A Kingly Adieu To The King Of Talk: Larry King

The king is not dead but we will miss his show.

Photo From CNN.com

After 50,000 interviews, 6,120 shows and 53 years of broadcasting, CNN's Larry King finally hung up his suspenders but of course, you cannot expect this extraordinary guy to just fade away. Its simply not the King's way of doing things and there's no way Ted Turner will let him go.

I practically grew watching Larry King Live. From the time we first got our cable connection (about high school or early college) to the present day whenever there's an opportunity, I was always fascinated and amazed on how this man makes his interviewee so at ease, so comfortable yet at the same time manage stick to the main interview topic like industrial strength glue.

He doesn't patronize his guests but at the same you can feel the connection & trust between both interviewer and interviewee without selling out his mission as a journalist.

Another thing you will notice with the King, he is always in control of his entire interview regardless who is front of him sharing his iconic mic, whether its a queen, a head of state, a celebrity or some big shot CEO. The King bows to no one except his audience who is his real king as far as he is concerned and that's why he rules.

And while it's pointless to compare Mr. King and some of our own local talk show host (oranges and banana), you cannot help but notice how most Filipino interviewers and host tend to talk more than their guests! 

I was expecting these celebrity hosts have learned the virtues brevity from their overuse and abuse of Twitter but then when you have inexperienced and untrained people taking on a journalists job, you cannot expect too much as far as professional results are concerned.

Maybe these talk show hosts should take their cue from Larry when he said: "...if it's more than 2 sentences, it's too long."

And so to the king, I bid you adieu and thank you.

The air is dead! Long live the king!

World News: Facebook's Zuckerberg - Time Magazine's Man Of The Year

If there's any more strong proof that Facebook and the rest of the social media world has gone mainstream, this is it.

Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg is Time Magazine's 2010 Man Of The Year. Image / Photo from Time.com

Just hours ago, CNN reported that Time Magazine has named Facebook founder, Mark Zukerberg as its 2010 Man Of The Year edging out Wikileaks.org's Julian Assange and a strong U.S. conservative political movement, the The Tea Party.

Time Magazine explains its choice saying:

"Facebook has merged with the social fabric of American life, and not just American but human life: nearly half of all Americans have a Facebook account, but 70% of Facebook users live outside the U.S. It's a permanent fact of our global social reality. We have entered the Facebook age, and Mark Zuckerberg is the man who brought us here."

Time Magazine's editors further noted:

"Zuckerberg wired together a twelfth of humanity into a single network, thereby creating a social entity almost twice as large as the U.S."

"For connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them (something that has never been done before); for creating a new system of exchanging information that has become both indispensable and sometimes a little scary; and finally, for changing how we all live our lives in ways that are innovative and even optimistic, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is TIME's 2010" Person of the Year. 

You can read the entire editor's choice summary at the Time Magazine website.

As I've noted earlier, social media is indeed mainstream and has never been the fad.

In 2006, Time also selected as person of the year: YOU (us..as in you and me) for:

"...for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game..."

This basically means we are the creator of our own content (social media) and we share and connect that content whether its our thoughts, feelings, convictions and opinions to the rest of the world.

Now, Facebook has taken that natural need to share several steps higher.

As humans, we always connected with each other with or without the tech.

How we love to talk and pass time with friends and relatives. We share stories, photos and experiences during physical gatherings like birthdays, weddings and even funerals. We tell people we trust how we feel and our opinions on what's happening all around us.

Facebook and the rest of the social media world just provided a platform for all us to connect better with our existing social circles. The social network has always been there and its only recently that technology has provided us the means to make it much easier.

This is the reason why people love Facebook and other social media platforms. It supplements and takes our our existingocial networking activities to faster and higher level. It is isn't a surprise at all to find people using Facebook on a daily basis (50% of 500Million users making it the most visited site in the internet, surpassing Google).

For providing this unique tool and a higher level of real life social networking experience, I say I agree with Time Magazine's choice for this year's Man Of The Year recognition.

How about you, do you agree with Time's choice?

Sleeping Makes You More Beautiful - Study

It turns out you don't need lots of money to look more pretty or handsome. In fact, you don't have to shell out anything.

All you have to do is just get some sleep. Actually, lots of it


A recent BBC report says researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm found people deprived of sleep for long periods appear less attractive and more unhealthy than those who are well rested.

Image from BBC.co.uk

 While the concept of beauty sleep among women (and some men) have long been around, this is the first time the long held myth had some scientific basis.

Now what are the implications of this study?

For one, you can now use health and aesthetics as excellent excuses why you...


* Fell asleep during a boring university lecture or political speech

* Keep yawning whenever a friend's joke bombs & you just don't the heart to tell him or her its so corny

* Can't have sex with your spouse or partner ("Honey, I want to look good for you.")

* Dozed off in church (Health & cleanliness is next to godliness).

Seriously, maybe employers would now consider one-hour power naps for front line employees? Not only would a siesta improve the appearances of the workers, it would also energize them as well.

