This entry is based on the ongoing blogger project, The Top 10 Emerging Influential Blogs in 2007, of Janette Toral. Influential is a ticklish thing to define, so let’s just say influential ranges from the personal (hey, I like reading such-and-such a blog) to the tangible in terms of link love… Anyway.The blogs speak for themselves. I’m not 100% sure they’re all post-August 2006 blogs, though.
1. Ricky Carandang Reporting
2. The Patsada Karajaw Nation
3. Tingog.com: The Voice of the Filipino
4. CAFFiend
5. Dispatches by Jesus Llanto
6. smoke
7. The Bayanihan Blog Network
8. Placeholder
9. The Magnificent Atty. Perez
10. Puckering Time
And on to being tagged for various memes.
Macaula.com and Feels Great to be Pinoy: well,
1. In San Carlos City, Negros Occidental, a hacendero’s son once took me around a property they were developing. It was a small residential village. He pointed to the various homes under construction: “here, is a seaman’s home, over there, a home built by a nurse in Texas, there, a caregiver from London’s home, and that one is the home of a carpenter in Saudi.” Each of these people, upon further investigation, had parents who were sakadas; in one lifetime, they’d made the leap from the peasantry to the middle class. This is remarkable and will eventually have long-term, positive, consequences.
2. The students I’ve met in so many places around the country, and how they teach me, every time, to look at problems and solutions with fresh eyes. While I worry that much is being lost by way of traditions and a shared culture, because of the breakdown in our institutions, I admire the sense of freedom, the lack of being limited by these things, that these students show. Literally, nothing will be impossible for them.
3. The way it’s still possible, sooner or later, to engage in productive discussions even with those whose views I strongly disagree with.
Two from baratillo @ cubao:
Six weird things about me meme.
1. I like peas microwaved with butter.
2. I am convinced that even if only a few drops of rain fall on my head, I’ll end up sick.
3. I tend to consume cigarettes very quickly.
4. I have a horror of drafts.
5. For some reason, I used to be unable to work without music; now, music gets in the way of thinking when I work.
6. When I am a passenger in a car, I end up subconsciously stamping my feet on the floor, miming braking as if I’m the one driving.
Tagging: anyone.
and that postcard meme, Only in the Philippines!
Tagging: anyone.
Technorati Tags: Blogging
brian, i actually checked google analytics, and it says I have never had a visitor, ever, to my blog.
my wordpress shortstat for today said 2,961 unique visitors for today, 9,617 hits for today. no clue what the difference is.
technorati says this blog ranks 11,811.
pajamas media bases its payments on nielsen/netratings reports. for the current month, its 22,373 impressions, 7,575 unique browsers, 11,128 user sessions. ave. page impressions: 1,491.53 while ave. unique browsers is 610.30 and ave. user sessions is 741.87.
alexa.com. which i believe is consulted by people to see the global rankings of a site, says traffic rank is 275,143. traffic rank, 1 week average: 143,906.
i don’t know if any of these figures are relevant to the point you wish to make.
As i’ve said before, i think Ellen’s blog has the pulse of the majority of Filipinos. That was proven by the results of the Senatorial elections especially in the case of Trillanes.
Some hold the view (I guess myself among them) that the so-called mainstream media is a weapon of mass destruction for PRIVATE tyranny – ergo, profit motive could only be secondary; when unleashed on a daily basis (thus the tag “dailiesâ€Â), it is meant for total obliteration, to put it in some negative sense. The “positive†way of looking at it however is that, as the name implies, it is a media for mainstreaming thoughts or a weapon (tool) for mass reconstruction of adult minds – the way (yes, BrianB) “memes get sanitized and (uncritical) reason prevails†in the mass “education†of the young minds.
People – very intelligent people – who still think that tyranny relates only to POLITICAL power remain unsuspecting victims. So, if fed with materials that the country is going down the drain because of corrupt politicians, the gridlock in congress, the slothful and un-entrepreneurial Malay race, etc., and believing them as Gospel truth in our subconscious, we repeat them, then we are still naively oblivious of the radioactive in our system.
So politics is dirty, trapos are corrupt, the herd has fiesta mentality (per BenignO) and the constitution is skewed. But do we get a daily dose of criticisms about the economic elites being laggards in the region whose incompetence is keeping a third of our population at a dehumanizing impoverished state?
I also wrote this before:
On August 25, 2006, Nepomuceno A. Malaluan, economist, lawyer and trustee for Action for Economic Reforms reported on The Crisis of Income and Employment in the Philippines partly in reaction to the optimism of President Arrroyo’s SONA (State of the Nation Address) of 2005 and 2006. In 2005, Arroyo’s message: the Philippine economy is on the verge of take off; this year she claims she now has the funds to meet the government’s expenditure needs.
