The Daily Bluster

The Philippines has more than its fair share of disasters, and not because the country is particularly cursed or anything, but because the entire archipelago—purportedly composed of 7,100 islands—lies on a region in the Pacific Ocean called the “Ring of Fire” (actually, the area is shaped more like a horseshoe, although to be fair, “The Horseshoe of Fire” doesn’t have the same impact as the “Ring of Fire”). About 40,000 kilometers long, the “ring” runs from the southern tip of South America, up along the coast of North America, across the Bering Strait, down through Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia (the Ring of Fire’s western edge extends into the Indian Ocean), and to New Zealand.  The “Fire” part of the Ring of Fire is because a string of 452 volcanoes dot this line, like a malevolent game of connect-the-dots. The regions along this line experience volcanic eruptions and periodic earthquakes—majority of them small, hardly-felt tremors, and the few devastating ones that...

"If you want to do something evil, put it in something boring."- John Oliver John Oliver, host of the HBO comedy show “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” made one of the most brilliant rants in the history of internet. Not only was it funny and made people laugh, but it also made them outraged about something a great majority are clueless and apathetic about: net neutrality .  The rant was directed against the US Federal Communications Commission’s proposed net neutrality regulations , which was deemed so egregious it forced activists and corporations to be on the same side. The FCC, however, invited the public to post their comments on their website. And this made Mr. Oliver appeal directly to the trolls and lurkers and other internet commenters out there to “seize their moment” and let their outrage show using their most potent weapon: the keyboard.     "For once in your life, we need you to channel that anger, that badly spelled bile that you n...

I was reading  this article  about a so-called “healing priest” and it struck me that even in the 21 st  century, people are still gullible enough to trust “faith healers.” There are a lot of reasons for this (poverty and miseducation among them), but  in this day and age ,  you’d think that people  would think twice about trusting those who claim to heal all kinds of diseases through prayers and faith alone. Mind you, the “healers” would make it clear that their healing powers did not come from them, but from a “higher power.” These mysterious power source would range from the Baby Jesus (or the adult one), “Mama Mary,” from a magical dwarf (I’m not kidding), a mysterious hermit, or even from an old lady who claims to be a reincarnation of Jesus. Filipinos lap these up. Even today, there are many p eople in the country's rural areas that still believe in  anting-anting  (amulets). It’s not a coincidence that people in areas that are mired in...

Authors have different writing styles. To somebody who is halfway literate, Hemingway’s works are as different from Dan Brown’s as Mozart’s music is from Kenny G’s. It’s not surprising then that different authors have different writing advice. Compare the different advice given by these three great authors: Elmore Leonard Never open a book with weather. If it’s only to create atmosphere, and not a character’s reaction to the weather, you don’t want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want. Avoid prologues. They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in nonfiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want. There is a prologue in John Steinbeck’s  Sweet ...

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...