Friday, November 04, 2016

Philippine news

well, we've had a Jewish guy, a black guy, and a woman as ambassador. We seem to get a new one every year. So how can they top this?

The new US ambassador to the Philippines is ASIAN! A Korean born American..

Guess all East Asians look a alike to the US State Department. Of course, Korean culture is not the same as that in the Philippines, but never mind. He'll feel right at home; acccording to Wikipedia, 80 thousand Koreans live here, and they are prominent  in Baguio, where Koreans come to learn English...

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Yes, retire to the Philippines and live a nice quiet life in a romantic primitive village: complete with cellphone texting teens.

Headline: 59 percent of Philippine teens can't live without their cellphones.

everyone here has one, even my maid. You buy a "load" for 25 pesos (fifty cents) and text away.

but the more affluent use smart phones, often using them as a computer for youtube, photos, and all sorts of social media, especially teens. Ruby is on hers constantly, and is a twitter freak.

or course, it's hard to find a place without cellphones now: even my friend in Africa has had access to one for several years. IBT has an article about the surge in cellphone use in subSaharan Africa. This not only includes sending messages (text messaging is very cheap) but photos, films, and as "mobile money". Pew report here.

Hmm.. Gary Larson needs to update his famous cartoon: They'd be watching their movies on their iPones, not using VCR's today.



what you have to remember is that people share the cellphones, so although you might see one person "owning" and texting like our teens, what is more common is that you will also find a lot of people who have access to the cellphone of their cousin or brother.

celphones are one of the biggest changes in the modern world, and unlike the internet, how it has changed culture is rarely discussed.

this 2011 article at StrategyPage discusses the implications of using cellphones by citizen journalists in countries with dictators who control the internet.

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The big news in the Philippines: The Pacquio Varga fight is on.

the country will shut down on Sunday morning to watch.


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