Malaluan’s analysis provides a different scenario: “The domestic problem in income and employment is of crisis proportions. Recognizing it is a crucial first step in addressing this crisis, similar to our experience with the fiscal crisis. The next step is to identify its root causes, and address them head on with emergency measures that are doable and can provide immediate and dramatic.â€Â
Why is the banner about Charter change and not this crisis?
To begin with, the Malaluan study also finds that “as much as 52.5% of total market capitalization is controlled by the country’s top 10 families†whose lackadaisical competitiveness is at the heart of the crisis. Isn’t the same handful of families also in control of the media ownership in the Philippines today?
Now we know why the trapos (traditional politicians) as well as the Constitution get the beatings all the time. They don’t own newspapers and televisions.
So, methinks that while many of the ellenville habitués could be barking at the wrong tree, highly intelligent people like DJB needs to up his ante too.
On figurs, I subscribe to DJB’s philosophy. One Pinoy at a time.
Wow Cat,
My blog is not as popular or at least as influential as this of MLQ3, but I average roughly a little less than 200 except with the coming of the *sauna 2007 where i get over 1k visits and actually a lot of student readers! I might agree with you on the readership because most of these rankings and ratings are really based on visits – unique or what not. Meaning, I could see your point between the difference of visits and those who actually read. But given the number of comments that MLQ3 gets on his posting, I think it’s a fair assumption that he probably gets more than that.
I have a problem with google analytics though. Many months ago, google suspended my adsense account because there was a lunatic who clicked my adsense like insane i was earning an average of about $300 per day! can you imagine? obviously i did not get the money. now, i think they blocked my site on the crawl or whatever, my pagerank went from 6 to 3 and it never moved from there since i was banned forevah and the analytics they give me sometimes is funky because i compare the analytics they have with my host – bluehost as well as the free sitemeter and i have no freaking clue who’s telling the truth. but given the suspension i got, i ignore google analytics – worst, it slows down my site.
on ellen tordesillas, yeah, one could she’s a rabid anti-arroyo based on her blog articles, but you have to give her credit, for anyone who has a successful blog and is popular like her, you’d surely get some fanatics and those are the very people who regularly comments on her site. don’t think you can blame her for that, can you? pikon lang most of those guys there.
besides the fact that she’s offering the other winds of the spectrum and we need that so we could have some sense of comparison. it’s true sometimes, some of those regulars would just blatantly label you an arroyo clone should you disagree with them. heck, that’s them. but i still love reading her blog articles and i think she’s doing a great job i just don’t want to leave comments baka batuhin ako!
ah.. thanks for clarifying PTT, even though i don’t agree.
ako naman, hindi na ako masyadong napapapunta sa site niya, but for a different reason.
nawalan na ako ng gana masyado na pumunta sa blog ni ellen because of the trolls who frequented her site, trying to stir up trouble and instigate flame wars. it was easy to do so because her site is unmoderated. i’ve been complaining about this (GMA trolls) to ellen for the longest time (dapat kasi zero tolerance for trolls). ayaw niya kasi sa simula na mag-take action at i-ban ang mga iilang sa mga ito, kasi respetuhin raw natin ang karapatan ng kabilang panig na magsalita. pero ang problema ay iba ang agenda ng mga ibang maka-arroyo na trolls na nangugulo sa site niya eh.
it got so bad that many many of us who used to frequent her site and participate in the discussion got turned off by the “gulo” and fighting in her comments section.
another “lurker” here said na “dissenters” usually gets banned and his opinions deleted. HAH! that’s really funny. the problem with the way ellen handled her trolls was that she did not take control of her comments section quickly enough before it escalated into something uglier. if i were her, i would have banned the likes of “anthony scalia” and “proudtobepinoy” AKA MR. OFF TOPIC (and his numerous alteregos) a LONG TIME AGO. i don’t understand why she was lenient to them. all the personal attacks coming from the pro-arroyo alternics were really disgusting (lalo na noong palapit na ang election period).
pero hindi sila (pro-arroyos trolls) takot ma-ban dahil pwede naman silang gumawa ng bagong username eh, at trabaho nila ay manggulo, hindi mag-participate sa discussion.
grd complains about “getting banned” and having comments deleted. sa pagkakaalam ko, she doesn’t do it often (she doesn’t do it enough IMO) last resort na yan, kung talagang masama na ang sitwasyon. at AFAIK, hindi naman moderated ang comments section ni ellen eh, unlike sassy’s or bong austero’s. so if a troll wants to cause mayhem, it’s so easy.
guys who are “moderates” like djb (or godsavedconstitution… wink wink) are not banned dahil hindi naman troll si manong djb eh.
oops, it’s not “proudtobepinoy”, but “hindinapinoy”.
