governor Lady Ann Sahidullah. We thank them and share their hope for enduring peace in Mindanao," it said.

"For their invaluable assistance, we thank Interior and Local Government Secretary Ronaldo Puno; National Police chief Avelino Razon Jr.; officials of the Police Anti-Crime and Emergency Response (PACER) led by Senior Supt. Leonardo Espina and Senior Supt. Edgardo Iglesia and the PNP Intelligence Group led by Chief Supt. Rolando Anonuevo and Supt. Winnie Quidato; the Marines based in Sulu led Maj. Gen. Juancho Sabban," it said.

Legarda said Drilon kept promising to give P15 million or P20 million to the kidnappers, but when they "realized they wouldn't get anything and when they felt the [military] pressure," they decided to release their captives.

Legarda said Drilon thought she would die in captivity and asked to help get her released. "You are my lifeline," she quoted Drilon as having told her.

Legarda said she coordinated her effort in securing Drilon's release with ABS-CBN News and Current Affairs executives Maria Ressa and Charie Villa.

She said she did not promise the young kidnappers anything, but she told them she knew their parents.

DZMM Correspondent Noel Alamar reported that the turn over was done around 11 pm in Barangay Kagay, Talipao.

They were held for nine days by an armed group believed to be Abu Sayyaf bandits in the hinterlands of Sulu island.

"Nandoon po sila sa sa bahay ni [Indanan] Mayor [Alvarez] Isnaji," Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Director General Avelino Razon Jr. said in an earlier interview over DZMM.

"Sila ay dadalhin dito sa Zamboanga [City] kung saan po ay mag-uundergo sila ng medical check up at pagkatapos po niyan ay isang debriefing para malaman po natin sa kanila directly kung anong nangyari," he added.

There were reports that the armed group kept the captives in the bandits’ lairs in Maimbung and Indanan towns.

The kidnappers initially released ABS-CBN assistant cameraman Angelo Valderama on June 12. He was released by to Jun Isnaji, son of Mayor Isnaji.

Mayor Isnaji, a Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) leader whom the kidnappers agreed to be an emissary, said the kidnappers contacted him through their mobile phones. The negotiating team was led by Sulu Governor Sakur Tan and Vice-Governor Hadja Nur Ana Sahidullah.

When asked if they are going to pursue the kidnap group, Razon said they will have to get more information from the former captives to get a better idea on the identities of the suspects.

"Atin pong titignan po matapos nating madebrief sina Ces Drilon, Jimmy Encarnacion at Prof. Dimampo para lalong pagtibayin ang ebidensya na hawak sa grupong ito," he said.

He added that the PNP will maintain it heightened alert on the area until such time the alert is no longer needed.

"Magpapatuloy po muna… at iyan ay ating a-assessin po kung kelangang manatiling ganun," he said.

Razon said the three will be brought to the Jolo provincial hospital for a medical check-up before flying to Zamboanga City for a debriefing. -- with reports from Noel Alamar, DZMM; Jay Ruiz, TV Patrol; Reuters

Sleeping with the Enemy [2008]

2008-06-17T23:41:00.009+08:00

Nope. I'm not talking of the 1991's Julia Robert's movie.. it's real life! A cat adopts a baby rat.

Pet cat's maternal instinct has made her overlook the fact that one of the youngsters she's nursing happens to be a baby rat. (see pic)

According to the Qilu Evening Post, the cat's owner Sun Shujun, of Yantai City, China, reveals that the rodent has been living along with the cat ever since the feline gave birth to four kittens last month.

And, the rat not only nurses alongside the kittens, but also plays with them, reports the Daily Telegraph.

The moggy also makes sure that the rodent does not feel left out by treating it rat exactly as she does her kittens.

What if I crossed my eyes for 10 minutes?

