tagged w/ Filipinos
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Now that John Park got the boot on American Idol, Manny Pacquiao is driving the Asian American pop culture train. He is our only hope. All of our eyes are on him. He is our God. He is watching over San Francisco in the form of a billboard perched atop Nike Town in San Francisco’s Union Square.
But this is not the first time the Pac-Man gazed over our city like brown-hued Zeus. He was also there a couple of months ago...
Follow the link for more...
http://blog.dinoray.com/2010/03/11/pacquiao-is-watching-over-us/Now that John Park got the boot on American Idol, Manny Pacquiao is driving the Asian... more
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Comedian Harry Enfield's BBC show has been labelled "disgraceful and distasteful" by members of the Philippine community in the UK.
A petition has been launched condemning the Harry And Paul show for a sketch in which one man urged another to "mount" a Filipina maid. The Philippine embassy in London has written to the BBC and the Press Complaints Commission about the scene.
A spokesman for the show said it was "in no way" meant to cause offence. "Harry and Paul is a post-watershed comedy sketch series and as such tackles many situations in a comedic way," said the spokesman, from production company Tiger Aspect. "Set in this context, the sketch in question is so far beyond the realms of reality as to be absurd - and in no way is intended to demean or upset any viewer."
The scene, first broadcast on 26 September, was part of a running joke in which a family from the south of England treats a northern man like a pet dog. "Our chums up the road wanted to see if they could mate their Filipino maid with our northerner," said Enfield's character as the maid danced provocatively in his garden. After the performance failed to have the desired effect, Enfield shouted: "Come on, Clyde, mount her."
In the Philippines, foreign secretary Alberto Romulo, summoned British ambassador Peter Beckingham to discuss the broadcast. The British Embassy in Manila later issued a statement saying the BBC had editorial independence and the views expressed and portrayed by the network were "completely independent" from the government.
A petition organised by the Philippine Foundation called for the "re-education" of the BBC. It said: "This particular sketch is completely disgraceful, distasteful and a great example of gutter humour." It accused the BBC and the show of "inciting stereotyped racial discrimination, vulgarity and violation of the maid's human rights". The sketch was "tantamount to racism and [the] worst sexual abuse and exploitation of the hapless young Filipina domestic worker employee," it added. The petition had received 328 signatures by midday on Tuesday. Comedian Harry Enfield's BBC show has been labelled "disgraceful and... more
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Ferdinand Marcos, the despot who ruled here for 21 years, is remembered mainly for the staggering quantity of his wife's shoes. But there is another Marcos legacy, and it is drawing new attention at a time of high oil prices, global warming and urgent questions about the role of government in alternative energy development.
Reacting to the early 1970s oil shock, Marcos created a major government program to find, develop and generate electricity from hot rocks deep in the ground. Since then, the Philippine government has championed this form of energy.
Geothermal power now accounts for about 28 percent of the electricity generated in the Philippines. With 90 million people, about 40 percent of whom live on less than $2 a day, this country has become the world's largest consumer of electricity from geothermal sources. Billions of dollars have been saved here because of reduced need for imported oil and coal.
"Goes to show that things aren't always the way we might expect," said Roland N. Horne, a Stanford University expert on geothermal power who has visited this country more than 20 times. "The Philippines would be in hugely worse shape without geothermal as an indigenous energy source."
In installed geothermal power capacity, the country ranks No. 2 in the world, narrowly trailing the United States, which has far more geothermal potential, far more engineering talent and far greater demand for clean sustainable power.
But unlike in the Philippines, government policy in the United States has been inconsistent. In 2006, the Bush administration cut most geothermal spending -- federal programs that received as much as $100 million a year in the 1980s shrank to $5 million. Research projects were dismantled. Scientists in the field had to find other jobs.
"Most of the federal infrastructure, the laboratories and the researchers are now gone," said Karl Gawell, executive director of the Geothermal Energy Association in Washington.
As oil and coal prices soared in the past year, and as popular demand increased for alternative energy sources, the Bush administration rediscovered geothermal. It has proposed spending $90 million over three years on research.
"That's the goods news, but the bad news is that we are going to have to relearn a lot of what the people who we just let go learned over the past 20 years," Gawell said. "The problem with our government's approach to alternative energy is that it is too short-term. You need a sustained commitment to reach this huge energy base."
At early stages of development, geothermal energy has historically been dependent in most countries on high-risk, long-term investment made by governments, not private companies.
While Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, has said little about geothermal energy, Sen. Barack Obama, his Democratic opponent, has said renewable energy -- which includes wind, solar and geothermal -- should generate 10 percent of the country's electricity within four years.
The figure now is about 4 percent, of which less than 1 percent is geothermal. But geothermal offers reliability advantages over solar and wind, mostly because geothermal fields do not stop producing power at night or when the wind stops blowing.
Ferdinand Marcos, the despot who ruled here for 21 years, is remembered mainly for the... more
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