Kewl Tools
The Net knows poetry (yeah, right! :) ) It provides you with recipes (from ingredients you want to use) as well as track mutations of clichés and the web of networks your site has created. All thanks to Google! (Click here to discover Google's "secrets".) To be able to use these kewl tools, try this key: 7bpG4v1QFHLZZd6DOEihcLXcNK/FnsB/.

And, o!, speaking of network, some tools are available to track your social networks using another set of tools.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
Some of my friends are still 'hot' about going to the US to secure jobs. /. directed us to these articles from CNN and Salon which discuss employment decline in the American market.

On the other hand, the outlook is not at all that bad for those who already have jobs, especially in the IT sector, according to this article. But according to another article, IT employment would remain flat for 2003. This is made worse by the trend of outsourcers being outsourced by others. Still, even if the US economy recovers, chances are the jobs might not come back.

A Billion Spam A Day
That's how much AOL, just 1 ISP gets, according to this report. Doesn't it seem futile to fight it? Here's one way of looking at the entire spam economy. Even big companies, big names profit from it.

Here's how spammers got you and possible how you could avoid spam in mail.

In a similar vein, txt spam is growing.

'Whipsawing' What?!
What on earth is this word?! It figured recently in relation to AT&T's complaint against the local Philippine telcos that allegedly refuse to connect international calls coming from AT&T network. Here's how the US FCC characterizes 'whipsawing' in a 1988 decision:

Whipsawing often "takes the form of the foreign carrier isolating a U.S. carrier in an effort to negotiate a favorable accounting rate agreement. Once an agreement is reached with the foreign carrier, other U.S. carriers are under substantial pressure to accept the same agreement or risk retaliation by the foreign carrier."

This is supposed to be contrary to public interest. The American public, that is.

Philippine-bound calls constitute the 4th-largest international route for US cariers, with WorldCom carrying about 25-30% of the traffic (Cris Larazo 2003 Manila Intensifies Phone Fights. AWSJ 27 (135/14-16 March): A4).

KDE v Gnome
KDE and Gnome--two competing desktop environments (DE) in the Open Source market. I'm of course partial to KDE. Still, this OSNews interview with the DE gurus on both camps is a must read.

Here's a general read on DEs comparison.

Txtng Hurts!
The British Chiropractic Association (BCA) warns that too much texting could lead to RSI (repetitive strain injury). "2 mch txting cud corz RSI!" So practice safe txt!

On the other hand, another study casts doubt on injuries like this.

Private Joyce
I didn't know that Joyce Jimenez ("ang pantasya ng bayan") is a good entrepreneur until I read a FEER article detailing her business success. Private Joyce lingerie is now sold in 14 outlets in the Philippines, NY, Washington, LA, and San Diego, "where local Filipinos tired of ill-fitting American underwear snap up smaller sizes made for their lighter frames" (Hookway, J 2002 Franchising With Frills FEER 166 (10/13 March):34-6). I won't be surprised if some of my friends in the US are wearing Private Joyce right now as I blog. Consumption powered by ethnicity is perhaps another flipside of the Pinoy Diaspora.

In a parallel vein, 84% of ethnic Californians consume ethnic media, according to the New California Media Survey.

[ Joyce Interview ]

Waterrrrrrrrrrr!
Clean water reserves are fast shrinking, says the UNESCO World Water Development Report. The report's release is great timing--a week to go before the 3rd World Water Forum in Kyoto.

Some highlights:
1. Shrinking water reserves are due to failed water management policies including over-reliance on dams and overprivatization of the fresh water market.

2. Promise lies in improved infrastructure, sensible pricing plans, conservation technologies and water treaties.

3. Water contaminated with fecal bacteria, parasites, and other microbes causes about 6,000 deaths a day, more than 60% involving children under 5 years old.

4. Access to clean water (def: access to at least 20 liters per person per day from source within 1 km of the person's house) should be made available to more than 1 billion people who today are deprived of it and to twice more who live without sanitation.

Behold the Uberman!
According to this Slate article, the next generation gene research promises to build "Supermen" or "Superwomen" out of us all. Want muscles and strength without ever visiting a weight room? Red blood cells to enable us to run "forever"? Human "blood" to speed up evolution and make us less susceptible to disease and injury? Hmm... tempting it is! But, nah!, I want to be the Nietzschean Uberman--aesthetic, comtemplative, self-overcoming rather than too self-absorbed to cheat one's way to a great body and personal well-being.

Warning Signs of Scientific Rubbish
"There is, alas, no scientific claim so preposterous that a scientist cannot be found to vouch for it," says physicist Robert Park. How to detect all the rubbish that some people call "scientific" is the real challenge. Here's his guide.

Secret Writing
This is my first attempt at encryption. No, not this message, you bloody man! I'm trying to install an encryption software. Well, two applications: PGP and GPG. The former is proprietary (although I'm getting it as freeware); the latter, open source. PGP is pretty straightforward, and one can download it from pgp.com. The latter requires a bit more savvy. To install GPG, one may use this set of instructions. It's the exactly the clearest stuff but a good start. What's crucial is the installation of the initial GPG file before one proceeds to do the shell installation. Here's a guide for this process.