“People – very intelligent people – who still think that tyranny relates only to POLITICAL power remain unsuspecting victims. So, if fed with materials that the country is going down the drain because of corrupt politicians, the gridlock in congress, the slothful and un-entrepreneurial Malay race, etc., and believing them as Gospel truth in our subconscious, we repeat them, then we are still naively oblivious of the radioactive in our system.”
Amen.
reinz,
the comments are not measures of traffic because there are blogs which do not entertain comments because there is no need for one.
I do not even subscribe to alexa and other rankings since some of them can be faked.
Like a blog, I know, the value of the blog that he/she displays is more than a hundred thousand but if you check the real the worth, it is zero. They are just deceiving themselves.
There are high rankings in the technorati because of the links but those who got high ratings are mostly webdesigners who put codes in their templates. I checked one which is at the top. Her links are mostly her websites which just have one or two entries.
If you are after the income, the traffic is also irrelevant. There are websites which have high traffic but clicks are few. There are websites which show fake traffic too.
I do not know what influential means but if a blog gets 50 views only a day and mostly from the same links, I do not consider that influential.
No problem John Marzan and I respect your opinion….I can not justify comments made by these “trolls” on Ellen’s blog but I think I know the reason why they come about versus the notion na “trabaho nila ang mangulo” I think these trolls that you mentioned are people that are just weak and can not distance themselves from the egotistic personalities of Ellen’s regular members. Intead of getting amused and even having a favorite member to hate like me, they put in comments to personally attack members hence the trouble and flame wars. This might be the very reason why it’s a popular blog.
reynaelena:on the other hand, one of the keys to a successful blog is to have strong opinions, yes? no one likes a blog that always says, well, be fair (this one might be the exception, but then again, not all bloggers have the same credibility as mlq3, among other things because very few of us actually have public personas). Either hate something – and draw in everybody else who hates the same thing; or love it to bits, and be joined by everyone who feels as you do. that’s at least two things blogs have in common with traditional media: first, it’s hard to find a fair, middle-of-the-road blog; and second, one of the factors affecting the popularity of the blog is the popularity of the stance espoused by the blogger. but i’m sure everyone knows that already.
rom, i think it’s not so much as being “fair” or “middle of the road” as being tolerant of other people’s points of view. i know blog owners have a “right” to exclude anyone who oppose their opinion and enjoy “preaching to the choir”.
i also know that there are people who live vicariously through other’s intellect, not having the gift of understanding issues, and articulating their emotions and feelings. they are nothing but “followers”, cabooses, not engines.
in the “marketplace of ideas”, there is no room for exclusivity in this day ang age. the reason mlq3’s blog is strong and popular is because he can put up with “trolls” without compromising his own beliefs. tordesillas’ blog is one-dimensional and founded on antiquated notions of “tao-tayo” or atin-atin” lang. it will not last, or if it does, it will not grow, i think.
hi rom: “reynaelena:on the other hand, one of the keys to a successful blog is to have strong opinions” DID I SAY THAT or you’re asking for my opinion?
in any case: well “successful blogs” is really dependent on what the goal of the blogger, meaning whatever is the blogger’s definition of success and it could be as varied as trying to reach out a number of similarly opinionated people, or getting as much traffic to increase page rank, etc., etch…
my personal take is that: i think it will actually be at your disadvantage to always take a very strong opinion on certain matters, else you not only alienate some of your avid fans but you’d be so out of focus that you won’t be able to maintain some semblance of balance in your blog. I do am aware of the fact that it could rather be very difficult at times to maintain some balance and that’s the challenge for some bloggers, i myself is guilty of this one as one reader had emailed me that sometimes my true color indeed comes out of my veins no matter how much i try to sorta put them in between my jokes.
this is the new medium, it’s like re-aligning people according to what they wanted to hear and for the most part, that’s what blog does, puts us in once column and it would be very difficult to find a blog that sorta caters to both, else, you’d lose the juice.
errata: opposes, not “oppose”; and age, not “ang age”.
hey Cat,
i certainly agree with you that MAYBE, just MAYBE (coz am not tehno-geek) some of these ratings are like (heck i just blog about ratings agencies! hehehe) fake which is why to be safe I analyze three sources and look at the similarities and analyze the disparities. annoying as it is, but the reason why i subscribed to alexa is because i wanted to improve my pagerank and that;s how if found out that some things that i hope i;m wrong.
now, regarding the INFLUENTIAL, i essentially agree with you on this one, no pun intended to the originator of the idea, but i really believe it’s just a reinvented version of viral tagging, that’s all. but of course, we all know what’s influential – and i don’t get it really (not that i was not one of them) get it.
mlq3: Site statistics can be very tricky to interpret. NO doubt volume of visitors, however measured, and changes in that volume, are an impt measure of how good our weblogs are getting over time.
