Category: personal AnGoL

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Philippine Internet Users Part 2

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Internet users as percentage of population, Philippines
5.97% of population – 2007
Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators
www.google.com/publicdata
via internet users philippines – Google Search.

PHILIPPINES
PH – 97,976,603 population (’09) – Area: 300,000 sq km
Capital City: Manila – GNI p.c.US$ 1,170 (’04) per World Bank
24,000,000 Internet users as of Jun/09, 24.5% penetration, per N-O
967,600 broadband subscribers as of Mar.31/08, per ITU

picture above from here

Was really piqued in an interview of Noy’s Media Manager Yolanda Ong with her data of 26 million internet users. as shown by my post here . Luckily Google was awesome enough to release google public data WOOT! this is so cool, probably my super time sink for this week!
PS: the 26 million figure was only about 1-2 million more than the estimate of 24++ so good enough!

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rePost::Letters of Note: Your own private book event

Well, tell your dead grandpa the old German (Goethe) saying: “The longer you look, the more stars you see…” I prefer that to going crazy. It’s the same with meditation, how you can find the entire world in a single object or activity. Once you commit your life to a passion, you find that things open up. Still, it seems like a paradox. Most people never fully commit to their art, out of fear of losing options. But commitment brings more options than you’d ever lose.
via Letters of Note: Your own private book event.

Read the whole letter. This was written by Chuck Palahniuk. (The Author of The Fight Club.)
I loved reading the whole thing so hope you see the scanned original. From the marvelous blog Letters of Note!

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Senator Aquino launches ‘Vlog’ – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos

I fondly remember Obama’s vlog about the state of the campaign, specially for volunteers/supporters.  In “The West Wing” I think it was the last season, The campaign staff was telling Matt Santos the minority democratic presidential candidate that he has to have that “Presidential Voice”.  Matt Santos asked another staffer if she believed he needed to have the Presidential Voice, or at least sound presidential. She ansawered, the man makes the voice. I believe this is where Noynoy Aquino is, trying to find his voice. Hope he finds it in time.

Senator Aquino launches ‘Vlog’
By Maila Ager
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 16:16:00 11/10/2009
Filed Under: Internet, Eleksyon 2010, Elections, Politics
MANILA, Philippines – After joining the popular networking sites “Facebook” and “Friendster,” now comes a video log or “Vlog” for Senator Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III to further boost his presidential bid next year.
For the first time also, Aquino answered questions from the media Tuesday through a video satellite from his residence in Times Street in Quezon City.
The video blog, dubbed as “60 seconds with Noy,” will be a series of 18 episodes to be posted in his various websites starting this Tuesday until November 27 or a day before he files his certificate of candidacy.
Aside from his official website, www.noynoy.ph, the senator also maintains an account with Facebook, Friendster, Twitter, YouTube, Multiply, and other sites created by his supporters.
via Senator Aquino launches ‘Vlog’ – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos.

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rePost::Charter Cities: Meta-Rules: The Success of Congestion Pricing in Stockholm

This is a big issue for me , I repeat/paraphrase what is said below::”Drivers do not pay the full social cost of crowding congested urban roads during peak hours”. I slept through 1 hour of traffic from Commonwealth to Mega Mall. When I take the cab at night It takes a good driver less than 30 minutes to get home. We live in a world where our actions affect others this is the reason I confuse people when I say I am libertarian in principle but is very pro regulation. We want to maximize fun/happiness/freedom for everyone, and we cannot do this if not all social costs are front center. If we continue to be blind from these social cost. My 30 minutes lost everyday from traffic because buying a car, and more so driving a car is very inexpensive relative to what people can afford. When oil hit $100-120 per barrel level the streets were less congested, my commute was reduced by 15 minutes (although I noticed a lot more people were riding the buses and MRT/LRT). The fuel cost is only a factor not even directly involved with congestion, and the effect is noticeable to me. Good public policy is what is needed!

The logic of congestion pricing is fairly straightforward. Urban areas tend to have wasteful levels of congestion during peak commuting hours. Each car that enters the roadway contributes to congestion, polluting city air and increasing overall trip time. Describing the work of the late urban economist John Meyer, Edward Glaeser makes the succinct case for pricing road access:
Unless drivers pay the full social cost of crowding congested urban roads during peak hours, then those roads will remain overused and society will pay a large cost in wasted time.
Some cities tackle the problem by cordoning-off their centers and using electronic tolling to collect congestion fees. The fees rise during peak hours and decline during off-peak hours. To avoid the charge, some people commute during non-peak hours, some people carpool, and some others commute by train, bus, bicycle, or metro. Drivers who pay-up experience less congestion and shorter commute times. For higher income drivers, the benefits from less congestion outweigh the fee. The challenge for city officials is to ensure that people who stop driving end up better off as well. It’s possible to use revenue from the charge to upgrade public transport services, improving the commute everyone.
via Charter Cities: Meta-Rules: The Success of Congestion Pricing in Stockholm.

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How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory

I’m a fan of both shows. I’ve watched HIMYM and BBT 3 times each all the seasons, which can only be beaten by me watching The Office five times all seasons (correction I’ve watched ).
That said, It surprised me how high the difference between their ratings are. I don’t know where to get the tv rating stats to actually dive into the differences between the audiences of these two shows. Suffice to say, 2-3 million lead for BBT is considerable because they follow each other.
Any thoughts on this?

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The New Wall

It’s the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Wow, I was only a child then, but even I knew that it was a momentous event.
Now as a new decade approaches a new wall has already been built, the battle lines are fuzzy and the enemy would be much harder to defeat.
It is funny in a perverse way. Capitalism suffers from its excesses, and there is at least a considerable fraction of people who agree that left to its own devices capitalism fails (I dare to say that more people were convinced of capitalisms problems by the recent economic crisis rather than the former soviet union).
Democracy is heading to a collision course with religion. Not a specific religion but with the practice of religion. It is a question I mull but cannot seem to get any headway in. I just hope we solve this within our lifetimes.  In a way as hard problems tend to be, I don’t know where I stand when the collision happens, all that I know is that it probably will happen.