2008-06-16T23:33:00.007+08:00

"Don't cross your eyes -- they'll stick that way!" That's something most of us have heard from our mothers at one time or another. Can they actually stick? Let's take a look at how your eyes work.Your eyeballs are controlled by six muscles. When you look up, down, left or right, the muscles attached to your eyeballs make this movement happen. When you cross your eyes, you're simply telling your muscles to move your eyes inward together. This is something you naturally do when you look at something that's very close to your face.

So was mom's warning just a ruse so you would stop tormenting your younger brother with another one of your gross-out maneuvers? The answer to that question is yes. Although crossing your eyes for an extended period of time might cause a temporary strain on your eye muscles, no medical evidence suggests that they would stick that way. You would most likely suffer from some eye spasms or twitches, and your eyes might feel a bit fatigued, but they would certainly return to normal within an hour or so.

Source: HowStuffWorks

Welcome Home, Discovery!

2008-06-15T08:28:00.005+08:00

Seven astronauts flew space shuttle Discovery back to NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Saturday to end the latest construction mission to the International Space Station.

Commander Mark Kelly and Pilot Ken Ham were at the controls of Discovery as it glided through Florida skies to touch down on time at 11:15 a.m. EDT.

Kelly, Ham and Mission Specialists Karen Nyberg, Ron Garan, Mike Fossum and Japan's Akihiko Hoshide spent 14 days in orbit installing the Japanese Pressurized Module to the space station. The module is the largest section of the Japanese laboratory called "Kibo," or hope. Garrett Reisman also returned onboard Discovery. He spent three months living on the space station.

Talking to the news media a few hours after landing, the crew of STS-124 beamed about the flight.

"I think I have the best space shuttle crew of all-time," Kelly said.

Although there are more pieces to add on future flights, Fossum said the addition of Kibo made the station look nearly complete.

"It was a great feeling of accomplishment as we backed away (from the station)," he said.

Hoshide, one of the astronauts of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, spent time on Earth monitoring Kibo's preparation for space. Saying goodbye to it in orbit was not easy.

"When we went to close the hatch, that was a tender moment, it was kind of sad," he said.

NASA and Japanese officials hailed the flight just after landing.

"I can't think of a mission really that's been better than this one," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator of Space Operations. "We're starting to break that tie to planet Earth and get out and do what exploration is."

Discovery returned to its base in good shape, said Michael Leinbach, shuttle launch director.

"It's just a terrific day here at the Kennedy Space Center."

Astronaut Ron Garan came back with a unique spacewalking experience. Perched at one end of the station's long robotic arm, he swung far out and away from the shuttle and station to move a nitrogen tank into place.

"I got the impression I wasn't just looking at the Earth, I was looking at a planet hanging in space," he said.

After a night at Kennedy, the crew will fly to Ellington Field near NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

NASA's next shuttle flight is slated for October when the crew of STS-125 is to service the Hubble Space Telescope.

Source: NASA

PARASKAVEDEKATRIAPHOBIA and other Superstitions

2008-06-13T12:58:00.013+08:00

Today is Friday the 13th and the only Friday the 13th of the year 2008. Some say it's an unlucky day. especially to some Christians. Well for me, it just another day of the year. I don't really believe in superstitions, in fact Friday is my most favorite day of the week! You've heard of the phrase, "Thanks God it's Friday!!", right? --- because friday is the last working day of the weekend! and having parties on friday nights are common because you can have party all night without having to worry of getting up early for work.

I have attended parties that falls on Friday the 13th and it's just as exciting as any other weekend parties. --- I'll just give you tip though..: if you are superstitious, you can party on this day and go home only after 12:00 am because 12am onwards is already Saturday the 14th!, no longer an unlucky day. heheh

According to Christian tradition, Friday is unlucky because it's a day where Jesus Christ was crucified --- and number 13 is considered unlucky because Judas (the disciple who betrayed Jesus) was the 13th to sit at the table in the Last Supper, and with that, number 13 is said to be carrying a curse or something.

--And if these two 'unlucky' days were combined, comes "Friday the 13th" Uh-Oh..