But I usually go by Google Page Rank as the most reliable and consistent measure over time. And by this I don’t mean Page Rank on your Home Page alone, but a kind of integrated Page Rank Metric that I’ve invented, just for blog hopping and doing TRUTH LAID BEAR kind of checking. If you really want to see how good a weblog is, check out (1) the Page Rank it gets for PAST posts; and (2) its search engine page placement for searches on topics in those past post titles.
The strongest sites have at least ONE search engine hit in which its post on that search topic is consistently #1 or #2 in a search that contains more than a million hits.
In a sense, the only opinion that matters for the long run growth and durability of a weblog, is that of Google and dominant search engines.
This I think has to do with the TOPOLOGY of the Web. Blogging is NOT broadcasting. It is not even narrowcasting because people have to ride a machine to your site to see it. It is more like putting up billboards in a jungle of a trillion other billboards.
Without the seekers, we are all lost as just so much background noise.
a measure of a worthy, quality blog is that it gets read by a loyal set of readers, not just passing viewers. we know who they are.
which means if a viewer happens to drop by your site for less than 2 minutes, chances are he or she is not reading your posts. just gauging how deep or inane or bloated your ego-boasting promotion that goes there.
MLQIII,
“People – very intelligent people – who still think that tyranny relates only to POLITICAL power remain unsuspecting victims. So, if fed with materials that the country is going down the drain because of corrupt politicians, the gridlock in congress, the slothful and un-entrepreneurial Malay race, etc., and believing them as Gospel truth in our subconscious, we repeat them, then we are still naively oblivious of the radioactive in our system.â€Â
1. Colonial mentality runs deep. We still think we’re the slaves of mestizos
2. slothful malays? Not true. Rather a business and political elite (Chinese, kastilas) that think Malays are not worth their cent to invest on. Malaysia is making their own automobile and cellphone brands. I believe much of this confidence comes from their pro-Malay laws. Compare that to Negros Occidental and Hacienda Luisita where even the supreme court can’t take back stolen land.
3. Land owned by mestizos should’ve been confiscated when the Spanish left. Filipinos will still feel like a conquered people when all these mestizos are still enjoying the fruits of Spanish oppression.
Hey you all techno-geek after reading you all, you are no difference with my neighbor epileptic daughter. Your yardstick don’t even measure up on Newton’s third law. Your instinctive mind is stained by the filth of evil instinct of jealousy and enviousness, without achieving anything.
I am a lurker at Ellen’ Blog and I see nothing that impaired my opinion to cause my blood pressure to boil, you may call it a scream therapy or whatever you began to compare yourselves with others, especially with the people who fly around the world, live in luxurious estates, drive BMWs and the ones who wine and dine in five-star hotels. In a way we are witness to the emerging thecno culture and everyone wants to be part of it. Of course, there is nothing wrong in having such thoughts and desires. In fact, these thoughts not merely widen our mental horizons but also help us to learn from others and improve wicked vision on our own lives. But the problem occurs when people want what they want in a split of second, a ridiculing culture in a crab mentality world.
so if you sitemeter is full of Google, msn, yahoo searches, that means you have made it. If you are just visited by loyal followers, that means, your audience is limited to those who patronize you. If they spend an average of 5 minutes per visit, that means they are reading your blog. if your page views, that is they go to other pages averaged about 3 to 4 minutes, there’s a reason why they stay this long in your blog.If ask.com include you in their directory, they must be getting answers for the questions asked by the researchers. Why is there a need for comment just to feel that you are being read? The akismet can catch as many as a hundred spam in the comment box.
Bah, you’re successful if you’re high on technorati.
MLQ3 why am I being moderated again?
sorry, I meant Nah. Morning
CAT,
Everybody’s sitemeter is full of google and yahoo searches. Then there is the minority of what you call “loyal readers”. Those are the ones your memes are attractive to. but they usually start out as search engine arrivals from somewhere else. That’s the “topological” necessity of it:
NO BLOG IS AN ISLAND!
However, in the midst of all these beauty contests and ego-warmers, let us not forget that we are all wart-hogs.
i like what indoro ni emilie said, that pretty much sums up what it is, but also, key is, consistency.
now on technorati, even that is funky because it’s based on your tags. so if you have the tagging plugin, instantly, most of those people will tag you, at least that’s what i noticed in my blog eversince i added the plugin. do they read my blog? hardly so, i have my own set of loyal followers.
i only get inundated by readers if i write something of interest to them and then they disappear.
i remember that viral tagging, i was inflicted by that stupid virus, but going back, i decided not to update the links because it’s a fake, i probably only gained a 0.00000001% of readers there that became a regular.
and i still don’t trust page rank, have no clue what kind of computations they do over there
at least my ever dependable sitemeter is validated by bluehost analytics
Yes Justice League , I also suspect sheila’s leaving PCIJ has contibuted to the current fate of PCIJ….But I also feel that a very hostile dicussion has turn-off a lot of people too.
