MikeLigalig.com

Bracken Cave is the summer home to the largest colony of bats in the world. An estimated 20 million Mexican Free-tailed Bats roost in the cave from March to October making it the largest known concentration of mammals. The cave is located in southern Comal County, Texas, outside the city of San Antonio. The 100-foot-wide crescent shaped opening to the cave lies at the bottom of a sinkhole, formed when the roof of the cave collapsed.

The cave and 697 undeveloped acres around it are owned by Austin, Texas-based Bat Conservation International, which restores the land to support native vegetation and an abundant variety of wildlife. Access to the cave is restricted to protect the habitat of the resident bats. Bat Conservation International offers evening guided tours to the cave to watch the bats emerge from the cave. --Wiki

And yet beauty is a very real piece of the human experience and bespeaks some of our greatest existential tensions, such as the mortality paradox. Etcoff writes:

Attitudes toward beauty are entwined with our deepest conflicts surrounding flesh and spirit. We view the body as a temple, a prison, a dwelling for the immortal soul, a tormentor, a garden of earthly delights, a biological envelope, a machine, a home. We cannot talk about our response to our body’s beauty without understanding all that we project onto our flesh.

Though at first glance borderline reductionist in its excessive reliance on evolutionary explanations, the rest of Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty goes on demonstrate why science and philosophy need each other and how the social sciences fit into the intellectual debate on beauty.

But as unique as we would like to think we are, these inner templates turn out to be far more uniform. Etcoff cites the work of anthropometrist Leslie Farkas, who measured the facial proportions of 200 women, including 50 models, as well as young males and kids, and asked a large sample of participants to rate their appearance, then compared the results with the conventions of the classical beauty canon. The surprising findings, Etcoff argues, illustrates how measurement systems have failed at producing a formula for beauty and instead reveal something profound about the brokenness of the prescriptive canon:

The canon did not fare well. Many of the measures did not turn out to be important, such as the relative angles of the ear and nose. Some seemed pure idealizations: none of the faces and heads in profile corresponded to equal halves or thirds or fourths. Some were inaccurateâ€"the distance between the eyes of the beauties was greater than that suggested by the canon (the width of the nose). Farkas’s results do not mean that a beautiful face will never match the Renaissance and classical ideals. But they do suggest that classical artists might have been wrong about the fundamental nature of human beauty. Perhaps they thought there was a mathematical ideal because this fit in a general way with platonic or religious ideas about the origin of the world.

Etcoff argues that we each possess an intrinsic beauty “template” that we intuit, against which we measure everything we observe:

People judge appearances as though somewhere in their minds an ideal beauty of the human form exists, a form they would recognize if they saw it, though they do not expect they ever will. It exists in the imagination.

    […]

The human image has been subjected to all manner of manipulation in an attempt to create an ideal that does not seem to have a human incarnation. When Zeuxis painted Helen of Troy he gathered five of the most beautiful living women and represented features of each in the hope of capturing and depicting her beauty. There are no actual descriptions of Helen, nor of other legendary beauties such as Dante’s Beatrice. Their faces are blank slates, Rorschach inkblot tests of our imaginings of the features of perfect beauty.

Ezra Pound had a moment of recognition that inspired him to write a two-line poem “In a station at the Métro,” which comprised these brief sentences: “The apparition of these faces in the crowd: Petals, on a wet, black bough.” Later, Pound described how he came to write it. “Three years ago in Paris I got out of a Métro train at La Concorde, and saw suddenly a beautiful face, and then another and another, and then a beautiful child’s face, and then another beautiful woman, and I tried all day to find words for what this had meant to me, and I could not find any words that seemed to me worthy or as lovely as that sudden emotion.… In a poem of this sort one is trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward and objective transforms itself or darts into a thing inward and subjective.”

She offers some exquisite examples of beauty’s contemplation from the annals of literary history:

The most lyrical description of an encounter with beauty â€" solitary, spontaneous, with an unknown otherâ€"comes in James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when Stephen Dedalus sees a young woman standing by the shore with “long, slender bare legs,” and a face “touched with the wonder of mortal beauty.” Her beauty is transformative and gives form to his sensual and spiritual longings. “Her image had passed into his soul for ever and no word had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy.… A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory. On and on and on and on!”

Framing beauty as a “basic pleasure,” Etcoff argues that our response to it is actually the sign of a healthy human mind. Conversely, the absence of such a response is one of the key symptoms of severe depression, one that goes hand-in-hand with anhedonia â€" the inability to take pleasure in things that once pleased us.

Although the object of beauty is debated, the experience of beauty is not. Beauty can stir up a snarl of emotions but pleasure must always be one (tortured longings and envy are not incompatible with pleasure). Our body responds to it viscerally and our names for beauty are synonymous with physical cataclysms and bodily obliteration â€" breathtaking, femme fatale, knockout, drop-dead gorgeous, bombshell, stunner, and ravishing. We experience beauty not as rational contemplation but as a response to physical urgency.

