A Business Graduate's Reviewing History Blog

PHOTO: US DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY   Who can remember Amos Yee, that brat who badmouthed the late Lee Kuan Yew? It's been 10 years and several months since LKY died on March 23, 2015. According to The Straits Times article written by Chinese Singaporean writer Daniel Lai, it should be interesting to note that he's the only Singaporean among the arrested. This is what Lai wrote about Amos, which should be  disturbing at several levels. The webpage states that Yee was convicted of enticement of a minor for indecent purposes, sexual exploitation of a minor via photograph and sexual exploitation of a minor via telecommunications . It added that he was arrested in Chicago, Illinois. The 27-year-old child sex offender is in the custody of ICE after he was released on parole on Nov 20. He is last known to have been detained at the Dodge Detention Facility in Wisconsin, a four-hour drive from Illinois, where he was serving a six-year jail term for child pornography and sexual ...

Gemini AI Art Some time ago, I wrote an essay that Filipinos can expect to lose more money betting that people will vote wisely . It's time for the truth,  and the  inconvenient truth hurts now, doesn't it? I had Gemini AI create this new AI art of President Ferdinand "Bongbong" R. Marcos Jr. and Atty. Maria Leonor "Leni" S. Gerona-Robredo, at the casino, just to make a point. Sure, Bongbong shook hands with Leni in Sorsogon as a step for political reconcilation . However, such events should be considered more like random variables, such as getting your ball to land on a certain color and a specific number in a game of roulette.  Let's define what a gamble means. The Cambridge Dictionary defines gamble as: to do something that involves risks that might result in loss of money or failure, hoping to get money or achieve success: The gamble of whether your candidate wins or not, because popularity is fickle It's effortless to say, "It's not rea...

I was watching this Tagalog video on YouTube. It made me think about the ecological role of typhoons. The Philippines is prone to typhoons the most, while Indonesia is prone to tsunamis. As I was looking at people who wish storms will never come, they never realize the ecological role that storms play. But first, let's look into the reason why typhoons are common in the Pacific Ocean . THE PACIFIC IS WARMER Sea surface temperatures (°C) around the world on July 14, 2016. Image credit: NOAA/ESRL/PSD Warm sea surface water is the fuel that drives tropical cyclones. If you ignore large-scale anomalies like El Niño and La Niña, the waters in the Pacific Ocean are usually warmer than those of the Atlantic Ocean, and the temperatures stay pretty toasty through almost the entire year . If you were to take a swim in the water off the coast of the northern Philippines, it would feel like you dunked yourself into a freshly drawn bath, just as it would if you took a dip in the ocean at a beac...

Several years ago, Case Unclosed featured an episode about the Chiong Sisters, a few years before Give Up Tomorrow came out. One of the things I could say is that GMA-7 is far less biased than ABS-CBN in news reporting. The late Antonio "Tony" Calvento even aired a dramatization of Davidson Rusia's testimony , which had Niño Muhlach play as Juan Francisco "Paco" Larranaga . It's easy to say, "Unlike you, I read the Supreme Court decision." This came out a year after the controversial case involving the late Federico "Toto" Natividad and his controversial film Animal  had ended in 2007. Apparently, Animal (2004),  which was released as Butakal (1999),  still remains banned. Since I'm not a lawyer nor do I have the temperament to be one in court, I'm simply writing based on common sense .  As I read through the Supreme Court decision , I confess it's a difficult read,  especially since I'm not a lawyer. Thankfully, I watched...

After many years of self-studying the Chiong Sisters Case , I have written several entries on the matter. In fact, I created what I call an "almost-ever-updating" review on Give Up Tomorrow , which was a documentary that challenged my views. I was hesitant to write this review, as it involves another sensitive issue. Some time later, I wrote an entry discussing another aspect of the Chiong Case, specifically  the issue of the late Federico "Toto" Natividad Jr. himself . I always thought it was an unethical issue. However, I was able to watch the film on YouTube (via a poor quality upload), and it doesn't seem that anyone from Natividad's estate is interested in fighting for the film's right to be distributed , not especially that Case Unclosed already came out in 2008, now available on GMA-7's official YouTube channel . Kara David did a meticulously good job featuring the Chiong mother, the Uy mother , and even another member of the " Run for Pa...