And Im afraid the same thing will happen to Ellen’s blog.
=====
“And to grd, I suggest you be more judicious with your remarks about a fellow blogger of Ellen’s stature!”
=====
Ellen’s stature? Jeez. If that is our measure of blogging quality, then we as a community are in deeper trouble than we think we are in. 😉
And, yes, Ellen banned me too, the same way Alecs Pabico (PCIJ) did.
=====
“my advice to the trouble makers is to go to sassy’s site na lang or a site that is “more hospitable†to your views. wag na kayong manggulo”
=====
“Manggugulo” is subject to interpretation now, isn’t it. The phrased you used “pro-Arroyo idiots” speaks volumes about your interpretation of what a “manggugulo” is. 😉
One can learn a lot from participating in a jolog site like Ellen’s. For one thing, the views exchanged there are quite typical of underclass mentalities. If you wanna learn about masa thinking (which, in fact, characterises something like 90% of Pinoy thought), I suggest you lurk around there.
My take on the PCIJ blog is that at some point, it became apparent that it was becoming merely a publicity conduit for various “groups of interest”. Blog posts there at best merely surfed the tide of popular interest.
What finally got me banned was my continued expression of my beef about how — at a time when 1,300 Pinoy souls lost their lives in a mudslide in March 2006 — the PCIJ continued churning out politically-motivated story after another. In fact I cited a specific statistic – 2 mudslide stories out of 15 politically-motivated stories in a span of several weeks.
I documented some of it in here…
http://www.getrealphilippines.com/rant/rant00024.html
…and, subsequently got into a heated shoutbox dialog with Pabico himself which I documented here:
http://www.getrealphilippines.com/rant/rant00025.html
Funny enough, I also recall an exchange in the PCIJ with the eminent Patricio Abinales here…
http://www.getrealphilippines.com/rant/rant00006.html
… which, considering his credentials, I found to sound more like this “ystakei” character than a well-bred member of a prestigious thinktank.
My point is that excessive, hollow-headed partisanism is the common denominator across most of the stupidities we see in Pinoy society. It has a mind-numbing dumbing down effect on most people, from Tordesillas’s disciples up to the Abinales’s of this world.
I just check ellen blog just this minute to find out if the good praises it got from some people is true.
Jeeezzzz, agree ako lahat sa sinabi ni Benigno….
And surprise surpise…. somebody is using my name in that blog and wrote the following..
———————————————–
rego Says:
July 25th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
“Uulitin ko: Hindi ako sagabal sa ambisyon ninuman.
But make no mistake. I will not stand idly when anyone gets in the way of the national interest and tries to block the national vision. From where I sit, I can tell you, a President is always as strong as she wants to be.
Pagpalain tayo ng Diyos at ang dakilang gawaing hinaharap natin. The state of the nation is strong. Inyong lingkod, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Pangulo ng Republika ng Pilipinas.â€Â
patnubayan po kayo ng Mahal na Panginoon mahal naming Pangulo at ilagtas kayo sa kapahamakan laban sa mga taong naghahangad ng masama sa inyo sampu ng inyong pamilya. matupad sana ang minimithi ninyong kaularan ng bansa bago matapos ang inyong termino sa 2010.
——————————————————
woahh this is the kind of people that thrives in ellen blog.
Oh my God even Habito has turned communists!!!!!!
Bring down the wrath of the Gods on him as he dared question the Gods of Olympus.
Unstable Equilibrium
By Cielito Habito
Inquirer
Last updated 00:00am (Mla time) 07/30/2007
“THE ECONOMY is doing well; we need to unite and sustain the gains, instead of rocking the boat and derailing the progress we are making.”
“We hear this statement a lot these days, mostly from Malacañang and business circles, so often in fact that some people now even question the patriotism of those who call attention to the wrongs being done in our midst.”
“Flaws
I have difficulty subscribing to this proposition, on two grounds: One, its premise is open to question, and two, looking the other way or closing our eyes to wrongdoing never makes for lasting stability–especially when there is just too much of such wrongdoing to be ignored. Ignoring them for the sake of “unity” and “stability” would only be promoting an unstable equilibrium (an oxymoron?).”
This is what worries me about accepting the proposition outright. I would hate to see our economy fall apart again and bring us even farther from the dream of First World status that all of us would like to see fulfilled. But we are risking precisely this if we fail to address the flaws in our current economic (not to mention political) directions, as embodied in policies, high-level decisions, presidential appointments and even specific government projects. We cannot afford not to point them out, publicly debate on their implications and collectively determine whatever superior options there may be available to us. There is a world of difference between constructive criticism and economic sabotage. Unfortunately, too many among us can’t seem to tell them apart.
Two out of three
Is the premise valid? There are positive trends in the data indeed, but can we truly and honestly say the economy is doing well? Who make up the economy anyway?
