The Daily Bluster

I was at a mall about a month ago when I saw an electronics store and I thought of buying a Kindle book light.  I entered the store and approached a saleslady and asked for one. What’s a Kindle, she asked, with a blank stare. I must have looked sufficiently puzzled at her “lack of familiarity” with said device, because she turned towards the other saleslady and repeated the question to her. She didn’t know what a Kindle was, either. A Kindle is an e-book reading device from Amazon that uses e-ink technology , I might have said, but I didn’t. I wasn’t particularly interested in informing them of various gadgets that stores such as theirs might have an interest in. I turned around and left the store, disgusted. Amazon introduced the first Kindle in 2007; its latest incarnation, the Kindle 3, was released last year. Kindle is a bestseller for Amazon, and is the most popular e-book reader out there. No mass market appeal for Kindle in this part of the world, though; but...

Inanna, “The Queen of Heaven,” is a goddess of Sumerian origin: goddess of warfare, fertility, and sexual love. The Akkadians called her Ishtar , a name from which Easter was derived. Yes, the Christian holiday. Inanna is the most popular and important female deity in ancient Mesopotamia. She is also known as a healer, life giver, composer of songs, and possessing a wide range of emotions—passionate, ambitious, jealous, grieving, joyful, timid, and generous. In later cultures, she went by different names: Astarte, Isis, Aphrodite—she was the Goddess. She is the original femme fatale , the embodiment of the woman every man dreams about; the female that devours men, the female that attracts/scares men; the virgin harlot. Every man knows at least one. The goddess makes an appearance in Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods.”  Throughout Sumer’s existence, her powers and deeds were glorified and extolled in myth, epic, and hymn. No one dared oppose her, neither god nor man. She...

Between the years 1405 and 1433, a Chinese admiral named Zheng He, the "Admiral of the Western Seas," led seven expeditions from China; with him was a fleet with ships so numerous the world would not see anything like it until the 20 th century.  Emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty, who ordered the construction of the ships, had this idea that building such immense fleet and unleashing them to the 15 th century world would establish Chinese presence, impose the empire’s control over trade among nations in the Indian Ocean, and collect tribute from the “barbarians from beyond the seas”.  Well, the fleet did that, but the tribute-collecting was but for a short time, and on countries that were not exactly known for their naval power—at least not during that point in history. The fleet was undeniably huge, and could have posed as a serious threat to any country in the world, or even defeated any navy Europe could throw at it. The Chinese armada included 300 ships ...

Located in a large limestone formation 35 meters above sea level in Lipuun Point in Quezon, Palawan, the Tabon Caves complex is one of the most important and well-known archaeological sites not only in the country but in the whole Southeast Asia as well. Around 200 smaller caves make up the Tabon Caves complex. The main cave, called the Tabon Cave (named after a bird that digs its nest into the ground), has a mouth that measures 16 meters wide and 8 meters high. It measures nearly 48 meters long.  H. Otley Beyer was the first to note the value of Palawan in the search for prehistoric humans in the country. Following this, a team from the National Museum of the Philippines, led by Dr. Robert Fox, discovered and explored hundreds of caves and rock shelters in the province between 1962 and 1966. Found in the caves were many artifacts, including animal and fossilized human remains that prove the existence of prehistoric life in the archipelago. The fossils in the caves are p...

The Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) closed down on Tuesday the main gallery where the controversial "Kulo" art exhibit is on display. In a statement, the CCP said threats to persons and property influenced the management's decision to close down the gallery. One of the artworks displayed in the gallery — artist Mideo Cruz's piece, a mixed-media collage called "Poleteismo" — was criticized as "blasphemous" and then vandalized last week. Read more here . Unbelievable. I am not a fan of this particular piece of art (and I am not even aware of this Mideo Cruz fellow’s existence prior to this), but my objection to this man’s “art” is purely aesthetic, and not because I think the “artwork” is “blasphemous.”  If they don’t like it, why pay attention to it? Why exert such efforts to draw attention to it? That artwork has been in existence since 2002, and was exhibited all over the frigging place before being brought to the CCP...

I have always loved Bonnie Raitt. I first saw her on the concert movie “No Nukes,” which was one of the first movies I saw as a kid. I was still in shorts at that time. I saw her perform “Angel from Montgomery” and man I was lost. I wanted badly to have the album of the concert, so I saved up on my allowance, and I think it took me about a week to finally come up with enough to buy me a cassette tape of that concert. Well, it turned out “No Nukes” was on two volumes (this was before the DVD era), so I still came up short. Finally I got enough money and a happier kid in Sampaloc, Manila you couldn’t find. Then high school and college and other things came along and I sort of forgot about Bonnie. Well, not entirely. Anyway, a month ago I got a John Lee Hooker album (another boyhood favorite; yes, I was already a strange banana even as a kid, surprise) and I was listening and there was John Lee Hooker jamming with Bonnie Raitt.  They were doing “ I'm in the Mood ,” and holy c...