(It is especially ironic and demonstrative of the oppressive power of such ideals that Roosevelt famously wrote, “When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else … you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.”)

Still, the mesmerism of beauty and its grip on us, Etcoff argues, is too deep-seated to be undone by its mere intellectual recognition:

Appearance is the most public part of the self. It is our sacrament, the visible self that the world assumes to be a mirror of the invisible, inner self. This assumption may not be fair, and not how the best of all moral worlds would conduct itself. But that does not make it any less true. Beauty has consequences that we cannot erase by denial. Beauty will continue to operate â€" outside jurisdiction, in the lawless world of human attraction. Academics may ban it from intelligent discourse and snobs may sniff that beauty is trivial and shallow but in the real world the beauty myth quickly collides with reality.

One writer says that in China, reports about meals made from infant flesh surface from time to time. An online video clips on Chinese cannibalism contains the introduction that “eating human flesh is an art form.”

In 1995, one human rights advocate recorded allegation of doctors eating dead fetus after performing abortions at Shenzhen hospitals. To confirm the allegation, an undercover reporter from Eastern Express visited a state owned health center for women and children and asked a female doctor for a fetus. The doctor said that the hospital was out of stock but reminded the reporter to come back. When the reporter went back to the hospital, the doctor offered ten fetuses for free.

In another state-run hospital in Shenzhen, a nurse said that fetuses were in short supply and the price could go up from $10 to $20. In another clinic, one doctor offered the reporter a full-term fetus and recommended that it had the best healing ingredients.

The disturbing human rights abuse comes from a distorted view of unborn children in Chinese culture. Traditionally, ancient Chinese considered ingestion of firstborns, aborted fetuses and placentas as part of a mother’s flesh. An unborn child has no personhood of his or her own. Hence, mothers believed that they were theirs to reabsorb to create a new, healthier baby. This type of belief is common in societies practicing cannibalistic infanticide.

Chinese folk tradition says that placenta consumption helps increase the supply of sperm, and in traditional Chinese medicine it is believed to support blood supply.

Consumption of fetuses and full-term infants is a horrific, vile practice against humanity. The Chinese government must step up efforts to end the practice. -- http://communities.washingtontimes.com/

Earlier this week, the Daily Mail revealed further details about the practice:

“The grim trade is being run from China where corrupt medical staff are said to be tipping off medical companies when babies are aborted or delivered still-born.

“The tiny corpses are then bought, stored in household refrigerators in homes of those involved in the trade before they are removed and taken to clinics where they are placed in medical drying microwaves.

“Once the skin is tinder dry, it is pummeled into powder and then processed into capsules along with herbs to disguise the true ingredients from health investigators and customs officers.”

Chinese authorities denied allegations that the pills were manufactured in China. A Ministry of Health spokesman stated that an investigation conducted last August showed no proof that pills containing human flesh were manufactured in China.

Reports show that the South Korean customs officials aren’t the first ones to witness such a gruesome human rights violation by the Chinese. In 2007, Hong Kong based Next Magazine reported that infant fetuses had became a popular health and beauty supplement in China. In Guangdong, the demand for fetus’s body parts was so high that buyers purchased them directly at the hospitals.

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/



Capsules filled with powdered human flesh seized by Korean customs (Korea Customs Service)


WASHINGTON, May 10, 2012 â€" China’s one child policy, baby trafficking, and sex trafficking of North Korean women aren’t the worst human rights violation happening in the country. Aborting innocent and healthy unborn children and eating them to boost one’s stamina and sexual health is.

South Korean customs officials recently seized thousands of pills filled with powdered human baby flesh arriving from China. Since August 2011, South Korean officials have intercepted more than 17000 pills smuggled from China.

South Korean officials became aware of a horrific practice of eating aborted fetuses after Seoul Broadcasting System showed a documentary on Chinese doctors who performed abortions and then ate the fetuses. One Chinese doctor on the documentary took out fetuses from his refrigerator.   

Quote from: islander on July 02, 2013, 10:10:29 AM
Park, who is married to a Korean, uses human placenta for the stem cell therapy and technology from South Korea.

Placenta is a vascular organ that develops inside the uterus during pregnancy and is expelled after birth.

The three politicians who allegedly died after treatment in Germany underwent “xenogenic” or animal-based stem cell therapy. Last week, the Philippine Medical Association issued a warning against the procedure, as well as undergoing the treatment in nonhealth facilities.

Planas said she believes placenta-derived stem cell therapy is safer, but she could only speak based on her experience.

Hmm, manghod ra man nig gamay sa health pills made of powdered flesh of fetuses which are allegedly made in China...

Quote from: TUBAGBOHOL.com on June 28, 2013, 10:45:58 PM
Bf: pan-os ka!

Oops, speaking bad words...

