Diving in June

Sol, Timmy and Loida, Timmy's nanny, are going to Camiguin with me in June. We've got a full week and a half in Cagayan de Oro and Camiguin. We'll arrive in CDO, spend a few days arranging things for Timmy's Catholic baptism, and then go to Camiguin, spend a week or so enjoying the hot springs, the cold springs, the waterfall, and trying to dive every day :-).

I'm sure timmy will love the hot springs. I don't think we'll let him in the cold springs or the waterfall pool since the water there is very cold. But he'll enjoy looking at everything and will be wide-eyed for the whole week, I'm sure.

I had a LOT of dental work done over the last two and a half months and I'm a bit concerned about the diving. If there are holes in my porcelain caps (the adhesive wasn't smooth enough to remove all the holes) then I'm not going to be able to dive (the air in the holes expands as you dive deeper, creating pressure that results in nerve pain). I hope there are no problems. If there are, well, I suppose I'll have to make do with snorkelling from now on. I don't mind that too much. Diving is great, but having my next half-lifetime be dentally comfortable is a big deal too. I can deal with the compromise and maybe I'll just take up mounting climbing instead :-).

I'm really looking forward to diving Sunken Cemetery. That's a great dive spot a few hundred meters off from the Sunken Cemetery marker in Camiguin. I've dived there I think only once, and sol hasn't dived there yet. It's a great reef dive, not too deep (well, maybe there's a deep dive there, but I haven't done it since I wasn't deep dive qualified yet back then). I saw my second scorpionfish there (the first time was at the White Island dive sanctuary, a great coral garden and unfished reserve off White Island, that's a few hundred meters to the East (right) of that wikimapia spot.

White Island is sometimes named alphabet island since the shape is usually a "C", but sometimes changes with the season, wind and waves.

Sol and I have both dived off White Island (for our drift dive qualifying dive for the advanced open water certification) and we saw a HUGE grouper during that dive. It scared the heck out of me when it seemed to just suddenly become visible and then materialize somewhere else, it was so fast.

I don't think we'll be able to take pictures of fish that move that fast this time around, but we'll be able to take a lot of pictures when my sister sends the dive case for our camera over this month or next. We're certainly going to be taking a heck of a lot of pictures so that, finally, I'll have dive images to post rather than just describing dives and dive sites and posting links to wikimapia ;-).

Naturally, when we go over, we'll stay at CamiguinAction. We always dive with them (along with the occasional waterfall rapelling/canyoning. We love the resort too. I bought a bunch of pretty tropical windchimes for our bedroom so Timmy has something to look at, and I'll bring several over for the resort. We've got one of dolphins, but Timmy doesn't look at that as much as at the caterpillar/butterfly windchime set, so maybe we'll bring the dolphins chimes over and diggi can put that at the dive shop itself.

Timmy's baptism will be toward the end of the vacation, on 16June in Cagayan de Oro. I'm hoping that Josine will be able to come to the Philippines then, although that looks a bit less likely just now since the family is pitching in to help pay for my stepfather's emergency heart surgery in California.

An Enemy of the People

So it seems that a distinguished law professor who saw active service in the USMC in Korea and was in the reserves several times the number of years that GW Bush was goofing off pretending to be a reserve pilot is on the terrorist watchlist for criticizing GW Bush. And then they stole his luggage.

Yep, I'm not a distinguished anything, nor have I ever been in any military service, but I'm pretty open about how Bush and Cheney are evil (well, more Cheney, really, Bush is just a dumbass who works pretty hard to be a bastard). Another reason not to go to the United States then, although, a minor one since I wouldn't go there anyway because it would be a sin.

The best way/place to have KFC

I was at the Gateway in Cubao with Sol. We do that once in a while, like every week or two. Sometimes it's for movies, sometimes for buying Earl's sausages at Shopwise. Always we drop by the food court because there's a San Miguel Draft beer stand there. SM Draft is a bit hard to find.

The food court also has a Kentucky Fried Chicken food court space there. And I thought (but didn't follow through, I'll do that next week), that the perfect way to have San Miguel draft would be with KFC Hotshots (which, at least, aren't McDonald's Mcnuggets, which are 56% corn.

Easter

Easter this year has been great. It's a very long holiday in the Philippines. The holiday started on Maundy Thursday and continues til this coming Monday (not sure what national holiday that is, but it's a holiday).

Today, Easter Sunday, we went to the Market! Market! mall at the The Fort. Sol's church is near there, so I go to the mall while she's at worship. Normally I bring my laptop and read my mail on battery power. Today I walked around with Timmy in his stroller. He had a lot of fun goggling at the Gift Market, at all the colorful novelties for sale. It was a lot of fun for me too, since he was having so much fun and was no trouble at all. For lunch sol, her sister, timmy and I went to Sushi-ya, our favorite japanese restaurant. That's always very good. We also made reservations for after the baby dedication (which is what her church calls baptisms, we're having the Catholic baptism in Cagayan de Oro when we go in June).