Anyway for the record (and for the title) Triskaidkaphobia means fear of number 13... and Paraskavedekatriaphobia means Fear of Friday the 13th.

Well, as for me, we carry our own fate, we have our own freewill to do what we want to do, whatever a day it is, we have our own discretion to avoid sticky and nasty situations.

Scanners that see through clothing installed in US airports

2008-06-12T16:29:00.013+08:00

NEW YORK (AFP) - Security scanners which can see through passengers' clothing and reveal details of their body underneath are being installed in 10 US airports, the US Transportation Security Administration said Tuesday.

A random selection of travellers getting ready to board airplanes in Washington, New York's Kennedy, Los Angeles and other key hubs will be shut in the glass booths while a three-dimensional image is made of their body beneath their clothes.

The booths close around the passenger and emit "millimeter waves" that go through cloth to identify metal, plastics, ceramics, chemical materials and explosives, according to the TSA.

While it allows the security screeners -- looking at the images in a separate room -- to clearly see the passenger's sexual organs as well as other details of their bodies, the passenger's face is blurred, TSA said in a statement on its website.

The scan only takes seconds and is to replace the physical pat-downs of people that is currently widespread in airports. TSA began introducing the body scanners in airports in April, first in the Phoenix, Arizona terminal.

The installation is picking up this month, with machines in place or planned for airports in Washington (Reagan National and Baltimore-Washington International), Dallas, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Miami and Detroit.

But the new machines have provoked worries among passengers and rights activists.

"People have no idea how graphic the images are," Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union, told AFP.

The ACLU said in a statement that passengers expecting privacy underneath their clothing "should not be required to display highly personal details of their bodies such as evidence of mastectomies, colostomy appliances, penile implants, catheter tubes and the size of their breasts or genitals as a pre-requisite to boarding a plane."

Besides masking their faces, the TSA says on its website, the images made "will not be printed stored or transmitted." "Once the transportation security officer has viewed the image and resolved anomalies, the image is erased from the screen permanently. The officer is unable to print, export, store or transmit the image."

Lara Uselding, a TSA spokeswoman, added that passengers are not obliged to accept the new machines.

"The passengers can choose between the body imaging and the pat-down," she told AFP.

TSA foresees 30 of the machines installed across the country by the end of 2008. In Europe, Amsterdam's Schipol airport is already using the scanners.

Source: Yahoo News

ABS-CBN Official Statement (6/11/2008)

2008-06-11T17:25:00.008+08:00

ABS-CBN News journalists Ces Drilon, Jimmy Encarnacion, and Angelo Valderama have been kidnapped for ransom.

ABS-CBN News is doing everything it can to help the families of its kidnapped journalists through this harrowing ordeal.

However, ABS-CBN News will abide by its policy not to pay ransom because this would embolden kidnap for ransom groups to abduct other journalists, putting more lives at risk.

We ask the nation for your prayers and request our colleagues in media to join ABS-CBN News in condemning this unconscionable attack against journalists.

We thank everyone for the outpouring of support we have received in this most difficult time.

Source: ABS-CBN News Online

Ces Drilon dinukot ng Sayyaf

2008-06-10T06:35:00.009+08:00

Dinukot ng mga pinaghihinalaang bandidong Abu Sayyaf ang sikat na television reporter na si Ces Drilon at dalawa pang crew ng ABS-CBN Channel 2 matapos na magtungo sa Sulu, ayon sa ulat kahapon.

Batay sa report, umpisa pa noong Sabado ay hindi na makontak at hindi rin matagpuan sa Sulu si Drilon, cameraman nitong si Jimmy Encarnacion at isa pang crew.

“Ginagawa namin ang lahat para makabalik nang ligtas si Ces at dalawa niyang mga crew,” sabi kahapon ni Philippine National Police Chief Director Avelino Razon na kumumpirma sa pagkawala ng TV host.