But our fixation on beauty is so profound that it even permeates the most elevated of human spirits. Etcoff gives Eleanor Roosevelt, one of history’s most remarkable hearts and minds, and Leo Tolstoy, enduring sage of human wisdom, as tragic examples:

When Eleanor Roosevelt was asked if she had any regrets, her response was a poignant one: she wished she had been prettier. It is a sobering statement from one of the most revered and beloved of women, one who surely led a life with many satisfactions. She is not uttering just a woman’s lament. In Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, Leo Tolstoy wrote, “I was frequently subject to moments of despair. I imagined that there was no happiness on earth for a man with such a wide nose, such thick lips, and such tiny gray eyes as mine.… Nothing has such a striking impact on a man’s development as his appearance, and not so much his actual appearance as a conviction that it is either attractive or unattractive.”

She traces the cross-cultural, age-old extremes to which people go for “beauty” â€" or, really, for control of those judgments, whether by self or others:

In Brazil there are more Avon ladies than members of the army. In the United States more money is spent on beauty than on education or social services. Tons of makeupâ€"1,484 tubes of lipstick and 2,055 jars of skin care productsâ€"are sold every minute. During famines, Kalahari bushmen in Africa still use animal fats to moisturize their skin, and in 1715 riots broke out in France when the use of flour on the hair of aristocrats led to a food shortage. The hoarding of flour for beauty purposes was only quelled by the French Revolution.

Equally, we direct our real-time assessments of appearance towards others:

We are always sizing up other people’s looks: our beauty detectors never close up shop and call it a day. We notice the attractiveness of each face we see as automatically as we register whether or not they look familiar. Beauty detectors scan the environment like radar: we can see a face for a fraction of a second (150 msec. in one psychology experiment) and rate its beauty, even give it the same rating we would give it on longer inspection. Long after we forget many important details about a person, our initial response stays in our memory.

One of the most fascinating aspects of beauty, however, is how bound it is with judgment, and self-judgment in particular. One of the products of our narcissistic bias, Etcoff argues, is that we greatly exaggerate the minute fluctuations in our outward appearance:

To the outside world we vary in small ways from our best hours to our worst. In our mind’s eye, however, we undergo a kaleidoscope of changes, and a bad hair day, a blemish, or an added pound undermines our confidence in ways that equally minor fluctuations in our moods, our strength, or our mental agility usually do not.

“If everyone were cast in the same mould, there would be no such thing as beauty,” Darwin famously reflected, and Etcoff echoes his admonition in turning to the menacing domino effect of this proposition in action and what it robs us of:

The media channel desire and narrow the bandwidth of our preferences. A crowd-pleasing image becomes a mold, and a beauty is followed by her imitator, and then by the imitator of her imitator. Marilyn Monroe was such a crowd pleaser that she’s been imitated by everyone from Jayne Mansfield to Madonna. Racism and class snobbery are reflected in images of beauty, although beauty itself is indifferent to race and thrives on diversity.

Etcoff admonishes against confusing beauty with all the manufactured â€" and industriously exploited â€" stand-ins for it:

Madison Avenue cleverly exploits universal preferences but it does not create them, any more than Walt Disney created our fondness for creatures with big eyes and little limbs, or Coca-Cola or McDonald’s created our cravings for sweet or fatty foods. Advertisers and businessmen help to define what adornments we wear and find beautiful, but … this belongs to our sense of fashion, which is not the same thing as our sense of beauty.

Etcoff begins by confronting our intellectual apologism for the cult of beauty:

Many intellectuals would have us believe that beauty is inconsequential. Since it explains nothing, solves nothing, and teaches us nothing, it should not have a place in intellectual discourse. And we are supposed to breathe a collective sigh of relief. After all, the concept of beauty has become an embarrassment.

But there is something wrong with this picture. Outside the realm of ideas, beauty rules. Nobody has stopped looking at it, and no one has stopped enjoying the sight. Turning a cold eye to beauty is as easy as quelling physical desire or responding with indifference to a baby’s cry. We can say that beauty is dead, but all that does is widen the chasm between the real world and our understanding of it.

That’s precisely what Harvard’s Nancy Etcoff sets out to unearth in Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty â€" an inquiry into what we find beautiful and why that frames beauty as “the workings of a basic instinct” and explores such fascinating facets of the subject as our evolutionary wiring, the ubiquitous response to beauty across human cultures, and the universal qualities in people that evoke this response.

The Science of Beauty
By: Maria Popova
http://www.brainpickings.org/


“Attitudes toward beauty are entwined with our deepest conflicts surrounding flesh and spirit.”





“That is the best part of beauty, which a picture cannot express,” Francis Bacon observed in his essay on the subject. And yet for as far back as humanity can peer into the past, we’ve attempted again and again to capture and define beauty. For Indian philosopher Tagore, beauty was the Truth of eternity. For Richard Feynman, it was the mesmerism of complexity. For E. B. White, it was the power of simplicity. For the influential early art theorist Denman Waldo Ross, it was a supreme instance of order. For legendary philosopher Denis Dutton, it was “a gift handed down from the intelligent skills and rich emotional lives of our most ancient ancestors.” But despite all these metaphysical explanations, we continue to strive for a concrete, tangible, material answer.