After a rest when we got home, Sol was convinced to go to the beauty parlor for a haircut and foot spa (or something). Timmy was very easy to put to sleep (the excitement of the day tired him out, maybe), and we then had wine, Tostitos corn chips, homemade salsa (tomatoes, onions, garlic, lemon juice, chili flakes, salt, pepper, catsup) and cream cheese :-).

I've just finished off the wine and am about to go to bed. Tomorrow, the same. Heheh, we've got another bottle of wine, another pack of chips and more tomatoes, onions, garlic, etc :-).

Why GW Bush isn't going to hell

Here's why George W Bush isn't going to hell. It's a poster in New Zealand that says "Hell. Too good for some evil bastards." with a picture of GW Bush in it.

I saw this long ago and it certainly strengthened my desire to immigrate to NZ, where freedom still rings and where they don't oppress and kill other people just because they have weapons they need to test and war profiteers they need to fatten.

Also, the immigration process has been incredibly professional and it's nice to see an immigration policy that is reason based (based on the needs of the accepting country) rather than incredibly dysfunctional, as in the U.S.

In later news, there have been some complaints about the advertisement but the coverage, and the decision are similarly reason-based and reasonable. The advertisement fails some parts of the Advertising code but not all parts referred to in complaints.

The defense is serious:

Cinderella (the company that owns the pizza chain being advertised -- ed) told the board the billboard was erected to capitalise on the growing sense of outrage that was building around the invasion of Iraq and the role George Bush had played.

"We believe, and given the even greater opposition to the war in Iraq and George Bush's plummeting popularity among voters in the US, that the billboard was not only socially responsible, but incredibly prescient given events that have unfolded subsequently," the agency said.

and, amusing:

"As it stands, George W could certainly fit within the genus of bastard identified as a `Bad bastard' (bastardus skullduggerus), or arguably for a subgroup of this particular type of bastard – the `real bad bastard' – although that is not for us to say," the agency said.

If they let my family in, I'm going to so enjoy NZ.

Wow, Crepe

Wow, Ken Silverstein, in Harper's magazine quotes.

It's never pleasant to favorably cite Robert Novak. “Beneath the asshole,” Michael Kinsley once said of him, “is a very decent guy, and beneath the very decent guy is an asshole.”

I'm irritated by Novak, but now I'll never be able to use that beautiful line against Krauthammer who is even more an asshole than I've ever seen Novak be.

Hmmm, I see that there's a lament Why, oh Why does Charles Krauthammer Get Published by a Respectable Newspaper? with the money quote:

Chuck Krauthammer is a pseudo-intellectual hack; like so many right-wing "thinkers", his appeal comes from his ability to use long words in the service of arguments that would be transparently stupid to an eight year old.

I wouldn't work that hard. The man is an asshole, that's all. There's a lot of bile in that asshole, but not much else. Anyone who believes what he says is either an asshole or too stupid to be worth anything. Or both.

That's not enough

GoofyBlog says, about Cheney's lies

Impeach

Trial

Prison

Let's get 'er done

He missed one thing.

Execute

If they go to jail, they won't stay there long. The next Republican administration will pardon them, and the next dumb Democratic administration might do it anyway in the spirit of bipartisanship. No, no. After the execution:

Embalm.

Cremate.

Bury at sea.

Take No Chances.

And if he comes back, take a wooden stake and bury it in his chest.

Proving psychic phenomena exist

by analogy, How do you prove the existence and validity/truth of photography to a blind man. Wow, that is one powerful article. Mostly, because it's smart and on-point, but also because of the pace.

bacon-wrapped, cheese-filled, battered and fried hot dogs!!!

This was originally posted by mistake on my other me. I couldn't find a way to move the post from there to here in one or two clicks, so I've just copied and pasted ;-). So inelegant.

If syphilis were a product this is what it would look like

But you'll have to follow the link and read the article. Or, hmmm, click here for the image. I would post an IMG link there, but again, that'd be rude.

Don't go there

you're muslim, don't go to the U.S., unless you're a moron.

So they took your laptop. You didn't know they could do that? They don't have to return it to you. Don't go to the U.S. if you're muslim. Don't bring a laptop or anything you can't afford to lose if you go to the U.S. (particularly if you're muslim, but that's not a requirement, they can take your computer and not give it back regardless of your religion).

This is a government that is proud to have avoided a vote on Israel's attack on Lebanon so that the Israelis could kill more children and destroy the infrastructure of that country. This is a government that takes canadian citizens and exports them to foreign countries that will torture them (unless, of course, it chooses to torture them itself, in which case it will export them to Guantanamo or to torture chambers in Kirghiztan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Poland). Heck, this is a government that takes its own citizens and tortures them regardless of constitutional rights.

Don't go where the government is evil, man. Unless you're a moron, of course. It doesn't seem like you are. Just ignorant, are you? Well, now you know. Don't go there.