Nabatid na sina Drilon ay nagtungo umano sa Sulu para mag-interbyu sa Abu Sayyaf o grupo ni Moro National Liberation Front Lost Command Commander Habier Malik nang harangin sila ng mga armadong lalaki sa Barangay Culasi, Maimbung, Sulu noong Sabado dakong alas-10 ng umaga. Tinanggihan umano nina Drilon ang security escorts na ibibigay sana ng tropa ng Philippine Marines sa mga ito.

Sa inisyal na report, kinumpirma naman ni Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao Police Director Chief Supt. Joel Goltiao na ang grupo umano nina Abu Sayyaf Commander Albader Parad at Gafur Jumdail ang responsable sa pagdukot kay Drilon at sa dalawang crew nito.

Sinasabing sina Drilon ay tinangay umano ng grupo nina Parad sa bahagi ng kagubatan ng Indanan, Sulu. Maliban sa MNLF Lost Command, ang Sulu ay pinamumugaran rin ng mga Abu Sayyaf na target ng opensiba ng tropa ng pamahalaan.

Ikinasa na rin ng awtoridad ang pakikipagnegosasyon sa dumukot sa mga biktima kung saan tumatayong negosyador sa binuong Crisis Management Team si Sulu Governor Sakur Tan.

Source: Philstar.com

"Lunar Concrete" May Form Buildings on the Moon

2008-06-07T22:21:00.004+08:00

A new type of "lunar concrete," made by mixing moondust and carbon nanotubes, could be used to construct buildings, solar power arrays, and monolithic telescopes on the moon.

"We could make huge telescopes on the moon relatively easily and avoid the large expense of transporting a large mirror from Earth," said Peter Chen of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the Catholic University of America.

Astronauts would only need to bring aluminum to coat the surface of the telescope.

"Since most of the materials are already there in the form of dust, you don't have to bring very much stuff with you—and that saves a ton of money." The new technique was described today at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in St. Louis.

Smelly Goo

Chen and his colleagues were working on ways of using carbon-fiber composites to create lightweight telescopes easily transportable to the moon when they decided to substitute the carbon fiber with carbon nanotubes—tiny tubes made of pure carbon.

The team wondered what would happen if they mixed carbon nanotubes with gluelike materials called epoxies and simulated moondust supplied by NASA.

"We went to the lab, whipped up a batch of this stuff, and presto, we ended up with something very gooey and very smelly," he said. After some more tinkering, the team ended up with a very strong material that had the consistency of concrete.

Looking for ways to put the material to good use, the team applied additional layers of epoxy to their lunar concrete as it was spinning.

The result was a 12-inch-wide (30-centimer-wide) bowl-shaped object that could be coated with aluminum and transformed into a mirror.

The mirror could be used to create solar arrays that collect sunlight on the moon or enormous telescopes unlike anything seen on Earth. Our method could be scaled up on the moon, using the ubiquitous lunar dust, to create giant telescope mirrors up to 50 meters [164 feet] in diameter," Chen said.
Ideal Site

Such an observatory would dwarf the 34-foot (10.4-meter) Gran Telescopio Canarias in the Canary Islands, currently the largest optical telescope in the world.

"The moon is generally considered the best site in space for astronomy because it combines the best quality of space, which is vacuum, and the ground, which is a stable platform," Chen said. With no atmosphere to absorb or blur sunlight, a colossal lunar telescope could gather light from distant exoplanets or detect traces of life in their atmospheres.

Source: National Geographics

Actor Rudy Fernandez dies

2008-06-07T07:25:00.006+08:00

Movie actor Rudy Fernandez died at his home at 6:48 a.m., Senator Jinggoy Estrada, a fellow actor, said on radio Saturday. Fernandez had battling cancer for more than two years.

His wife Lorna Tolentino and close friends were with him, Estrada said.

Fernandez had asked his wife to have him discharged from the Cardinal Santos Medical Center in San Juan City, where had been confined for a month, on Sunday, their 25th wedding anniversary.