In 2007, scientists at Gyeongsang National University in South Korea have successfully created cloned cats that glow in the dark. The three white Turkish Angora cats, weighing around 7 pounds each, were capable of glowing red under UV light. Here is a quotation from a report written by Alan Boyle, the science editor at msnbc.com explaining the procedure: ‘They took skin cells from Turkish Angora female cats and used a virus to insert the genetic instructions for making red fluorescent protein. Then they put the gene-altered nuclei into eggs for cloning. The cloned embryos were implanted back into the donor cats, which effectively became the surrogate mothers for their own clones. Four kittens were born by Caesarian section, but one of them died during the procedure, according to the Korea Times. The fact that the kittens’ skin cells glowed under ultraviolet light served as evidence that they were really gene-altered clones.’ -- http://listverse.com/

Hmm, layk dis?

Quote from: islander on July 02, 2013, 11:13:29 AM
i am hoping lorenz would, not for treatment but to further his medical knowledge.  then our inhouse tb doctor can treat all kinds of tb maladies, including psycho cases.  magpa-test case kog una.  i hope hubag will follow my shining example.

The order of precedence (cf. hierarchy of patients in Thoman Mann's The Magic Mountain) dictates that I keep to my lowly station.

Quote from: islander on July 01, 2013, 11:36:40 PM
maayo ka pa.  kun telepono pa nang imong kamaisan, morag landline.  ang ako morag mobile phone, madaladala, kay dia man tawon akong corn sa tiil.  hell hath no fury than a woman's corn.

Indeed. Just as heaven has no rage like a man's scrotum torn.

Quote from: islander on July 01, 2013, 11:36:40 PM
guwapoha nang lugara bai hubs, uy.

maayo ka pa.

Hmm, you haven't seen my corn trees yet...

Quote from: islander on July 01, 2013, 11:36:40 PM
guwapoha nang lugara bai hubs, uy.

Puyra bujag. Balhiboon ra ba kuno kag dila, Madam...

Quote from: hubag bohol on July 02, 2013, 11:15:15 AM
These orgasms were very embarrassing and worrying to the woman, said study author Dr. Marcel D. Waldinger, who treated the woman and is a neuropsychiatrist and professor in sexual psychopharmacology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

"She felt terrible about it," Waldinger said.

Embarrassing jud tuod, tiaw moy naa sa meeting unya mokalit lag kirig2x...

The researchers called the woman's disorder "foot orgasm syndrome," and it is the only known case of its kind. (A foot orgasm has previously been reported in a man with a foot amputation).

Waldinger thinks there may be other people who have the condition, but are too embarrassed to talk about it. Waldinger wanted to publish the case report in part to reduce the stigma surrounding such conditions.

"It's not psychological," Waldinger said. "It's a neurological thing -- we can explain it, we can treat it."

Waldinger is hoping to hear from more people who may have a similar condition, and has made a website for people to contact him

The study was published online June 19 in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

The woman was treated with an injection of anesthetic into one of her spinal nerves -- the nerve that receives sensory information from the foot -- and the orgasms stopped completely. The woman has not had any foot orgasms for eight months now, although she might need to return for another anesthetic injection if her symptoms return, Waldinger said.

The researchers believe the phenomenon was the result of a sort of mix-up in the brain.

About a year and half before the foot orgasms started, the woman spent three weeks in an intensive care unit -- part of the time, in a coma -- because of a sepsis infection. When she came out of the coma, she had tingling and burning sensations in her left foot, likely as a result of damage to tiny nerve fibers in the foot, Waldinger said.

Interestingly, the nerve that registers sensory information from the foot enters the spinal cord at the same level as the nerve that registers sensory information from the vagina, Waldinger said. Because of nerve damage in her foot, the woman's brain did not receive sensory information from her foot, but it did receive sensory information from the vagina.

After a year and a half, the nerve in the foot regenerated. When that happened, the researchers believe "the brain could not anymore differentiate between the foot and the vagina. So that it decided that every stimulus coming from the foot was actually coming from the vagina," Waldinger said. "And that means an orgasmic feeling," in the foot, he said.

By Rachael Rettner /
Livescience.com/
July 1, 2013, 9:54 AM


A 55-year-old woman in the Netherlands visited the doctor with an unusual complaint: She experienced unwanted orgasms that started in her foot, according to a new report of her case.

The orgasmic sensations -- which occurred in her left foot -- were sudden, not brought on by sexual desire or thoughts, and occurred about five to six times a day, the report said. The sensation traveled up her left leg to her vagina, and she said the experience felt exactly like an orgasm achieved during sex.

These orgasms were very embarrassing and worrying to the woman, said study author Dr. Marcel D. Waldinger, who treated the woman and is a neuropsychiatrist and professor in sexual psychopharmacology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

"She felt terrible about it," Waldinger said.