Israel is a mirror image of its patron, the U.S.A.

Israeli forces killed almost triple the number of Palestinian children in 2006 than they did the year before (141 compared to 52

Israel needs to be boycotted. The only people who should go to Israel are jews (it's their country, they should certainly go there if they want to), evangelical Christians who want to see it before it's blown up (could be a long wait, but evangelicals think it's going to be soon, in fact quite a lot of them are PRAYING for it to be soon), and other christians who aren't praying for Israel to be blown away anytime soon, but who don't care that the host country is almost (but not quite) as evil as South Africa ever was back in its apartheid days.

The United States, by giving Israel billions of dollars which Israel then uses to punish civilians and kill children is complicit in all this. Generally, and as much as possible, the U.S.A. should also be boycotted until it stops supporting evil regimes and, in fact, doing evil itself, all over the world. Let it do evil within its own borders, that's it's own business. But where it goes overseas and kills innocents there, it needs to be abused and scorned until it learns its lesson. Or at least until it retreats to its own borders.

Not particularly beyond bold, but good sense

Johanna Rothman slays a hotel restaurant stupidity dragon when she sidesteps a dumb rule and asks a gentleman if she can share his table for breakfast. Offering to not talk to him if he wasn't a morning person is a nice touch.

I'd say, "Good man!", but she isn't. I need to find an approving exclamation that doesn't sound as stupid as "Good person!" :-). Or maybe not, since I never actually say "Good Man!" to anyone, just think it. And maybe blog.

Good advice

I sent email to some friends pointing at Adzilla. The right link though was to: Design Observer where Michael McDonough discusses 10 things he wasn't taught in design school.

It's all very good advice (and the occasional pointed observation). Highly recommended.

hahaha, foxholes

I'd not heard the term foxholes before. Now that I see it in action, it seems so perfect. Fox is entertaining (because there are so many, ah, foxholes on there), it's like a trainwreck without the blood. It gets tiresome though. If they were entertaining and truthful it would be interesting, but after a while, it's just bile, lies, more bile, and more lies.

Hahaha, foxholes.

Hahaha, 300 for nerds

What 300 would be like if sparta were run by nerds

Link there because posting the img tag here when it's hosted there would be rude.

wow

I'm REALLY not into modern art and "installations". Which is why the double quotes there. But this installation, particularly the first picture, without the posters, is deep

Misleading Reddit (digg too) headlines

I saw these Dawkins quotes pointed to from reddit (and, I think maybe from Digg too, but I wasn't paying attention) as

The Most Brilliant Anti-Religious Quotation by Richard Dawkins

The link has *many* quotes. So I'm not sure which one the reddit reporter meant. Likely though, he just missed an s. There are more than 400 comments as I type, but a quick scan doesn't show anyone pointing out the missing letter. Looks like everyone cares about the substance of the site rather than the copy-editing skills of the reddit reporter.

I'd care about the substance too, but Dawkins is just an atheist evangelical/fundamentalist. Anyone that extreme is to be treated to the business end of a ten foot pole until they stop foaming at the mouth. That goes for religious evangelical/fundamentalists too. To be fair, I haven't yet been exposed to the rabid kind, only to filipino evangelical types. They're more polite and far more sensitive to my lack of interest, so I haven't had to take out the ten foot pole yet, just practice my matrix skills.

That was a mistake

An American colonel commits suicide (or perhaps was murdered by money-grubbing contractors who were stealing the U.S. blind) because he thought it would reduce his dishonor. That was a mistake. Killing himself (or allowing himself to be killed by contractors he had already put on notice for stealing U.S. government materiel) doesn't do much. It didn't even make the news until recently. And the Republican Army of the United States continues its whitewash, perhaps because general officers were criticized in (what was probably) his suicide note.

No, no. Don't shoot yourself, dumbass (yes you're dead, and you went through intense pain to get to the point of probably killing yourself, but see the ff, it was a dumbass thing to do). This enemy (your own leadership, and your own government) are insensitive to your death. Killing yourself does nothing. Better to attack. Always attack. Your leadership is insensitive to anything except their own pain. You need to make them feel that pain until they learn. If they won't learn to do the right, at least hurt them enough so that they'll shy away from doing the wrogn.

Last Call!

There's an anthology of drinking quotes here. Amusing. Not too relevant anymore. My hard drinking days are behind me. But amusing.

US Soldiers panic, kill civilians indiscriminately, destroy the evidence

I posted a question yesterday about how the U.S. military probably is killing civilians (not as indiscriminately as in the following link, but with impunity), and what do I see today but evidence of exactly that.

In Afghanistan, some U.S. soldiers were caught in a suicide bombing. They go into escape mode, which is a reasonable thing to do. They start shooting. Which would be a reasonable thing to do except the shooting was indiscriminate and innocent and weaponless civilians died.

They then forced a reported (not an American) to delete pictures he took of the aftermath.

The press is the only protection against American arrogance and overreaching, and a thin shield it is too.