Known as Daboy in the showbiz industry, Fernandez is married to actress Lorna Tolentino whom he has two children. He also has a son Mark Anthony with actress and now Paranaque councilor Alma Moreno.

First Filipina in West Point

2008-06-06T08:49:00.004+08:00

The Filipinos and Fil-Ams of USMA Class 2008 pose with their sponsor, at left, Col. Bryan Goda. The graduates are Daniel Asis, Anthony Bulaclac Jr., Kimberly Jung, Christy Achanzar and Mario Feliciano.

WEST POINT, New York - The US Military Academy (USMA) Class of 2008 will be memorable for Filipinos and Fil-Ams alike. They will be a tough act to follow in terms of distinction and the honors they’ve reaped in the four years they spent in West Point.

Christy Isis Achanzar is the first Filipina to join the "Long Gray Line". The Davao lass took the Philippine Military Academy entrance exams almost on a whim. She passed and while already in Baguio, tried another test, this time for the USMA. The rest, they say, is history.

Mario Mokhtarian Feliciano is the first son of a Filipino migrant worker to hurdle West Point. He was born in Iran and grew up in Kuwait where he learned to speak near-perfect English. As a child, he’d cry when told not to play with other children because he hadn't finished his homework yet, but when he did decide to part with his books, liked to play with miniature soldier figures.

Christine Limsiaco of Houston, Texas is already the second West Pointer in the family. Her elder sister Marissa, USMA Class 2005, has just finished her first tour with the 1st Cavalry Division, spending 15 months in Iraq. Asked if she had any advice for her sister, Marissa smiled and assured, "She’ll be fine, he’ll be good. We’re going to be together." Christine is deploying to Fort Hood, home of the 1st Cavalry.

Anthony Bulaclac Jr. of Victorville, California joined the Golden Key, an international honor society that recognizes scholastic achievement – members must rank in the top 15 percent of their class. He is going to the Army flight school in Fort Rucker, Alabama. Given a choice, he says, he’d like to fly Apache attack helicopters.

FULL Story: ABS-CBN News Online

21 movie & the Monty Hall Paradox

2008-06-05T18:14:00.009+08:00

The movie is about 5 MIT students(of course you know the MIT, right?) who used their math skills to calculate the odds of winning a 21 game (Blackjack) -- they proved that the game is beatable by use of excellent memory and math skills, hand signals and sharp eyes. We are talking of thousands of dollars of winnings here and weekend of Vegas nightlife! ...and they are all just students.

I'm particularly reminded in the first scenes of the movie, (where the the main actor gained reputation) in a math class where Ben Campbell, was asked to solve a 3-door puzzle.. and Ben solved it easliy. I think it's called Monty Hall paradox, (just google the term for description, it's really a lengthy discussion) i stumbled upon that puzzle years ago, and it's interesting to know this probability puzzle and how surprising the solution is. I'm gonna post that in here, if i have time (umm maybe)

Anyway, we're talking here of the movie, so, am gonna give this movie an 8/10 rating! this is based on REAL story by the way, of real MIT Blackjack Team.

A Blogger is giving away FREE iPhones!

2008-06-05T17:25:00.008+08:00

One good Samaritan is giving away free iPhones to fellow bloggers. (note the S's)

Grab the opportunity! who knows, you'll be a new iphone owner by this weekend!

[Link Edited: Promo Ended]

NASA Mission's 8th Astronaut is Buzz Lightyear

2008-06-03T14:34:00.009+08:00

To infinity, and beyond!

Buzz Lightyear, the Disney / Pixar character that made famous the movie line "To infinity, and beyond!" has been assigned a new mission on the International Space Station. The space ranger from the "Toy Story" movies is joining the crew of the STS-124 space shuttle mission.

