One Youth Headshot Clinic (Open Shoot)

For all Filipino Youth! You are invited to attend the Headshot Clinic One Youth shoot on February 27 & 28, 2009, Friday and Saturday, at Capones Bar in A.Venue Mall Makati Avenue.Open to all Filipino Youth. This is part of the very successful Headshot Clinic series of visionary photographer, Niccolo Cosme. Just go to the venue from 2:00 PM to 7:00 PM on Friday and Saturday and register for your

The age old question

It's a common stereotype that Canadians like to talk about the weather. This is true. Partially.

What the proponents of that stereotype are forgetting is yet another bit of our Canadianicity - we are a very polite people. So polite, that when we ask "how's the weather eh?" and get a long-winded response about barometric pressure, high-pressure fronts, and how you call this cold? i was in moose jaw back in '85 without a parka, now that was cold!, we politely nod along and even tell some weather stories of our own, too timid to break off the conversation by explaining that all we really wanted to ask is "do I need a jacket?".

Luckily, the Internet - in its ever-helpful and omnipotent way - has provided us with an alternative to these conversations. Do I Need A Jacket? will tell you not only whether you need a jacket, but *why* you do or do not need a jacket. I've linked to the Hamilton page because, well, that's the closest I could get.

I'll admit that I was originally expecting a straight-out Is xkcd shitty today?/Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the Earth? clone, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that this is no longer the case.

--Ryan

Help Spread the Charity Virus - Be A "Kaibigan ng PCSO" Volunteer!

The Philippine Charity Sweeptakes Office (PCSO) started the celebration of it's 75th year anniversary last February 20, 2009 with the theme "Care, Share & Win, Tulong mo na, Suwerte mo pa (Help & Get Lucky)." The celebration's main event is the night concert entitled "Spread the Chairty Virus" where they launched the "Kaibigan Ng PCSO(Friend of PCSO)" program where sourcing of volunteer

MWC you later

MWC 2009 was the first since the launch of Samsung Mobile Innovator. And for us, apart from shirt pockets torn from the weight of too many businesses cards, phones and stand goodies, it was an overwhelming success.

We were at the event to announce the launch of our Windows Mobile and Java forums. The timing could not have been better as cross-platform development is definitely a hot topic.

Multiple platforms are here to stay and it's our job to make it as easy as possible to target Samsung devices while maximising the rich features and APIs specific to each platform and device. Sanj Matharu, my colleague in the Global Relations area covered this while participating in Monday's App Garage panel sessions and it’s definitely something we’ll be addressing on Mobile Innovator in the coming months.

Apart from the addition of two new platforms (be sure to check the Mobile Innovator site this Friday), Samsung announced the Omnia HD – a device which will really raise the bar on what consumers can expect in a phone – and Samsung’s first Symbian-powered touch device. It was great to see this phone being put through its paces running some of our Core Partner’s latest offerings including games from EA (Need for Speed) and Digital Legends (Kroll) and demonstrations from Imagination whose Open GLeS technology gives the Omnia HD graphics capabilities never before seen on a mobile device. Expect to see all the resources and tools you’ll need to develop on this infotainment powerhouse available on Mobile Innovator shortly.

At the Samsung pavilion we were located alongside Samsung’s software solutions. There were two offerings which really stuck in my mind in terms of how they might benefit Mobile Innovator members.

The first was a Widget SDK which considering how crucial this technology is becoming to the mobile UI experience, will be a welcome addition to any developer’s toolkit.

The second was a cross-platform PC studio, meaning device users can use it as a common interface between their PC and ANY Samsung mobile device. I had a quick play and this is definitely a giant leap forward from the current drag ‘n’ drop interface - very elegant and simple to use.

We'll have more about these soon...

The biggest mistake of my life

Backstory: Back at the beginning of January, a few minutes of one of my classes was devoted to showing the Britney Spears 'Womanizer' video. Arguments that maybe the best use of the thousands of dollars I pay in tuition being used to watch music videos aside, this was the first time I had ever heard the song (which had apparently been popular for some time).

Being the music elitist that I am, I took a perverse sense of pride in that - and a much greater pride in the fact that while my friends couldn't get the song out of their heads for days, I'd forgotten it within minutes.

Then, surfing around the Internet last night, I stumble across a link to Lily Allen covering 'Womanizer'. Through some combination of boredom, curiosity, and masochism, I clicked the link.