I keep saying that there are only three economic indicators that matter to the average Filipino: Presyo (prices), hanapbuhay (jobs and livelihood) and kita (incomes). Through my years in government, I saw how little patience most of my audiences had with statistics on fiscal and external balances, interest rates, price-equity ratios, stock market indices and bond spreads, and other data that only financial analysts and maybe CEOs would stay awake for.
On this basis, I had been characterizing our overall economic performance until recently by saying “Two out of three ain’t bad”–referring to the way inflation has been low and GDP (that is, output and income) growth has been respectable, while the jobs situation has been worsening.
Weaknesses within
Lately, all three are showing positive movement, which is welcome news indeed. But as I have recently pointed out, the devil is in the details. And looking more closely at the statistics on jobs and on the sources of our economic growth brings to light problems that tell us, in no uncertain terms, that not all is well in our economy.
In fact, the situation suggests to me that it would be outright dangerous to proceed in the same directions we have been taking, given these weaknesses lurking within.
I will not repeat what I have written recently (NFL 7/9/07) on the declining quality of jobs even with their increasing quantity. What is even more threatening is the alarming decline in domestic investments over the past two years. Foreign investments were not a problem; last year, they grew briskly by over 50 percent, based on BSP data on actual inflows. Do foreigners see our longer-term potentials better than local investors do? Or is it because the foreigners fail to see something that the locals know more intimately?
Falling confidence
The latest news from BSP is worrisome: Foreign investment inflows fell in the first four months of this year, in contrast to last year’s brisk growth. As it is, we are already investing far less than our neighbors do, i.e., 15 percent of our GDP against our neighbors’ 25 percent or higher–and the gap is widening. We averaged a mere 0.6-percent average annual investment growth in 2002-2006, while our neighbors averaged from 3 to 20 percent annually. Malacañang’s selective statistics notwithstanding, the official statistics speak for themselves.
The recent State of the Nation Address was an opportunity to usher in real change, and to redeem the troubled presidency in its remaining years. Disappointingly, recent actions and developments–and yes, the speech itself–point to more of the same. But all the above tell us we just cannot afford more of the same. We need to address the ongoing crisis in investment confidence from the core. We badly need confidence boosters from the government–not more killings, more erring officials going unpunished, more questionable government appointments, more anomalous government contracts, more policies and decisions sacrificing the welfare of the greater majority in favor of a few powerful vested interests.
No one disputes the dire need for unity and solidarity in this country. But to ask Filipinos to unite in perpetuating wrongs is something else.
my experience usually is, kung walang troublemakers, walang gulo. “moderates” are always welcome. kaya nga hindi moderated ang blogs ng iilan dito eh (unlike some well known blogs).
i don’t know about ellen’s stats or blog popularity, but after the elections, mukhang konti na lang ang gulo (and maybe because mas proactive na si ellen sa pagbantay).
and you’ve been banned so many times in pinoyexchange too (and pex is 5 to 1 pro-admin). nakipag-away ka pa kay cathcath aka garfield M.
benign0 banned by admin
benign2 banned by admin
benign03 banned by admin
benign05 banned by admin
ANO, sasabihin mo na ban ka dahil sa “PRO-ARROYO” views mo sa pinoyexchange? (tapos ipagtatanggol ka ng mga ignoranteng posters like bencard at rego lol)
and aren’t you the same guy who likes to cause trouble in PHNO forum? sa pagkakaalam ko HINDI “pro-arroyo” si Red Angel.
sa napapansin ko, you’re a professional heckler who likes to spam and promote your website by posting links to it every chance you get (ganyan pa rin ba ang M.O. mo, benign0)
it telling that the only place where you are welcome to spew your drivel unconditionally is at sassy’s site. you are who your friends are.
btw, i have nothing against you. hindi naman tayo nag-away sa pinoyexchange or any othe forums, yes? kasi hindi ko na pinapansin ang hindi dapat pansinin. ika nga, don’t feed the trolls. 😆
in short, you just could not get along with most people benign0. doesn’t matter kung maka-arroyo o maka-erap sila.
“btw, i have nothing against you. hindi naman tayo nag-away sa pinoyexchange”
Depends on what you mean by “nag-away”. Some people feel that “inaaway” sila when someone begs to differ against their cherished views.
If your idea of participating in blogs and on-line forums is everyone holding hands and not making-“away” and singing off the same political page, then it’s no wonder that you consistently come across the way you do. 😉
Interesting though that you’d bring up the PHNO. If you check out my latest “panggu-gulo” there, maybe you’ll gain some insight on who it is really who engages in inappropriate behaviour.
http://www.network54.com/Forum/5345/message/1185515828/It%27s+OFFICIAL+then...
