reason is the reason

I’m in Davao right now, this is why. This article came out in the paper with pictures. The pictures I liked. The text, not so much.

If you’re interested in pursuing the Glorietta gas combustion theory, I figure this Gas Explosion Handbook ought to come in handy.

Prepare the asbestos suits. After Malu Fernandez, Desperate Housewives, and the Daily Show comes the greatest offense ever to our race. This will not end well!

Threats to US ships in the Strait of Hormuz heard at the end of a Pentagon-released recording of an incident between Iranian patrol boats and US Navy warships last week may have been the work of a local heckler known as the “Filipino Monkey”, The Navy Times has reported….

A civilian mariner told the paper that the “Filipino Monkey” phenomenon is worldwide, but more common in areas of heavy shipping such as the Strait of Hormuz.

”Mother Teresa extolled the virtue of suffering… [her patients] were offered plenty of prayer but harsh conditions and dangerously primitive medical care. Our heads can be turned by an aura of sanctity, distracting us from a more objective reckoning of their actions.” Steven Pinker reconsiders the Morality Instinct.

ONE two three FOUR five, SIX seven eight NINE ten, ELEVEN TWELVE. An almost limitless number of takes on that Pointer Sisters Sesame Street classic. Jazz? Punk/Ska? Family Guy? You’ll find it in here.

“RDX”, to me, is turning into the Glorietta equivalent of the “grassy knoll”: conspiracy theorists seem to keep latching onto it, again and again, even after it’s been shown that

• the traces of this bomb ingredient were too small to conclusively point to a bomb; and
• no other bomb components were found in the area.

Randy David, for example, presents an interesting case in point. Latching onto a perceptual disconnect in a TV conversation he saw (he’s presumably earned the right to judge an entire investigation purely from snippets of ANC news shows), David accuses investigators of having “delusions of omniscience” for pointing out that the amount of RDX found at the scene, even if multiplied a thousandfold, would be meaningless if no other bomb components were found.

Having already decided it was a bomb, David refuses to listen to any other argument. (David makes no mention of the other findings in the final PNP report, I wonder why?) Which makes his lofty conclusion so richly ironic: Read more…