Bad move. I haven't been able to get it out of my head since, no matter how--WOMANIZER WOMANIZER YOU'RE A WOMANIZER WOMANIZER WOMANIZER AAAAAAH WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME YOU STUPID POP SONG?!?!?!?!?

*ahem*

On a completely unrelated note, it's always a bit of a jolt to see your (extended) family's story told in a newspaper.

I'm going to go listen to some other music now. Maybe that'll help.

--Ryan

MWC Apps Garage

So here we were at Mobile World Congress and the Apps Garage and the stage fior the panel sessions. the first session will have involvement from Sanj in the Samsung Mobile Innovator team to discuss cross platform development. This is especially relevant as we just announced forums for Windows Mobile and Java due for launch it the end of the month. Ok the stage looks empty at the moment but that's because us hard working souls in the Samsung Mobile Innovator team were here FIRST. :) They're expecting a lot of people here so fingers crossed...

The 81st Academy Awards Concluded - Oscars 2009 List of Winners

The 81st Academy Awards (Oscars 2009) has just been concluded and Slumdog Millionaire was the run away winner with eight Oscar trophies including the much coveted Best Picture award for producer Christian Colson and the Best Director award for Danny Boyle. The other six awards bagged by Slumdog Millionaire include Best Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Film Editing, Original Score, Original

Mirror, mirror

At the end of high school, I had a decision to make - what next?

On the one hand, I could go to Laurier Brantford. Yes, the campus is unbelievably small, but that just means it's easier for me to stand out! And the journalism program is basically brand new, so it's not like I'll be stuck with some old instructors who've been teaching the same thing for forty years (I'm not even sure I'd be able to successfully change a typewriter ribbon!). Plus I'll know somebody there next year - well, not next year if you think of my first year as next year, but if you think of it as this year. And everybody seems nice.

Alternatively, I could go to Carleton. There are some problems with this option. I won't know anybody in the area, and I'll be five hours away from home. I won't actually be in journalism, but I could take some journalism courses and maybe transfer into it later on. There's a good chance I'll be just another student. At the same time, I'll be in a bigger city, at an established school - both of which should mean more opportunities.

(It wasn't really much of a choice, but bear with me, the story doesn't work otherwise).

As most of you know, I picked the first road. And today, Sunday, February 22nd, 2009, I can finally say without a doubt that this was most definitely the right choice.

For I have discovered my archnemesis, and he is me. And apparently I work at Carleton (scroll down to the bottom of the page).

First things first, the picture (above). Like me, he is tall, of a Spartanesque height. However, his face is nothing like mine - which is good. It means I can eliminate my theory about me going to Carleton, getting mixed up with a sinister-yet-well-intentioned group of physics kids, building a time machine, coming back to 2009, and taking a job in Student Affairs to stop now-me from building the time machine. Unless I got facial reconstruction surgery so people wouldn't recognize me. But that seems unlikely.

Now onto his history. "I joined the federal public service in 2000". Hmm. One of the non-journalistic roads I've considered for my career, and I'd have to spend most of it battling a case of mistaken identity.

"I was involved in several high profile and dynamic issues". YEAH WELL IF THEY WERE SO HIGH-PROFILE HOW COME I'VE NEVER HEARD OF YOU?

"The environment at Carleton, and my role as Director, Student Affairs, allows me to work closely with the student population, and the relatively small campus community enables you to facilitate change quickly." - no witty rejoinder here, I just find it funny that Ryan Flanagan is calling Carleton a small campus after Ryan Flanagan said the exact opposite above.

"I am intent on building a real estate empire" - I don't even know what to think about this one. I own a house and rent most of it out, but that's for tax (me rather than my parents) and school (any of us at all) purposes only. I can't say I have the drive to expand, nor would I phrase it in such a Napoleonistic way.

"I bought my first property in 2007." - ...crap.

"In addition to these activities, I like to write creatively (when I have time!) and I'm a political news junkie." - ...double crap.

"Finally, I try to engage in physical activity as much as I can." - ...triple crap. Not because it hits close to home, but because Ryan Flanagan could kick my ass.