Anyways, with due respect to MLQ, I suggest you take your specific issues with moi off-line lest you be accused of attacking the messenger before understanding the message, dude. 😉
BenignO;
One can learn a lot from participating in a jolog site like Ellen’s. For one thing, the views exchanged there are quite typical of underclass mentalities. If you wanna learn about masa thinking (which, in fact, characterises something like 90% of Pinoy thought), I suggest you lurk around there.
*************************************************************
I visited your site and this is what is written on your wall:.Pinoys are:
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(1) non-productive
(2) intellectually bankrupt
(3) devoid of substance
(4) unimaginative
Now,who is jolog Benigno? As I remember you called me “Dude†at Ellen’s Blog which you don’t even know who I am. As I remembered also, you are an Ellen’s reject because you respect no one but your almighty ego. Look at your site! You have a ZERO response.
You want to be in the first world. Impose 70 per cent inheritance tax, including all assets.
no need. i’m done.
it’s just funny na when the issue of trolls was being discussed, bigla kang lumabas (how apropo)
tinamaan ka ba? I guess you are the message.
What’s the problem with this smart aleck? Can’t accept the fact that there are people here in blogosphere other than the so called anti-gloria and pro-gloria fanatics (obviously his partiality shows which group he belongs)? So another version of those “pro-gloria idiots”, if you’re not anti-gloria you’re manggugulo.
As far as my first post is concerned (the start of the heated exchange), I’m just stating a fact to Bencard that there is ugliness in blogging too and not just the beauty of it (like here in MLQ3) where anyone can challenge other’s vast ideas, opinions, points of views, etc. and still come up with a healthy discussion about everything under the sun (not resorting to cursing, bad mouthing and labelings). Etong mga self proclaimed anti-gloria (kuno as if sila lang ang galit kay Gloria at sa nga nangyayari sa bansa) masyadong mga balat-sibuyas and are always into conspiracy theories.
Why limit the discussions on certain topics? “Troll†for all I care kaya nilalangaw yung blogs ng iba diyan (ika nga ni benignO, hollow-headed partisanism…).
And while bong austero and connie veneracion have gone a long way, they’re still fixated in their own little world.
you’re deluding yourself grd if you think na na-ban lang ang iilan dito because they “dissented” or “expressed different views”.
don’t worry, hindi ko na bibirahin pa si benign0.
not really. the black helicopter crowd are still at it, whenever an opportunity arises.
http://www.sassylawyer.com/2007/07/26/a-hello-garci-sequel/#comments
One of our problems is that we have inherited the self-consciousness of Americans without inheriting their arrogance.
“Let’s give it a break! (1) our brand of Christianity is medieval, (2) we not only cannot speak straight English, we are trying to banish the language from our education system, (3) we laugh at just about anything, even our own stupidity and on every conceivable medium – mobile phones, the Internet, etc., and (4) showbiz personalities are dancing and singing their way into office. Growing pains, yes, but we could have had as our mentor, a country that already had more than 200 years worth of lessons in democratic governance. But no! In 1946, we chose to learn to walk before we could even barely crawl.”
whatever you think john marzan. the fact is, i’ve been a long time lurker of ellen’s blog (under a different name), been posting some comments now and then but never been banned. the fact is, i’m so turned-off with the kind of characters in there (the cursing and labelings). and you might need to know that i’m a regular in pcij (a certified gloria basher). wonder why you have not attacked that arrogant ystakei like what you’ve been doing with benignO. she’s been attacking the country and Filipinos in general as well. i guess as long as you’re a Gloria basher, you’re forgiven, right? just like what ellen’s been doing in tolerating that slob. but i still think you have the same mindset as the regulars there.
you’re referring to this john? you sounded like a looser here.
8. Sassy wrote on 29. July 2007 at 12:08 PM
Re #5. LOL same old you, John. Still trying to find a paper willing to publish your crap eh? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I thought you’d mature with time but, no. You still insist on attacking me instead of talking about issues. You do belong with your crowd of junkie bloggers.
“don’t worry, hindi ko na bibirahin pa si benign0”
Tsk tsk. Unlike you, John, I don’t see myself as a victim here of any kind of “bira” or “away”.
It’s too bad neither yours nor people like Abinales’s credentials can hide the sad reality of the smallness of the mind behind them. 😉
And don’t flatter yourself. I don’t even recall having any kind of significant exchange of ideas with you in PEx or the PCIJ or wherever else you imagine yourself making a dent (which makes me wonder why tuwang-tuwa ka sa ‘kin. 😉 ).
so ano yung nic mo sa pcij at sa blog ni ellen, grd? baka kilala kita. baka hindi.
uh… hindi ko pinapansin si benign0 until now, grd.
hi fired the first shot, i fired back.
most of the time, i just ignore him.
i’ve been turned off by the commenters in the pro-arroyo blogs too, but i don’t waste my time stalking their sites. so why even bother to waste your time going to a blog whose members you hate? that’s what i don’t get.
you are turned off by some of the anti-arroyo commenters? to be honest, i see no difference between them and the anti-erap commenters i’ve encountered before nung presidente pa si erapski. some of the finger wagging know it alls who were calling for erap’s head because of corruption and abuse of power, are now the same people defending arroyo.
difference between then and now is that hypokrito yung former.