Magnetic resonance images (MRI scans) of the woman's brain and her foot showed no abnormalities, although another test revealed some differences between the nerves of her left and right feet, Waldinger told LiveScience. Stimulating her left foot with an electric current induced a spontaneous orgasm in that foot, he said.

Lawom ra...

Quote from: hubag bohol on July 01, 2013, 09:31:43 PM
Same loser, many incarnations...

Many incarnations, same repetitions...

Nag writer's block tawon si Botoy sa tumang kahadlok...

Quote from: islander on July 01, 2013, 11:50:37 PM
is that a fez on the professor's head?  or is it his hairstyle?

Fez? Morag pakan-anan man na sa pupils...

Quote from: Lorenzo on July 02, 2013, 04:24:31 AM
pwede pod ang sisig?

Hmm, pwede pero kuwang sa birada...

Quote from: islander on July 02, 2013, 10:07:11 AM
Now she can literally walk a mile.

Lawyer Charito Planas, 83, used to have a hard time getting up. But she can now walk without pain, thanks to stem cell therapy that cost her only five figures.

While hospitals here and abroad charge millions for the treatment, a wellness center in Tagaytay offers the service 10 times cheaper, Planas said.

Hmm, wa ba kahay mouli kay gaplano nga magpatambal diri...

Ngyaks! Medyo yabag jud ning mga bakang nga pikot, ba...

The practice, in which teens show affection by licking their partner's eyeballs, may have started with a scene in a music video released last year from the Japanese band Born, which features a dramatic slow-motion scene of oculolinctus, ABC News reported.

But experts are concerned that even if oculolinctius is done sparingly or on a dare, it could have very real consequences.

Dr. Robert Cykiert, an associate professor in the department of ophthalmology at the New York University Langone Medical Center, said the surface of a healthy eye is normal mostly sterile, while the mouth is filled with bacteria and food particles.

Cykier warns that when you get licked on the eye, you're transferring dangerous bacteria to the eye, so it's a very dangerous trend.

He said transferring bacteria to the eye leaves people with a higher risk of contracting conjunctivitis or, more seriously, a corneal ulcer .

ANI | 15th Jun 2013





A new trend among Japanese teens called oculolinctus, also known as "eyeball licking" or "worming," has gone viral.

Brat bitaw si Achilles, unya diha pa jud toy sine nga his role was acted out by Brat Pitt...

P.S. Di ba aydol nimo si Brat?

Quote from: islander on July 01, 2013, 11:52:42 PM
no wonder the iliad was b.c.

Scholar man jud ka, Madam. Kinsa man kunoy gasulti ani, bi...

(Para mausab ang dagan ani nga thread.)

Quote from: islander on July 01, 2013, 11:52:42 PM
how unchristian.  no wonder the iliad was b.c.

Bad bitaw to sila, hu hu hu...

For the past 1,300 years, the Hani people in southern Yunnan have used a sophisticated system of channels to funnel water from the top of the Ailao Mountains to the terraces below. These 41,000 acres of terraces also form a unique integrated farming systemâ€"using buffalo, cattle, ducks, fish, and eel to support the production of red rice, the staple crop. The Hani still live in thatched houses between the mountaintops and terraces, much like they have for a millennium, worshipping mountains, rivers, forests, fire, and other natural forces.
-- http://ph.news.yahoo.com/

Quote from: islander on July 02, 2013, 01:45:53 AM
i love oatmeal, too.  breakfast, lunch, dinner...

Hmm, oatmeal with ham and sausages at breakfast, oatmeal with kare-kare and adobo for lunch, oatmeal with tenderloin steak for dinner?

Quote from: islander on June 30, 2013, 11:23:55 PM
Coconut Water

Coconut water isn’t a solid food; however, it’s one of the most inexpensive and valuable sources of energy. It is often known as “natural energy drink”. It’s full of vital vitamins and minerals, such as potassium along with lauric acid. The potassium supplies the body with the nutrients and electrolytes that replenish the body. Lauric acid is useful in accelerating a person’s metabolic process and providing an energy boost. Additionally, coconut water is low in sugar, fat as well as sodium content.

Tilok jud...

Quote from: islander on June 30, 2013, 11:19:01 PM
Banana

An excellent post workout recovery food item, banana is a simple carbohydrate but an instant energy source. They are also an excellent source of potassium â€" reduced level of potassium in the body can result in physical weakness. The sugars found in banana can be digested quickly and converted right into energy for your body.

Hmm, bantog rang energetic gihapon...

Hmm, nagkanta-kanta na man jud ta...

Quote from: islander on July 01, 2013, 11:27:46 PM
seasick or airsick?  

Di galing ma-seasick. Airsick kaha [kay full of hot air?]...