--Ryan

PERYA : A Whimsical Benefit Fashion Gala

The PERYA cosplay event will happen on March 6, 2009, 6:30 pm onwards at A. Venue Hall in Makati. Registration and judging at the cosplay photo wall booth will start at 6:30 upto 8:30 pm only.Admission is free to all cosplay contest participants. For the online registration and mechanics of the contest. visit http://www.toyconph.com/peryaAbout the EventF*ART Fashion Art productions together with

My Favorite Spa Treatment at BlueWater Day Spa

A week ago, Digital Manila won in an online contest by Blue Water Day Spa at TechFilipino .com. Together with more than 20 other winners, we were toured around the Blue Water Day Spa Greenhills branch and treated to an hour-and-a-half of foot, back and neck massage. This is while we were watching the "Kung Fu Panda" BlueRay movie in their Spa Theater. The Spa theater is one of the newest

Mensa Day @ The Fort

Mensa Philippines invites you to Mensa Day ”MD2.22" tomorrow, February 22, 2009(Sunday) at Fully Booked, Bonifacio High Street in The Fort.With the theme “Celebrate Learning, Celebrate Life,” this is a whole day public event filled with learning and activities. Talks include topics on entrepreneurship by GoNegosyo, technopreneurship, and blogging, among others. Sequence of talks and seminars

Help me out here

Regarding Obama's surprise jaunt to the Byward Market on his Ottawa trip, I'm sure people are left with a wide variety of thoughts, most of which I've outlined below. I just can't figure out which ones are too cynical, and which ones aren't cynical enough.

"Good for Obama, getting out and meeting some ordinary Canadians."
"Good for Obama, getting out and meeting some ordinary Canadians, especially because there was nothing like that on the schedule."
"That's probably why he did it, because there wasn't anything like it on the schedule and he wanted to meet people."
"Or he wanted people to meet him."
"He only did it because he wanted to seem folksy and a man of the people."
"I wonder if it was on a secret schedule all along and they just didn't release it to the public to make Obama look good."
"I wonder if it was Harper's call to keep Obama out of the public eye so he (Harper) wouldn't be upstaged by a foreign leader."
"If that's the case, I wonder if Obama chose to do it just to get back at Harper."
"If Harper pulled a similar stunt in Washington, I wonder if anybody would know who he was."
"I want to go through all the neighbourhood backyards and steal their lumber."

--Ryan

You better watch out, you better not cry

You better not pout; I'm telling you why
The President is coming to town

Tomorrow, Barack Obama makes his first foreign visit as President of the United States - and he's following a loose tradition by making that visit to Canada.

However, this will not be his first major international test. For last night, the Superman of American politics had to survive a ten-minute interview with Peter Mansbridge.

The interview was surprisingly good. Like most Canadian politicians, Obama did whatever possible to avoid giving specific answers or do anything that didn't seem like a positive for Canada. Unlike most Canadian politicians, Obama actually answered the questions that were asked (the only time I noticed him not doing this was the first question on Afghanistan, and Mansbridge caught that one too).

At the end of the interview, Obama claims that he will eventually get to a hockey game. This worries me - Harper's from Toronto by way of Calgary, and residing in Ottawa. Ignatieff - who will be PM before long - is the same thing minus the Calgary. Nobody can resist becoming a hockey fan if their first game is in Montreal. The odds seem slim, so it'll take a grassroots effort. Habs fans, heed this call!

But back to tomorrow (paradoxical as that may be).

Live coverage on the major Canadian news networks begins at 10 AM, even though Obama's arrival is assumed to be somewhere around 11:30. I was originally planning on watching (and liveblogging) all the coverage, but this is now impractical for various reasons.

Not the least of those reasons is that we really won't see too much. The Prime Minister's Office has been doing whatever they can to scuttle media availability - as far as I understand it, a press conference might be the only glimpse we get of the President.

The visit is only five hours long - Obama gets off his plane and meets the Governor-General, Obama and Harper meet with their respective staffs present, a working lunch, Obama and Harper meet without their respective staffs present, the press conference, Obama and Michael Ignatieff meet at the airport, jilted lover Jack Layton mopes at home.

In some respects, this is a good thing. The press will try to make a lot of the relationship between the two leaders - Chretien and Bush weren't as friendly as, say, Reagan and Mulroney, who probably had a little too much to drink before deciding to sing When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.

I mean, could you imagine the Harperbot, fueled with alcohol and set to "Obama love-in"? "I want to kiss you. I couldn't care less about the economy strugg-a-ling."