The STS-124 space shuttle mission will deliver the next piece of the Japanese "Kibo" laboratory to the station. Kibo is about the size of a large tour bus and will be the station's largest laboratory. It will feature 10 experiment racks where astronauts will conduct microgravity research that will focus on space medicine, biology, Earth observations, material production, biotechnology and communications research. In celebration of Buzz's flight, Disney Parks partnered with NASA to create five interactive games with educational activities and special messages from Buzz Lightyear. These will be added to the NASA Kids' Club Web site throughout the mission.

Image above: From the left are astronauts Gregory E. Chamitoff, Michael E. Fossum, both STS-124 mission specialists; Kenneth T. Ham, pilot; Mark E. Kelly, commander; Karen L. Nyberg, Ronald J. Garan and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Akihiko Hoshide, all mission specialists. Credit: NASA

Lost Brazilian Tribe Revealed

2008-06-02T17:22:00.008+08:00

Dramatic images of an isolated Brazilian tribe believed never to have had contact with the outside world were published by officials Friday to draw attention to threats posed to their way of life.

The pictures, released by the Brazilian government's National Indian Foundation (FUNAI), showed alarmed natives pointing bows and arrows at the aircraft carrying photographers.

The head of FUNAI's environmental protection unit responsible for the images, Jose Carlos dos Reis Mereilles, told Brazilian newspapers the foundation had known of the existence of the tribe for years -- located in thick rainforest near the Peruvian border -- and many photos had been taken.

"This time, we decided to reveal the material to prove that there are Indians living in complete isolation, and to call attention to a serious problem that exists, which is the threat of interlopers from the Peruvian side," he told O Estado de S. Paulo.

The pictures were taken from several flights over the apparently sedentary tribe's thatched-roof village in the remote Brazilian state of Acre.

Survival International, a British group lobbying on behalf of indigenous people around the world, said on its Web site there were fears illegal logging in Peru could endanger the Brazilian tribe's habitat, by forcing displaced Peruvian tribes into contact with it.

It said there were an estimated 500 isolated Indians living on the Brazilian side of the border.

"The world needs to wake up to this, and ensure that their territory is protected in accordance with international law. Otherwise, they will soon be made extinct," Survival International director Stephen Corry said.

His group said there were more than 100 uncontacted indigenous tribes worldwide.

Source: Discovery News

Mars Water is too SALTY to support Life

2008-06-01T13:03:00.005+08:00

The debate about whether Mars once had water is pretty much over. The new quandary is if the water was suitable to support life.

As one group of scientists prepares for the first sampling of Mars' water with the Phoenix space probe, which landed on the Red Planet last Sunday, another team of researchers has nixed life's prospects there after studying salt deposits left behind on the planet's surface.

"If Martian life had to contend with the conditions we found, it certainly would have had a tough time," said Nicholas Tosca, a Harvard University geochemist and lead author of a paper on the research appearing in this week's Science.

Using data collected by the Mars rover Opportunity and other probes, Tosca and his colleagues determined that the planet's water would have been too salty for all but a handful of Earth's organisms to survive.

"If there is a window of life to survive on Mars, it's probably pushed back to when the planet was very young," Tosca told Discovery News.

As tough as survival would have been at Meridiani Planum, where Opportunity found evidence of an ancient shallow ocean, it would have been worse elsewhere, Tosca added.

Tubbataha Reef and Chocolate Hills votes Unstoppable!

2008-05-31T10:12:00.006+08:00

Our very own Tubbataha Reef and Chocolate Hills is gaining momentum and no one seems to be stopping them. From 15th and 18th place, they are now in 3rd and 5th place!

Please continue to support our national pride, let's maintain our Nature's Wonders on its current rank. Voting is up until December 31, 2008! So we have plenty of time, to vote or to help in promoting the New7Wonders live ranking.

Vote Now!

http://www.new7wonders.com/nature/en/liveranking/

Next Indiana Jones?

2008-05-28T07:50:00.010+08:00

Do you remember the skinny teenager Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) in the movie Transformers? I remember mentioning in my previous review of Transformers that this kid has potential. well.. he'll be the next Indiana Jones!