Quote from: hubag bohol on July 02, 2013, 09:42:45 AM
And now, the end is here
And so you face the final curtain

My Way
Songwriters: JACQUES REVAUX, CLAUDE FRANCOIS, GILLES THIBAUT, PAUL ANKA


And now, the end is here
And so I face the final curtain
My friend, I'll say it clear
I'll state my case, of which I'm certain
I've lived a life that's full
I traveled each and ev'ry highway
And more, much more than this, I did it my way

Regrets, I've had a few
But then again, too few to mention
I did what I had to do and saw it through without exemption
I planned each charted course, each careful step along the byway
And more, much more than this, I did it my way

Yes, there were times, I'm sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew
But through it all, when there was doubt
I ate it up and spit it out
I faced it all and I stood tall and did it my way

I've loved, I've laughed and cried
I've had my fill, my share of losing
And now, as tears subside, I find it all so amusing
To think I did all that
And may I say, not in a shy way,
"Oh, no, oh, no, not me, I did it my way"

For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught
To say the things he truly feels and not the words of one who kneels
The record shows I took the blows and did it my way!

Yes, it was my way...

Quote from: Votives on July 02, 2013, 08:39:59 AM
8's d end of the line na.

He he. Now, segue to...

The Vatican bank was founded in 1942 by Pope Pius XII to manage assets destined for religious or charitable works. Located in a tower just inside the gates of Vatican City, it isn't open to the public â€" only to Vatican employees, religious orders and diplomats accredited to the Holy See.

Last week, Francis announced a commission of inquiry into the bank's activities and legal status to ensure it is in "harmony" with the Catholic Church's mission. It's part of his overall reform effort of the Vatican bureaucracy, mandated by the cardinals who elected him pope in March.

The reason for concern about the IOR is well-founded: The bank has long been the source of some of the greatest scandals of the Holy See, famously implicated in a scandal over the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano in the 1980s, in one of Italy's largest fraud cases.

Roberto Calvi, the head of Banco Ambrosiano, was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982 in circumstances that still remain mysterious.

Banco Ambrosiano collapsed following the disappearance of $1.3 billion in loans the bank had made to several dummy companies in Latin America. The Vatican had provided letters of credit for the loans.

While denying any wrongdoing, the Vatican bank agreed to pay $250 million to Ambrosiano's creditors.

The late Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, an American prelate who headed the Vatican bank at the time, was charged as an accessory to fraudulent bankruptcy in the scandal, but Italy's Constitutional Court eventually backed the Vatican in ruling that under Vatican-Italian treaties Marcinkus had immunity from Italian prosecution. Marcinkus long asserted his innocence and died in 2006.

Von Freyberg, who was named IOR president in February following the clamorous ouster last year of Italian banker Ettore Gotti Tedeschi for incompetence, thanked Cipriani and Tulli for their years of work and said much progress has been made in recent years to bring greater transparency to the Vatican's finances.

"While we are grateful for what has been achieved, it is clear today that we need new leadership to increase the pace of this transformation process," von Freyberg said in a statement.

Italian banker Rolando Marranci was named as acting deputy and another banking expert, Antonio Montaresi, has been brought into a new position as chief risk officer to help ensure the IOR complies with anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism norms. Both belong to the Promontory Group, an expert in the field of anti-money laundering which has been retained by the IOR to help it comply with international norms.

The IOR's board has begun the process of finding a permanent director and deputy director, the statement said.

According to wiretapped phone conversations, Scarano was in touch regularly with both Cipriani and Tulli to get the required bank approval to move large amounts of cash into and out of his IOR accounts. Scarano had two such accounts: a personal one and one called "Fondo Anziani" to receive charitable donations for projects to help the elderly, prosecutors say.

In addition to his Rome arrest, Scarano is also under investigation in the southern city of Salerno for alleged money-laundering stemming from a 560,000 euro cash withdrawal he made from his IOR charity account in 2009. Sica, the attorney, has said Scarano arranged complicated transactions with dozens of other people and eventually used the money to pay off a mortgage.

The group of five cardinals overseeing the IOR accepted the resignations of Cipriani and Tulli and tapped the IOR's current president, German financier and aristocrat Ernst von Freyberg, to serve as interim director, a Vatican statement said.

But the bank, known as the Institute for Religious Works, or IOR, has remained under the glare of prosecutors and now Francis amid fresh concerns it has been used as an offshore tax haven.

Last week, a Vatican accountant was arrested as part of Rome prosecutors' broadening investigation into the IOR. Monsignor Nunzio Scarano is accused of corruption and slander in connection with a plot to smuggle 20 million euro ($26 million) into Italy from Switzerland without reporting it to customs officials.

Scarano, dubbed "Don 500" by the Italian media because of his purported favorite euro banknote, acknowledged under questioning yesterday that his behavior was wrong but that he was only trying to help out friends, attorney Silverio Sica told The Associated Press.

ROME â€" The director of the embattled Vatican bank and his deputy resigned yesterday following the latest developments in a broadening finance scandal that has already landed one Vatican monsignor in prison and added urgency to Pope Francis' reform efforts.

The Vatican said in a statement that Paolo Cipriani and his deputy, Massimo Tulli, stepped down "in the best interest of the institute and the Holy See."