I wouldn't expect much substantive work to be done at this meeting. The biggest question on my mind is if CNN knows more about our country now than they did when the Air France plane slid off the runway a few years ago, and one of Wolf Blitzer's questions was "is Toronto a safe place to land?".

Either way, it's Obama in Ottawa. Obamawa, if you will.

--Ryan

A Little Bird Told Me

Ryan recently got a Twitter account... I tried it once nearly a year ago, and decided I didn't like it, so I deleted it. While I wait for the 30-day period (can you believe that?) for them to reactivate my account, I thought I'd browse through it with their search.twitter.com, and see what people are up to.

What are people today praying for? The most entertaining of the most recent events include:

• Praying my husband's emergency surgery goes well today.
  
• We had a threesome..I'm praying my husband is the dad.
  
• praying I'll raise the $8500 I need to intern in napoli this summer
  
• praying

Admittedly, I skipped a few. It seems that a lot of people pray for the sick, and two people had their status set just to "praying". I was rather surprised that I didn't see a lot of praying for selfish things. (I mean, those middle two are the closest, but they don't seem too bad. No comment on that threesome, though.)

I suppose we can also see people's opinions on current issues through this search. Unfortunately, current technology issues has a thousand people quoting the same headlines. Let's find out what people think of something slightly outdated: Mad Cow.

• Thousands at risk of human form of mad cow disease after haemophiliac's death
  
• UK first evidence of hemophiliac with mad cow
  
• Feeling guilty about feeling relieved that I can't give blood. Apparently I'm still a CJD risk because I lived in the UK during mad cow.

Oh. I didn't know that was still so current. Yikes.

I might actually use this instead of blogsearch.google.com for my news!

While picking that exciting issue, I was trying to phrase a search to find out the Coke vs. Pepsi question. Although I didn't find out, I did learn that more Twitter users tend to drink Diet Coke daily than Coke. (At least, they did today!) Neat!

Also, perhaps Hillary Duff was handing out Diet Coke in Times Square today. Or maybe I read that wrong. Whee!

--

D. Phillips

Thoughts from the infirmiry

I spent most of Saturday on a couch, in front of a TV, full of cold medicine (me, not the couch). I jumbled down a few thoughts over the course of the day, now watch as I try to flesh them out into a half-decent blog post:

-Saturday morning television sucks. I know Dan mentioned the death of Saturday morning cartoons a few weeks back, but I had no idea how bad it had truly gotten. Between flopping down on the couch a little before 10 AM and the start of The American President at 2 PM, I watched - in no particular order - CTV Newsnet, a fifteen-year-old episode of This Hour Has 22 Minutes, a NASCAR race, an Italian soccer game, and a twelve-year-old NFL game. My parents get literally hundreds of channels, and there was *nothing* that could hold my interest.

-Speaking of NASCAR, I seem to remember at least being able to tolerate watching auto racing as a kid, but I don't enjoy it in the least now. It's cars. Going around a track. Then they do it again. And again. How do people like this?

-The American President was a good movie. I'd never seen it before. It was written by Aaron Sorkin, who would later go on to create the TV series The West Wing, which I've been infatuated with for roughly a year now. The West Wing wasn't on any channel yesterday. Neither was Whose Line is it Anyway?, which is great to watch when sick.

-After the movie came a half-hour of one of the X-Men movies, which was a decent way to kill half an hour, then an episode of Scrubs. Then I turned on the Game Show Network, which has redeemed all of television in my books by airing the 1990s game show Supermarket Sweep, hosted by former CTV entertainment guru (and my distant relative) Tino Monte! Then the news and hockey until I went to bed.

-I also spent a couple of hours trying to sleep while listening to indie band Destroyer. I thought I'd like them better than I did, but they're good music for listening to while drifting in and out of consciousness.

-I think I've hopped on the Twitter bandwagon at just the right time. Normally I don't adopt technology until it's about to become obsolete (torrents, for example), but Twitter seems to be on a bit of an upswing.

-Three of the four cordless phones in my parents' house cause interference with my computer's wireless signal and disconnect me from the Internet if they're close enough. What are the odds?

-I guess I made a factual mistake in my complaint about news media not covering the whole wide world. When fires broke out in Australia last week, Jonathan Gravenor - the man who was CTV's short-lived Sydney bureau chief - reported from Melbourne on some sort of freelance arrangement. It's better than nothing.