Blogging as a medium of propagating one’s thoughts is still in its infancy (relatively speaking). Blogging is a kind of ego-trip writers ride onto. Everyone tries to attract as much readers as they can to raise awareness of their blogs.
At the start, blogging was born as just another adjunct of a journal. A dear diary made online. And a repository of one’s poetic works. Blogging as a means of “opinionating” developed much, much later on. Certainly much later than the advent of FORUMS or bullboards. Even the comments section of the blog arose from the need to imitate a forum’s capability to entertain other views.
A blog’s worth cannot definitely be measured by page ranks or by links alone. And even that “beauty pageant” of blogs is not an indicative measure of a blog’s success. that pissing contest is only a measure of how a group of bloggers tries to corner the market by distributing amongst themselves the “worth” of their blogs. alarming still, is the trend of commercial journalist trying to grab the “blog niche” to still pander their “views” and “thoughts” on the online community as if their air time or page allotment in dailies are still not enough. i expect still the “blog wars” to further escalate once advertisers get in on the picture. then you’ll really see intense quarrels abt rankings and page views. (and in the US, they’ve already grabbed the chance to charge their readers as some blogs i’ve encountered required the need to register or become a paid member before you can view their blogs)
i am worried abt commercial journalist hogging the limelight and pushing out other enterprising bloggers (by their means of banding together and throwing each other links) bec not only does this restrict the growth of more bloggers, it also thumps the one thing really great abt blogging: discovery of new talent.
in my time of being online, few are blogs i’ve come across that i’d really consider GOLD. and those few aren’t even what others would consider “active” since the author rarely updates regularly or have stopped posting altogether. for exampe, the blogs of my favorite authors aren’t as active as MLQ3’s (understandably, since they spend the bulk of their time writing their books), and aren’t as much linked or have as many daily hits as his, but that certainly doesn’t diminish their worth compared to MLQ3’s blog.
but maybe that’s just me. i am after all, more into poetry and prose than pure politics and everything else. even my blogs (yes with an s) display this inclination.
but if opinions are worth considering, these writers then are those whom I really admire:
Randy David, Michael Tan, Walden Bello, and of course this blog’s author. I had a passing adulation for Billy Esposo until he left PDI and I stopped reading his columns.
Blogging is like a social network. The more “blogger friends” you have, the more are the chances of your blog being linked and having more readers via the word-of-mouth method. This ultimately dooms anti-socials and their blogs, no matter how good it is, until such time that another noted blogger notices it, and passes the word around.
But if there are two things a blogger cannot avoid asking oneself, they are these: are there people really reading what I write? and do they really care?
at which I only have this concern for my own writing: that my works do not pass into the realm of meaningless things that didn’t change a thing or a person. i’d like to think that at least my work served some purpose, no matter how silly that may be.
Define, define, define, define,we’re always defining and redefining. I guess to a lot of people, by defining and redefining they come closer to meaning. No man, no.
john, kilalang kilala mo ako and the others here. if you want i’ll email my old nic to you for as long as you keep it a secret between us. 🙂
as for lurking in ellen’s blog, i am after the topics and commenting where my interest lies but definitely not about the court martial proceedings (an obsession i think for ellen and the regulars). i’m not even interested in any exchange with the regulars there.
regarding erap, i’m equally turned-off with those anti-erap commenters before who are now defending him and even calling for his release just because they are saying that the crimes of gloria are worse than erap. kagaya ng sinabi mo mga hypokrito ang mga taong ganyan. for me, pare-pareho lang ang dalawa na dapat ikulong.
Blog Popularity:
I’ve looked up all your blogs here. Self-indulgence – let’s put it another way – a blog full of the suthor’s solipsism seems like the straightest way blog limbo. One of the reasons MLQ3’s blog is popular (he says 2k unix a day) is that he links to other notable blogs and sites on the Web. If it’s all about his opinions and reposts of his column, only 200 people will visit every day.
Be useful. Pushing your opinions on other people feels like rape. Want your blog to be popular, go for news. Less opinions.
Interesting exchanges of comments here. I’m learning a lot of new things, including my observation that so many people here seem to have too much free time on their hands, LOL. Lotsa self-indulgence going on, but heck it’s fun to do and fun to read.
The PCIJ Blog has lost its appeal not only when Ms. Sheila left, but also when it stops being anti-Gloria! That is the truth! I am once a blogger there!
Down with those Luddites! Hahaha.