The Daily Bluster

Sometimes, we find something in the internet that makes us smile, something that touches us, and makes us feel happy, even for a brief and fleeting moment. Whoever this old man is, his account of his life throughout the years, told in rage comic, made me shed a few manly tears. And as this is November , he reminds of my own father.  Click here for a larger image: 86 years old...

Whales, like many mammals, are social animals. Some travel in groups, called “pods,” while some travel alone. Some whale species, like the blue whale and the humpback, are also known to communicate with each other by making vocalizations, called “ whale songs .” Although researchers have yet to fully understand the hows and whys of whale songs, they do notice that whales’ karaoke night frequently happens during mating seasons, which suggests that whales use some sort of cetaceous pickup lines—or perhaps “love songs,” that invite the females to mate. Their songs are heard by other whales for thousands of kilometers. These whales either sing alone, or in a group. They may sing together, in tune with one another. (A choir made up of humpbacks is awesome. I am picturing them in my head right now—with their mouths open, of course.) Some researchers even suggest that whales recognize each other by the song they are singing, even those coming from a different pod. Of course, differen...

For someone who was in the Top Ten Rock Stars Most Likely To Die for ten straight years, Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones shows remarkable resilience, considering his rock-star lifestyle. The music magazine New Musical Express (NME) put Keith Richards (or “Keef”) on this list way back in 1973. They finally removed his name when, after ten years, the legendary Rolling Stones guitarist showed no signs of slowing down, either in his music, or in his work-hard-live-hard way of life. 1973 is forty years ago; it’s 2013, and he’s still about, and had just finished a 50 th year anniversary (!) tour with his band, The Rolling Stones—arguably the greatest rock and roll band there is today. Keith Richards may be among rock and roll’s greatest guitarists, and the undisputed King of the Guitar Riffs, but he (and the rest of his band) did not start out at the top. In his memoir Life (written in collaboration with James Fox, published 2010), Keith Richards recounts that he starte...

Many people have been told that evolution is just a theory, and that it is, at most, a hypothesis, or even a guess. A scientific theory, however, is different from the theory the general public is familiar with. Many of us equates theory with hypothesis, which is erroneous. To a scientist, a theory is an explanation of a phenomenon. A scientific law , on the other hand, is a description of a phenomenon, and can be proven by a mathematical equation. To illustrate: Newton’s law of gravity describes how gravity works, which basically means that things fall down if you let go of them. His theory of gravity , on the other hand, is an attempt to explain why this happens (although modern scientists accept Einstein’s Theory of Relativity as a better explanation of gravity). Newton’s and Einstein’s theories will always remain theories, because they are explanations , and different from a law , which describes  things.  A scientific theory therefore does not g...

This question is a favourite among creationists; they often ask this to dismiss the Theory of Evolution. Although this probably dates back from the time of Charles Darwin, many creationists, when engaged in a discussion ( especially in an online discussion), act as if they had just discovered this particular zinger. They believe this is irrefutable, an argument that would surely reduce those smug, know-it-all evolutionists into blubbering idiots trapped in an existentialist despair. If you see this question in an Internet discussion board, this is usually followed by “HAHAHA,” which tends to make the impression that creationists are raving lunatics. This caricature of Charles Darwin with the body of an ape was used since the late 1800s to ridicule him and his ideas about evolution To be fair though, there are people out there who ask this question out of genuine curiosity, maybe because they were told (and taught) all sorts of misinformation and fed lies, deliberately or inad...

"Well meaning adults can easily destroy a child's love of reading - do not discourage children from reading because you feel they're reading the wrong thing. There is no such thing as the wrong thing to be reading and no bad fiction for kids."  - Neil Gaiman (The following is Neil Gaiman's speech during the The Reading Agency's annual lecture held on October 14, 2013 ) It's important for people to tell you what side they are on and why, and whether they might be biased. A declaration of members' interests, of a sort. So, I am going to be talking to you about reading. I'm going to tell you that  libraries   are important. I'm going to suggest that reading  fiction , that reading for pleasure, is one of the most important things one can do. I'm going to make an impassioned plea for people to understand what libraries and librarians are, and to preserve both of these things. And I am biased, obviously and enormously: I'm an autho...

So long, Mr. White. It is a very strange thing, when the defeat of a “monster” like Walter White—meth king, murderer, child-poisoner, destroyer of lives—evokes regret in us, the viewers. We feel sorry that his “empire,” his life, his world as he knows it, goes up in wisps of smoke like burned-off crystal meth on a strip of aluminum foil. It’s to the credit of everybody involved in the production of the TV show Breaking Bad —the writers, production staff, directors, show creator Vince Gilligan, and of course the actors—that this show can make us empathize with a man like Mr. White (played by Bryan Cranston, who was ridiculously, stupendously good in portraying the rise of timid, beaten-by-life middle-aged high school teacher into “Heisenberg,” the brilliant, efficient, resourceful, brutal meth kingpin, and his descent into his own purgatory—eschewed by his own family, hunted by the whole world, hiding, planning his own brand of "redemption," desperate for one final de...

(Continuation) It turns out that these “rice farmers” weren't actually what they say they were ; they were actually misguided activists who moronically believe that food crops that carry the tag “GM” (genetically modified) are automatically bad. The rice plants that were destroyed were “endowed with a gene from cornand another from a bacterium, making it the only variety in existence toproduce beta carotene, the source of vitamin A. Its developers call it “Golden Rice. ” If made available to people, a cup of this rice variety would provide half an adult’s daily recommended intake of Vitamin A. Vitamin A deficiency causes the death of millions of people around the world, and could also cause blindness among children. The vandals were members of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), AnakPawis Party list, and MASIPAG, organizations that ironically style themselves as pro-farmer and pro-poor. They were there to stage a protest versus GMOs, a protest that quickly tu...

Like most Asians, Filipinos love to eat rice. They eat rice at almost every meal. It’s their staple food, their go-to food, the ultimate comfort food. No Pinoy meal is complete without it. Just as Eskimos have many words for snow, Filipinos also have several words that refer to (no, not snow) rice —they have about seven. There’s kanin , which means cooked rice; palay —unhusked rice; bigas —husked, uncooked rice; bahaw —leftover kanin ; tutong —the burnt part of kanin ; binlid — bigas that got crushed during the milling process; in some Visayan languages in the country's south, there’s even a term for the unhusked rice ( palay ) that got accidentally mixed with bigas : pasi . They eat rice with ulam , which many Filipinos think is viand in the English language (it’s not). An ulam is any dish, usually protein, eaten in tandem with rice--it makes scarfing down platefuls of hot, steaming  kanin more enjoyable. The ulam is usually strong-tasting ones like the adobo, a dish so...

People Worship Weeping Tree In California, Tears Are Actually Insect Excrement A growing number of Catholics in Fresno, California believe that a tree outside St. John’s Cathedral is weeping God’s tears. “When you say ‘glory be to God in Jesus’ name’ the tree starts throwing out more water,” parishioner Maria Ybarra told  KGPE-TV . Ybarra was the first person to feel the drops of liquid, which began falling from the Crape Myrtle tree on Wednesday. As news spread, more and more people gathered under the tree to pray. “I said my prayer and asked the Lord to give me a miracle cause I’m really, really sick,” Rosemarie Navarro said. Continue reading at this site . Aphides, the insect whose poop is mistaken for Holy Water. If you look closely, you'll notice the little bugger is laughing his ass off. Here is another account:  California Parishioners Believe Tree Is Weeping God's Tears; Arborist Says It's Just Bug Excrement This reminds me of a recent episode of ...