-There seems to be a guarantee this year that if any member of my immediate family goes to a Kitchener Rangers game, the Rangers will win and Mike Mascioli will do something stupid.

Think that's all I've got for today.

--Ryan

Congratulations to the Winner of Digital Manila's First Online Movie Premiere Contest

After two days of commenting and 11 participants in the contest, Digital Manila was able to validate the entires of 8 contestants and scored them accordingly on the two movie reviews: Benjamin Button and Gran Torino.Digital Manila would like to congratulate winning commenter justmejasmine. She gets 2 movie premiere tickets for Confessions of A Shopaholic showing on February 17, 2009 at the

Yet another of my favourite webcomics...

but this time, no one will read it.

(...for a different reason than usual, at least.)

I just got some terrible news. I thought I would share it.

Matt Milby's domains have expired. He drew a comic called Malfunction Junction, which featured himself working at a gas station in Ohio. Unfortunately, I could only find one of them copied by someone else on the internet. That picture is posted below.

Since I'm posting on a dead webcomic, I feel obligated to recommend Kid Radd. It's done with moving .gif images, which is annoying at first. And the first "chapter" does suck a bit... But when you get into the plot, it entices you thoroughly. When thinking of its ending, I still get choked up. You can still find it here.

--

D. Phillips

The History of Peanuts (Part VII)

(The links! The links! The links are on the left!)

The thing about a slice of fifty-year-old pop culture is that sometimes it will intentionally reflect things prevalent in its own time, which become unintentionally even more hilarious half a century later. Take the punchline to this comic, which also includes proof that the "apple for the teacher" idea has probably never actually happened.


My dedication to presenting these strips in chronological order prevents me from having running themes - the other two in this batch also fit the anachronism motif (wow I sound elitist), but this one doesn't. It's the introduction of a character who didn't have much to do and didn't last very long!


Now we get back to the era-based humour - and the early days of the Santa Claus mythos - but I have another question. Why is Patty in Charlie Brown's house, if they're not related and clearly each doing their own thing?


Finally, for this batch, Schroeder clears up a popular misconception of his idol. Lou Bega wouldn't be born for another twenty years!


--Ryan

It Never Hurts to Ask

During these times of economic recession, we've noticed sales seem to be popping up the wazoo. In some sense, the lucky few with secure jobs have to ask why it's so bad.

Lifehacker and Racked recently made a posting to the effect of "Ask for a discount, and you'll probably get it!" (Considering I'm writing on Ryan's - my landlord's - blog... I won't go into detail of what the article specifically suggests.)

So, I've taken them up on the challenge, and bought a Blackberry Storm at half the cost with a discount on the first of the monthly plan's bill. Before that, I convinced Bell to let me out of an internet contract. And right now, I'm trying to get out of my other Bell cell contract. (Turns out, I might be out of luck on this one.)

(Image stolen from http://www.acf-fr.org/)

--
D. Phillips

Confessions Of A Shopaholic - A Digital Manila Free Premiere Movie Tickets Contest

Win a pair of tickets to the movie premiere of Confessions Of A Shopaholic on February 17, 2009 7:30pm at a Gloriette 4 Cinema 1 in Makati, Philippine as Digital Manila hosts its first online contest for its readers - You!One of Digital Manila's segment aside from events and technology are movie reviews. You simply have to leave one comment in each of the two recent movie reviews on the movies:

A Sweet Discovery Suites Date in Tagaytay From National Bookstore

In this season of hearts, make it the sweetest time of the year for you and your sweetheart! Join National Book Store’s A Sweet Suite Date Raffle Promo and win a super romantic overnight prize package for two at Discovery Suites in Tagaytay.Every purchase worth P200 of any of the participating items earns you one raffle coupon. Laking National members will get two. Four consolation prize winners

I'm all atwitter

After reading that subject line, some of you (especially those familiar with my love of puns) might have feared the worst.

Unfortunately, you're right.

I am now a member of Twitter, a social networking website of mild popularity. Twitter's main appeal is its simplicity - there's no photo albums, no walls, no embedded music, just short bits of text. Think Facebook status updates, and nothing but Facebook status updates.

And celebrities use it! So far I've come across Shaquille O'Neal (basketball player), Michael Ignatieff (leader of the Liberal Party of Canada), and Stephen Fry (British comedian), among others. I can find out what these people think of their day to day lives! And...that's it, really.