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rePost::The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God Of Manga – Telegraph

Is the astroboy movie any good? Hope they live up to how great the manga/anime was!

Foreign correspondents arriving in Tokyo to cover the State funeral of the Showa Emperor in 1989 were surprised to find almost as much media attention, and public grief, focussed on the death of a comic artist.
Osamu Tezuka died shortly after Emperor Hirohito. His funeral cortege passed through street lined with grieving fans: grandparents who read his early comics accompanied by grandchildren who were fans of more recent TV shows, respected film-makers and science fiction authors alongside office workers carrying posters of their favourite Tezuka characters. An American serviceman stationed in Yokosuka recalled walking through the city on the morning Tezuka’s death was announced: people clustered around TV stores, weeping at the news.
Tezuka’s precocious talent for art and storytelling helped him overcome bullying at school and survive the war years. Those early experiences created a lifelong determination to speak against war and injustice, constant themes in his work.
His early comics made him a teenage superstar while still in medical school. On graduation, he chose comics over science, but his passion for medicine crops up in many of his works. His career output is staggering, one of the largest in comics – around 170,000 pages. Like fellow-workaholics Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill, he slept in short stretches and worked almost non-stop.
But his interests went far beyond comics. He was an accomplished animator, illustrator, designer, film critic, essayist, novelist, director, screenwriter, radio and TV pundit and advertising icon. He had a wide circle of friends in the arts, sciences and media, and communicated directly with his fans – a 21st century celebrity far ahead of Twitter.
via The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God Of Manga – Telegraph.

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rePost::The Long View: In defense of Esperanza Cabral : Manuel L. Quezon III: The Daily Dose

I’ve bemoaned the lack of goodToGreat political blogs in the Philippines. Most tend to be ideologues and tend to bend over backward to defend their beliefs. Its refreshing to know that there is at least one High Quality blog in the Philippines about politics. Now if only I can find another 4  goodToGreat political blogs , I can finally start looking for goodToGreat Econ/Business blogs from the Philippines!

What struck me immediately about the controversial blog entry was that the problems the public has come to associate with officialdom and relief were notably absent. There was no pilfering, no looting, no diversion of relief to line official pockets. This, in itself, is a colossal achievement: the warehouses are secure, items are tidily kept and they presumably end up where they should. Another thing that struck me was that the secretary has proven true to her pledge to be transparent and accountable about donations: they are publicly available, on line, listing monetary donations, and donations in kind, and the disbursement of relief goods.
via The Long View: In defense of Esperanza Cabral : Manuel L. Quezon III: The Daily Dose.

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rePost::The Referendum – Happy Days Blog – NYTimes.com

A friend once told me “I don’t judge other people; Why should I let them judge me?”. This was in response to me ranting about how I feel people react when espousing some of the things I believe in, or I do not believe in. Since then I’ve tried thinking this way. If I am judged to be something; I just let it be. If I care too much of how other people see me, I will cease to be the person I am, and I like the person I am. I may have a lot of faults, insecurities and sins, but as my friends make fun of me when I say it: “I am the nicest guy I know.” (Mulling this question seriously I am not the nicest guy I know but I am definitely in the top 5). Yes there is a referendum, but we must understand that people mostly are self involved. People are mostly judging themselves; and simply put deep down nobody like looking down on themselves. Life is not a game that can be won or lost. It simply is life.  Read the whole article to understand what The Referendum phenomenon means.

The Referendum is a phenomenon typical of (but not limited to) midlife, whereby people, increasingly aware of the finiteness of their time in the world, the limitations placed on them by their choices so far, and the narrowing options remaining to them, start judging their peers’ differing choices with reactions ranging from envy to contempt. The Referendum can subtly poison formerly close and uncomplicated relationships, creating tensions between the married and the single, the childless and parents, careerists and the stay-at-home. It’s exacerbated by the far greater diversity of options available to us now than a few decades ago, when everyone had to follow the same drill. We’re all anxiously sizing up how everyone else’s decisions have worked out to reassure ourselves that our own are vindicated — that we are, in some sense, winning.
via The Referendum – Happy Days Blog – NYTimes.com.

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rePost::Love of Shopping is Not a Gene: exposing junk science and ideology in Darwinian Psychology – Boing Boing

I believe that blaming your genes for almost anything is the wrong way to go. It is a cop out and I would never want to be that way. We have the lives we have, deal with it, learn love change improve create. The limitations that our genes impose on us is not as shackling as the limitations we place on ourselves.

Love of Shopping is Not a Gene: exposing junk science and ideology in Darwinian PsychologyAnne Innis Dagg’s “Love of Shopping” is Not a Gene is a scathing, entertaining and extremely accessible geneticist’s critique of “Darwinian Psychology” — that is, the “science” of ascribing human behavior to genetic inevitability. Dagg, a biologist/geneticist at the University of Waterloo, identifies Darwinian Psychology as a nexus of ideological pseudoscience cooked to justify political agendas about the inevitability of social inequality, especially racial and sexual inequality.One after another, Dagg examines the cherished shibboleths of Darwinian Psychology, examining the research offered in support of such statements as “Rape is genetic” or “Black people are genetically destined to have lower IQ scores than white people” and demolishes each statement by subjecting it to scientific rigor, including an examination of all the contradictory evidence ignored by proponents.
via Love of Shopping is Not a Gene: exposing junk science and ideology in Darwinian Psychology – Boing Boing.