Cipriani, along with the bank's then-president, was placed under investigation by Rome prosecutors in 2010 for alleged violations of Italy's anti-money-laundering norms after financial police seized 23 million euro ($30 million) from a Vatican account at a Rome bank. Neither has been charged and the money was eventually ordered released.

By Nicole Winfield (Associated Press) | Updated July 2, 2013 - 6:31am





Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, a recently suspended accountant in one of the Vatican's main financial departments, is accused of fraud, corruption and slander stemming from the plot, which never got off the ground, attorney Silverio Sica told The Associated Press. He said Scarano was a middleman in the operation: Friends had asked him to intervene with a broker, Giovanni Carenzio, to return 20 million euros they had given him to invest. Sica said Scarano persuaded Carenzio to return the money, and an Italian secret service agent, Giovanni Maria Zito, went to Switzerland to bring the cash back aboard an Italian government aircraft. Such a move would presumably prevent any reporting of the money coming into Italy. The operation failed because Carenzio reneged on the deal, Sica said. (AP Photo/Francesco Pecoraro)

Quote from: hubag bohol on July 02, 2013, 07:53:31 AM
Precious friend,
With you I'll always have a friend, you're someone who I can depend,
To walk a path that sometimes ends.

THE STYLISTICS - YOU MAKE ME FEEL BRAND NEW


My love,
I'll never find the words my love, to tell you how I feel my love.
Mere words, could not explain.

Precious love,
You held my life within your hands, created everything I am,
Taught me how to live again.

Only you,
Cared when I needed a friend, believed in me through thick and thin,
This song is for you, filled with gratitude and love

[Chorus]

God bless you, you make me feel brand new,
For God blessed me with you, you make me feel brand new,
I sing this song 'cause you, make me feel brand new.

My love,
When ever I was insecure, you built me up and made me sure,
You gave, my pride, back to me.

Precious friend,
With you I'll always have a friend, you're someone who I can depend,
To walk a path that sometimes bends.

Without you,
Life has no meaning or rhyme, like notes to a song out of time,
How can I repay, you for having faith in me

[Chorus]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48oX3-GpsMM#ws

You make me feel...


...brand new.

Quote from: Lorenzo on July 02, 2013, 04:26:14 AM
he he he, pwede mag duwaduwa ang mga bata diha, ang mga trabahante pwede pod mag tulugtulug sa payag. 'jaw lang mag iyotiyot...

Di jud angay. Basin mahunlak ang payag. Sa may dike lang...

Good decision...

He he, mabalda man pud atong meditation...

Acting Senate President Jinggoy Estrada, who chaired the Senate committee on labor, employment and human resource development, filed a total of 15 bills yesterday, 10 of which focused on the concerns of employees, both in government and the private sector.

Sen. Francis Escudero made good on his campaign promise to pursue transparency in government by filing the bill that would make mandatory the issuance of waivers on secrecy of bank deposits by all government officials.

Sen. Loren Legarda also fulfilled her campaign promise to work on what she called the Pantawid Tuition program, which seeks to provide at least one college graduate for every family covered by the conditional cash transfer program of the government.

Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. filed a bill that would remove the controversial libel provision in the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012. With Christina Mendez

It is inevitable that some senators would file bills of similar content and so by making the order of filing random, no one can claim to be the first to come up with a particular bill.

Sotto, as expected, filed bills related to the fight against illegal drugs, given his strong interest in this particular field.

A former head of the Dangerous Drugs Board, Sotto pushed for the creation of a special court known as the Dangerous Drugs Court.

The official start of the 16th Congress is on July 22 when the plenary sessions of the Senate and House of Representatives begin and when members of the two chambers meet together to listen to the State of the Nation Address of the President.

This does not mean though that the work of legislators would only start on July 22.

Yesterday marked the first day in office of the newly elected senators and among their first acts was to file their respective bills.

The order of filing was determined by a raffle where Sen. Vicente Sotto III was given the first slot.

Angara, just like his father former senator Edgardo Angara, focused on education.

Angara filed the proposed Unified Student Financial Assistance System for Higher and Technical Education Act, which seeks to strengthen, harmonize and refocus the existing student financial assistance programs to make them more targeted to the poor, giving priority to students whose families are beneficiaries of the government’s conditional cash transfer program.

Ejercito filed a total of 15 bills yesterday.

Sen. Paolo Benigno Aquino IV was the only neophyte who did not join the first-day bill filing bandwagon.

A statement released by Aquino’s office revealed that the youngest senator opted to spend his first official day as lawmaker visiting one of the poorest provinces, Zamboanga del Norte, to speak and consult with leaders there.

Aquino said that his visit to the province was part of his effort to file bills that are “rooted in and responsive to what our countrymen really need from government.”

Villar, for her part, filed bills seeking the creation of a Department of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) and the six-year accelerated irrigation program.

“Considering the significant value they bring in to the economy and the specialized problems they face abroad, it is but appropriate that a separate department be created to cater to the special needs of the OFWs,” she said.

Villar said she wants to head the Senate committee on agriculture as well trade and commerce, which her husband, former senator Manuel Villar Jr., chaired.