I don't know that I'll get hooked on Twitter. There's a good chance I'll mess around with it for about a week, then ignore it forevermore.

But maybe not. We'll see how this plays out.

Speaking of which, Dan has already ridiculed me for it.

--Ryan

A Spa Theater Reunion - What?

I recently came across an online article about a spa theater in the Philippines. I first gave off a light smirk on the idea, but later on realize that it was quite elegnt. Imagine yourself enjoying a relaxing foot scrub or hand massage while watching your favorite film on the big screen!The concept is made into a reality by BlueWater Day Spa in its Ortigas Avenue branch. It is also tagged as one

What journalists aren't telling you

A while back, I saved a copy of a quote I wanted to blog about. Here's the quote:

Had I been there, I would have reminded this crowd that the multibillion-dollar company that owns their news organization muzzles stories from entire parts of the world, such as South America and Africa, each and every night of the year by not having any journalists posted there. When will they get around to discussing that form of media “censorship”?

This was written by Tony Burman, former news director of the CBC (now with al-Jazeera), referring to certain news outlets congratulating themselves for showing the controversial Muhammad cartoons that originated in Denmark a couple of years ago.

I shoved aside Burman's quote and forgot about the subject for a while. Then, while perusing the latest edition of the CAJ's Media magazine, I found a column - page 30 of this PDF link - along the same lines.

Even setting aside my complaints about today's 'news' being mostly entertainment and fluff, and the idea that what is actually reported is manipulated by corporate interests, news *still* isn't what's actually important. It's what seems important based on the resources the news organization has at their disposal.

As mentioned in the Media article, CTV currently operates six foreign news bureaus - Washington, Los Angeles, London, Beijing, New Delhi/Kandahar, and Jerusalem. CBC has nine (not sure on their locations), which is an improvement - but it's still not enough.

When the Taj hotel in Mumbai was taken hostage in December, CTV had to send a reporter from Beijing to cover it - CBC sending someone from Vancouver. Nearly any events that take place in Europe are reported on by Tom Kennedy (CTV) or Adrienne Arsenault (CBC)...but neither of them ever leave London to do this, they just take whatever footage they can find in their office, and report on it from thousands of kilometres away. South America and Australia are complete unknowns, Africa mostly the same (CBC has David McGuffin travelling around the continent, one CTV website lists Murray Oliver as a Kampala bureau chief, but that bureau's been closed and Murray in Winnipeg for a good couple of years).

In 2001, CTV announced that they were opening several new bureaus - you can find that announcement somewhere in this press release. Before this announcement, they had five bureaus - after it, ten. Now they're down to six, having closed Kampala, Moscow, Sydney, and Mexico City - four parts of the world which now cannot have their stories told on CTV.

It's not because of the economy - I've been watching CTV News (almost) daily for about three years now, and I never once saw a report from any of those closed bureaus. The economy was fine back then. (Even if that were the problem, I think that at least CBC should put informing the public ahead of making a profit, but that's another argument for another day.)

And it's not that there aren't stories to tell in these places. CBC regularly airs documentaries shot by their foreign correspondents in different parts of the world - either Adrienne Arsenault or Brian Stewart was in Rome recently. The caveat is that all these stories have an underlying tone of "this is going on in a part of the world we know nothing about". In this day and age, with 21st-century technology, there is no excuse for us not knowing about life in the streets of Rome. There is no excuse for us not knowing why students might be rioting in Paris. There is no excuse for us being unable to name anything that's happened in Australia since the Olympics.

Washington. Los Angeles. Mexico City. Rio de Janiero. London. Paris. Rome (or Berlin). Moscow. Jerusalem. Johannesburg. Kampala. Kabul. Mumbai. Beijing. Sydney. Bangkok.

Seventeen foreign bureaus is a lot, absolutely. And obviously some would be negotiable (Kabul could be replaced by somewhere in Pakistan, perhaps). But with that many reporters out there in the world, Canadians would be well-served. I think they'd like to watch a network that's doing something other than reporting on how cold it is in Winnipeg.

All three major networks are trying to do something to stand out from the other two in their news coverage. Why not beef up the foreign content? It worked in the United States - proud Canadian (and CTV alumnus) Peter Jennings led a revolutionary amount of global reporting that catapulted ABC to the top of the American news heap. Be the only Canadian media presence in these cities, and you'll be bringing back stories that none of your competition has. The ratings increase will pay of the extra cost of a few reporters.