Shia LaBeouf played the role Henry Jones III, son of Indiana Jones in the latest movie, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. LaBeouf was Spielberg's first and only choice for the role. Harrison Ford (now 66) is too old to continue the sequel, so i guess LaBeouf is bound to continue the legacy of the Joneses.

In the movie, Henry III is the son of Marion Ravenwood (played by Karen Allen), a tough yet charming and smart woman, who was first seen as young tavern owner in Nepal in the first film, Raiders of the Lost Ark. whom Indy had a relationship. It was not known until the latest sequel that he had a son with her.

It's nice to see the continuity from the first movie to the latest sequel.. I'm gonna give it an 8/10 rating. But I'll stay with my feel that Raiders of the Lost Ark as my most favorite movie ever. 10/10!

Uhmm.. well... let's wait for the next sequel.

Phoenix Spacecraft lands on Mars

2008-05-26T12:12:00.005+08:00

The U.S. space agency's Phoenix Mars lander sent a signal to Earth Sunday, indicating it reached the surface of the Red Planet, NASA said on its Web site.

Touchdown came shortly before 8 p.m. EDT, the space agency reported.

Phoenix, equipped with retro-rockets to slow its descent, plunged into Mars's atmosphere 78 miles above the surface at 12,750 mph, and then was traveling about 1.7 times the speed of sound when a parachute was deployed about 7.8 miles above the surface.

The Phoenix's heat shield, which had to withstand temperatures of about 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit during entry, was jettisoned about 15 seconds after the chute opened, NASA said.

Preparations were made to arrange for three Mars orbiting satellites to be in the right place on May 25, 2008, to observe Phoenix as it entered the atmosphere and to monitor it up to one minute after landing. This information will allow for better design for future landers.[15] The projected landing area was an ellipse 100 km by 20 km covering terrain which has been informally named "Green Valley"[16] and contains the largest concentration of water ice outside of the poles.

Phoenix entered the Martian atmosphere at nearly 13,000 miles per hour, and within 7 minutes had to be able to decrease its speed to 5 miles an hour before touching down on the surface. Confirmation of atmospheric entry was received at 4:46 pm PDT (23:46 UTC). Radio signals received at 4:53:44 p.m. PDT confirmed that Phoenix had survived its difficult descent and landed 15 minutes earlier, thus completing a 422 million mile flight from Earth. Radio signals, traveling at the speed of light, took a little over 15 minutes to reach Earth from Mars at the time of Phoenix's landing. The light travel time varies as Earth and Mars change their relative positions during their respective solar orbits. The landing was made on a flat surface, with the lander reporting only 0.25 degree of tilt. Just prior to landing, the craft performed a successful reorientation using its thrusters to allow the solar panels to deploy along an east-west axis to maximize power generation.

Only five of 13 previous attempted Mars landings were successful.

The first images from the Phoenix Lander:

Tubbataha Reef & Chocolate Hills among the Top 7

2008-05-26T05:47:00.006+08:00

As of May 25, 2008, our very own Tubbataha Reef in Palawan, and Chocolate Hills in Bohol is now in the sixth and seventh place in New Seven Wonders of Nature Live Ranking. The 10th place is also from the Philippines: Puerto Princesa Subterranean River.

Please vote now the nominees from the Philippines.

http://www.new7wonders.com/nature/en/liveranking/

Tubbataha Reef

Chocolate Hills

Puerto Princesa Subterranean River

10-year old Fil-Am World Champion

2008-05-22T19:44:00.007+08:00

A Filipino-American boy became this year’s World Sport Stacking champion by clocking a record of 1.86 seconds for the Individual 3-3-3 Stack Division.

Coming all the way this year from Long Meadow Massachusetts was ten year old Steven Purugganan. He came this year after only one and a half years of sport stacking and dominated the tournament taking home many trophies and medals including 1st Place All Around Champion.