Binay said that she would make good on her campaign promise to increase the day care and feeding centers in the country, expand the immunization program and provide free medical and dental services to the poor.

These priorities of Binay could very well have been patterned after the similar programs of her father, Vice President Jejomar Binay, when he was still mayor of Makati City.

“This is the time I start working on the promises I made during the campaign. This is part of my advocacy and UNA’s legislative agenda that I promised to pursue,” Binay said.

By Marvin Sy (The Philippine Star) | Updated July 2, 2013 - 12:00am


MANILA, Philippines - On their first full day at work, five of the six new members of the Senate filed their first bills.

Senators Juan Edgardo Angara, Nancy Binay, JV Ejercito, Grace Poe and Cynthia Villar filed their proposed measures at the Senate yesterday, most of which were based on their advocacies and campaign promises.

Poe, who personally filed her first batch of bills yesterday, focused on her key advocacies of addressing hunger and nutrition of school children and promoting film tourism.

The daughter of the late king of Philippine cinema Fernando Poe Jr. said that the tourism industry in the country could get a boost from the promotion of film tourism.

“Film tourism is a growing phenomenon worldwide, fueled by both the growth of the entertainment industry and the increase in international travel. Several countries have already capitalized on the spiraling phenomenon of film tourism,” she said.

"Fool, prate not to me about covenants. There can be no covenants between men and lions, wolves and lambs can never be of one mind, but hate each other out and out an through. Therefore there can be no understanding between you and me, nor may there be any covenants between us, till one or other shall fall." ― Homer, The Iliad

Quote from: islander on July 01, 2013, 05:46:29 PM
seriously, maayo baya tuod nga naay uniformity.  surely naay basis in fact and circumstance ni nga proposal, though i can't make heads or tails of what the letter "f" has got to do with the country's "history and development as a nation". 

Hmm, ferpect frofosal. Thanks, venereal members of the Konsimisyon sa Wikang Filipino (KWF)...

Quote from: islander on July 01, 2013, 05:35:19 PM
maghuwat kuno usa ta kun unsay proposal sa atong mahal nga congressman rene relampagos.

He he, lain pud nga way klaro, pero at least wa mogawas...

Same loser, many incarnations...

Students: Tigbao, Votives, Hubag (absent: Bugsay, Islander, Pikoy, Lolla, Chongki, BolBuhol, Vhinz, et al.)

Professor:

Hmm, what do you think, my TB friends?

Bye Pilipinas, hello Filipinas?
Yahoo! Southeast Asia Newsroom
By Kim Arveen Patria | Yahoo! Southeast Asia Newsroom â€" 23 hours ago

 
What’s in a name? For the Filipino nation, it should reflect its history and modernization, the country’s language commission said.

This, as it moved in a recent resolution to revert to the name “Filipinas” instead of the more popular “Pilipinas” and even “Philippines” as the country’s official name.

“Ipinapasiya, gaya ng ginagawang pagpapasiya ngayon, na ibalik ang gamit ng ‘Filipinas’ habang pinipigil ang paggamit ng ‘Pilipinas’ (We resolve, as it is hereby resolved, to revive the use of ‘Filipinas’ while stopping the use of ‘Pilipinas’),” the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (KWF) said in an April 12 resolution.

This is to “promote the country’s official and modern name which reflects its history and development as a nation,” added the document, which is making rounds in social media nearly a month before Buwan ng Wika in August.

The resolution also urges that the name “Filipinas” be gradually introduced into seals, letterheads, notes and other official documents.

Firms and institutions using the name “Pilipinas” will also be encouraged to spell it as “Filipinas” instead.

The KWF noted, however, that the change will not be mandatory, especially for entities established before the letter “F” has been introduced in the Filipino alphabet.

It added, however, that all organizations that will be created after the implementation of the resolution, should carry the name “Filipinas.”

Quote from: hubag bohol on July 01, 2013, 03:27:47 PM
Sukad mi nagkauyab, never gyud siya nga mihagad nako og sex kay alang niya mahitabo lang kini sud sa among kaminyuon.

Agoi, Inday Maxxy, basin di motindog ang iyaha?

Quote from: taga tigbao on April 14, 2010, 11:59:26 AM
Ako ra ba kay mopatay ug ilaga, madako ug magamay. Motan-aw bitaw na sila sa mata nimo, tinuod na. The look of death.

Hmm, taas na diay kag kasinatian ani nga gimbuhaton, Bay Tigs...

Quote from: hubag bohol on July 01, 2013, 03:27:47 PM
Sukad mi nagkauyab, never gyud siya nga mihagad nako og sex kay alang niya mahitabo lang kini sud sa among kaminyuon. Hinuon, dunay mga halok-halok ug gakos-gakos, apan kutob ra gyud dinhi. Sa laktod, di siya mapahimuslanon. Matinud-anon siyang pagkatawo.

Agoi, di ba kaha mausab kon maminyo na...