Now my sigs:
PGP keyID 0x34419024 fingerprint FD6B DF02 2043 5D64 960C 4CB9 393D 9EF7 3441 9024
GPG keyID 0x73286BBE fingerprint E9CE 0EB1 C443 2E19 5326 8BDA CB87 CCAB 7328 6BBE

We may now start exchanging "secret messages."

War Games
With the impending war on Iraq, Illiad's take on war games puts it well:)



Speaking of the Iraq war, a relief rally in the market is supposed to come once the shooting starts. But it may not last.

'Atta Babe!

Rosalind Elsie Franklin is not the name one usually associates with the DNA. But she did the 3-D x-ray picture of DNA that led Watson and Crick to finish the job and get the whole credit. While Franklin and her collaborator Maurice Wilkins had better DNA samples, better equipment, and better experience, their personal differences helped slow them down. Wilkins showed Watson the DNA picture taken by Franklin (without the latter's permission). And the rest, as they say, is history. Watson calls her impossibly 'prickly' but "might have been quite stunning had she taken even a mild interest in clothes." Ms Franklin was a woman ahead of her time, pursuing physics and chemistry at a time when women were not so welcome in the academe. Watson's an asshole. Ms Franklin sapmler (letter to her father, summer, 1940): "....science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated. Science, for me, gives a partial explanation of life. In so far as it goes, it is based on fact, experience and experiment. Your theories are those which you and many other people find easiest and pleasantest to believe, but so far as I can see, they have no foundation other than they lead to a pleasanter view of life (and an exaggerated idea of our own importance)." [ More info ]

"All suspects are guilty. Period. Otherwise, they wouldn't be suspects, would they?
That's according to Troops, a humorous "film on location" about the life of Imperial Troopers. Inspired by "reality" cop shows, "Troops" is a spoof of the Star Wars "troops" characters. In this "episode," some Troopers from Tatooine respond to a droid theft complaint and a call regarding a domestic dispute. [ download | More Info | See "George Lucas In Love" blog ]

"One Nation, Overseas"
Sometime ago, an LA-based friend directed my attention to this Wired Mag article on the Filipino diaspora. It's an interesting read on how the phenomenon of Filiino migration has served as both boon and bane for the Philippines.

Update: The global demand for workers generates about $6 billion in foreign currency annually for the country, about 8% of its GNP. In 2001, more than 97,000 of the 865,000 Filipinos who left to work overseas were educated professionals. Those who simply immigrate from the Philippines are not tracked systematically by the government. Source: Naik, G et al (2003). Age Gap Benefits Developing Nations. AWSJ 27 (125): A5

Accidental Email Forward
Forwarding an email could be a violation of privacy... really? A personal, for-friends-only account of "Class A hobnobbing" with the rulers of the Earth at Davos has turned out to be a Class A Privacy Spill. "A" as in "accidental." Here's a long-winded discussion of its implications.

Cooperation v. Competition
Lamark's (cooperation) and Darwin's (competition) evolutionary theories are competing models. But it appears Darwin's always wins (no pun intended) the day. For a long time, ant hills have been viewed as paragons of selfless co-operation for common good. Enter this report on Finnish researchers suggesting that some ant colonies are nests of nepotism and hidden selfish agenda. Here's the link to the original article.

Take It From the Senior, Bill!
A retiring Micro$oft exec tells his company to embrace the open source. This is his advice: "Open source software is as large and powerful a wave as the Internet was," says the exec David Stutz. "Microsoft cannot prosper during the open source wave as an island, with defenses built out of litigation and proprietary protocols" (not to mention people are increasingly running out of reasons to use Micro$oft or actively seeking alternatives). Well, way to go, David, to humble Goliath (for whom the world is not enought)! [ InTrO tO oPeN sOuRcE ]

On the other hand, while so much blood has been spilled over Open Source, perhaps equal zeal should also be focused on Open Data. (Here for the Open Data Format Initiative.) We should also take a look at the gift, and consider copyrights a crime. :)

Extreme French Cooking
Here's a case of French cooking taken to the extreme. One of France's most celebrated chefs kills himself after his restaurant has been downgraded by critics who probably can't prepare decent meals themselves. Well, after all, if you can't be an artist, be a critic. That's a lot better than agonizing over bad cooking.

Evidence- v. Race-based Medicine
This article from San Franscisco Chronicle reports of a controversy in AIDS vaccine research: whether the efficacy of a vaccine has some racial basis. A vaccine trial initially shows that among blacks, Asians, other non-Latino minorities, the vaccine appears to reduce infection rates by two-thirds, compared with a trial with other races where there has been no difference in infection rates between those who received the vaccine and those given shots of an inert placebo. Would this really constitute evidence-based medicine? Too early to say.