The Daily Bluster

(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...