Footage from the 2008 WSSA World Sport Stacking Championships. (Video)

Phoenix Mission to land on Mars (May 25)

2008-05-21T21:22:00.013+08:00

Phoenix is scheduled to touch down on the northern icy plains of Mars on May 25. NASA TV will cover landing events. Confirmation of the landing could come as early as 7:53 p.m. EDT (4:53 p.m. PDT).

After a journey of 10-months and more than 400 million miles, Phoenix arrives at the Red Planet just before 8 p.m. EDT this Sunday, beginning its study of water and possible conditions for life in the Martian arctic.

Phoenix Mission:
Phoenix is a robotic spacecraft on a space exploration mission to Mars under the Mars Scout Program. The scientists conducting the mission will use instruments aboard the Phoenix lander to search for environments suitable for microbial life on Mars, and to research the history of water there. Phoenix launched successfully on August 4, 2007, and is scheduled to land on Mars on May 25, 2008. The multi-agency program is headed by the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, under the direction of NASA. The program is a partnership of universities in the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom, NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, and the aerospace industry. Phoenix is planned to land in the planet's water-ice-rich northern polar region and, if this is successful, will use its robotic arm to dig into the Arctic terrain

Launch
Phoenix launched on 4 August 2007, at 5:26:34 am EDT (09:26:34 UTC) on a Delta 7925 launch vehicle from Pad 17-A of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The launch was nominal with no significant anomalies. Mars Phoenix Lander was placed on a trajectory of such precision that its first trajectory course correction burn, performed on 10 August 2007 at 7:30 am EDT (11:30 UTC), was only 18 m/s. The launch took place during a launch window extending from 3 August to 24 August 2007. Due to the small launch window the rescheduled launch of the Dawn mission (originally planned for 7 July) had to stand down and was launched after Phoenix in September. The Delta 7925 was chosen due to its successful launch history, which includes launches of the Spirit and Opportunity Mars Exploration Rovers in 2003 and Mars Pathfinder in 1996.

New Inventions (Weird)

2008-05-19T21:10:00.006+08:00

Mic Sponge - Perfect for bathroom singers

Arm Camera - You don't have to extend your arms with this one

Weight Conscious Belt - Keeps you updated with your waist size

Space Efficient Shoe Box

and this is the coolest, romantic (but weird) new invention ever!

The Double Umbrella

Animal Partnership (in Crime)

2008-05-15T20:09:00.005+08:00

Honeyguide (aka Indicator Bird) loves honey, beeswax and waxworms.. which can be found in a beehive---BUT the bird had no way in getting into the beehive without being mobbed by swarm of bees and getting stung to death.

and.....

Honey Badger (aka Ratel, named as most fearless animal by Guinness World Records) have such great appetite for honey and beeswax, which can be found in beehives---BUT, it is very difficult to find beehives and it requires great effort and risks being eaten too by intruding unknown territories...

----------
HOWEVER, nature has ways for these two entirely different creatures to forge into alliance...

The two different species has symbiotic relationship to get their common objective.. the Indicator bird is in the one in charge of finding beehives, which is easy to do because of her flying ability,..

as soon as it finds a target, this bird will then guide the Badger to the site---the badger is now in charge of getting the beeswax and honey which is easy to do because of its strong claws and protected by thick fur and skin from bee's sting...

then, after getting what they want, the two will share the loot! Cool!

VIDEO:

Shooting Stars? Think Again.

2008-05-15T19:55:00.003+08:00

Who says that Rocket Scientists are boring?

An Astronaut explaining to university students about everyday life in space.

About Pinoy Folks

2008-05-15T17:44:00.003+08:00

- As the name of this blog says, is an online community in which Filipinos, around world converge and hang out online to exchange ideas, share experiences in our daily lives, read latest news of the Philippines, about Showbiz, Politics, etc.. and as what a real 'Pinoy Tambayan' we can play online games, chat, send greetings, and talk here about anything under the sun.

Our way of linking Pinoys all over the world!