--Ryan

Best president ever

I was all set to post something relatively insightful today. Really, I was. I even had a pull quote.

But rampant discrimination in journalism will have to wait. Instead, I've found one of those things that makes you love the Internet.

Barack Obama - in case you don't keep up with the news, the new President of the United States, that big country to the south from where we get all our guns and fast-food chains - wrote an autobiography a few years back.

That in itself is not particularly interesting. What is noteworthy is that the autobiography includes quotes from an old friend of Barack's, a man who had, shall we say, less than Presidential language.

So what?

Well, this autobiography also happens to come in an audiobook format. Read by its author. Which means we get audio clips of Barack Obama saying things like "You ain't my bitch, nigga! Get your own damn fries!".

Here you go. Don't say I never give you anything.

--Ryan

“Get Off My Lawn” – A Gran Torino Movie Review

“Get off my lawn,” is a greeting you might get upon stepping on the backyard of iron-willed Mr. Walt Kowalski, played by Clint Eastwood in the drama film “Gran Torino.” Or at least get a spit to the ground before you leave. The movie starts off with Kowalski mourning on the loss of his wife. Another death he has to face in addition to those he experienced as a war veteran in Korea. Those

Youtube keeps bringing the funny

Sometimes a news producer will screw up and accidentily play the wrong tape to a story. I don't see how this one could have been accidental.



--Ryan

XBX Interactive Grand Opening Today

XBX Interactive will hold its grand opening today February 4, 2009 at the 2nd floor of Burgundy place in Katipunan Avenue, Quezon City. Starting 2pm until closing, celebrations and free gaming will be held.XBX Interactive hosts social gaming, lounge and events. It has VIP rooms with overhead LCD projector and a 60" screen, a home theater system, premium drums, premium Fender Bass guitars and

No Goats About It... (at least, not anymore)

The last of the Spanish Ibex is extinct. Again.

The last known (natural) member of its species was a thirteen year old female in Ordesa National Park, in Northern Spain. She died when a tree fell on her shortly after the new Millennium.

So, we did what any civilization would do... Instead of letting the natural order compensate for a new equilibrium to be reached, we tried to clone her.

And so here we are, with our successful clone. Almost successful, anyway.

The clone died seven minutes after birth, of breathing issues.

--
D. Phillips

Celebrities in jeopardy

Even though the word 'celebrity' has its roots in 'celebration', most of today's celebrities aren't people worth celebrating. Entertainment and alleged news media hang on every word uttered by a Britney Spears or a Tom Cruise or an Oprah Wifrey, even though none of them have any real reason to be that important to our lives.

Worst of all is when a celebrity can't even be identified as an actor, or a singer, or a talk show host - not that those people deserve to be celebrities, but it's better to be famous for actually doing something worthwhile. The worst example of this kind of bad celebrity was Anna Nicole Smith - with nothing else to fall back on, I remember several newscasters simply calling her a 'celebrity' in the lead-in to stories about her death.

Such was the case of one of the first true celebrities, Charles Lindbergh. In his plane, the Spirit of St. Louis, Lindbergh became the first person to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, flying non-stop from New York to Paris.

Five years later, on March 1, 1932, Lindbergh's infant son was abducted by an unknown kidnapper. The ensuing trial - dubbed 'the Crime of the Century', and probably the biggest celebrity trial until OJ Simpson - was a legitimate public spectacle, monopolizing radio news broadcasts. All of this for a man whose claim to fame was being a pilot.

Nowadays, the bar is much lower. Sing a popular song? Have a good agent? Be a C-list celebrity who had a family tragedy? Any of those will turn you into a legitimate celebrity. No longer do people become famous simply for making a contribution to society - unless they have a good media strategy and a book to sell.

Or so I thought.


Watching the Super Bowl pregame festivities yesterday, I was taken aback by the appearance of Sully Sullenberg (right), the pilot who guided a passenger plane to a relatively safe landing in the Hudson River, and his entire flight crew. They weren't there to hype their exclusive interviews, advance agendas of any kind, or even really because they wanted to be there. They were there - for the same reason Sully has been on talk shows - because they are heroes, they saved lives, and although they don't want their lives to change because of it, people want to show their appreciation for what they've done.

I guess we can still do celebrities right.

--Ryan