How about you, any other situations you can think of where sleeping for beauty can be legitimately used? Leave a comment.

By the way, you can read the entire BBC report / article here.

Reopened Vizconde Case: Let's Start With Jessica Alfaro

Will the Vizconde family ever get justice?

Following yesterday's acquittal of Hubert Webb & company by the Supreme Court, the police are now back to square one and after almost 20 years, all leads have gone cold and whatever evidence still remaining, of little value.

And somewhere out there, the real criminals are free and moving around (maybe in your neighborhood too) as they please, assuming of course that the SC has made the right decision of declaring Webb & co-accused innocent.

So how do you track and nail down murder suspects for a crime committed 2 decades ago considering...

* You already have 3 sets of suspects (including Webb & co-accused) and all of them were set free by the courts for either lack of evidence or illegally extracted confessions

* Practically all physical evidence from the crime scene were destroyed by PO1 Biong

* Most of the public still think Hubert Webb and his 'friends' did it, despite the SC saying otherwise

Star Witness Jessica Alfaro (Image from Philstar.com)

Well...how about we start with the primary state witness herself: Jessica Alfaro.

It is a well-known fact that the then National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Anti-Kidnapping & Organized Crime Head Agent, Artemio Sacaguing testified that Jessica Alfaro was never an eye witness to the entire crime.

What he told the court was this: she knew someone who knows about the crime details but since this person doesn't want to testify, she will instead take the place of that witness. The exact words were: 'Papapelan ko, Papapelan ko lang yan.'

Here's an interesting note: the Prosecution never refuted or rebutted Atty. Sacaguing's testimony. Why?


By the way, this testimony was documented and was also used as one of the bases for Court of Appeals Justice Renato Dacudao to cast a dissenting vote when the Vizconde case was reviewed.

Since Jessica Alfaro claims to know so much about the case and its been established in court (never refuted) that she merely has taken the witness role herself in lieu supposedly of the 'real witness', then its only  natural that any reopening of the case will start with her & hopefully this time we can ferret out truth from fiction.

What do you think? Should the authorities start the reinvestigation of the Vizconde massacre with Jessica Alfaro?

Vizconde Massacre Case: Hubert Webb & Company Off The Hook, What Now?

Now that Philippine Supreme Court acquitted Hubert Webb and company for the rape and murder of Carmela, Estrelita and Jennifer Vizconde, the question now is...what now? 

Hubert Webb (image from wikipilinas.org)

So who really killed the Vizconde ladies? We are now back to square one and if I remember correctly way back in the early 90s, there were what...two (2)..no make that three (3) sets of suspects. One group were a bunch of alledged Akyat Bahay (Burglar/Stick up artists) while the others were a mish mash of ordinary construction workers.

All of them were freed after police were found to have tortured these suspects into signing confessions (why am I not surprised) and a few of them showed torture marks.

The Vizconde victims: (L-R) Jennifer, Estrelita & Carmela

This is a real tragedy either way you look at it. So many innocent people have suffered already. Starting with the Vizconde victims, husband & surviving member Lauro, the tortured suspects and possibly Webb & company (if indeed they have nothing to do with the massacre). 

So what do we do with star witness Jessica Alfaro, the woman who set all of these in motion? How about the house helps and the guards who testified that indeed Hubert was in the country at the time of the murders?

By now, if indeed Web, et al are completely innocent, the guilty parties have long disappeared and the chance of getting one of them is practically nil.   

Such a tragedy and it's really scary. The real murderers are still out there. Who knows, he may be reading this blog post in an internet cafe or right beside you reading a paper.

It's time to get paranoid!

Metrodome Collapse: Staking Out A Disaster

Staking out a potential story is nothing new. Reporters do that all the time. But in the case of the Minnesota Vikings Metrodome collapse, one sometimes wonder if the lines between grabbing a scoop or an exclusive story & becoming a more active citizen becomes blurred.

If you haven't seen the video on the actual collapse as recorded by the Fox News team, here it is:



I'm not a structural engineer but when I sense something is wrong with a bridge or a structure and becomes a potential threat, I won't just leave behind a camera to record stuff and hope to get a billion youtube views. I'd call the authorities and ask them to take a look at it. You would do the same thing right?

Well, granted that Fox just gathers the news and not make it, don't you think they have a 'moral obligation' to discuss things with the stadium owner?

How about you, what do you think?

Pinoy News & World Events: Space Of Mind

The great thing about cyberspace is that you never run out of it. As a real estate practitioner, I'm always tied to the idea that space is a precious and inelastic commodity. Well, not here online. You can have all the space you need if the discussions on Facebook and Twitter gets too intense and you need more time (and well...space) to expand your views.

What to expect from the blog?

* Top news stories from around the world with no subject to be adult oriented to be considered taboo (uhmmm except for mutilations, sex with animals, children, and other creepy stuff...you get the picture)

* News from all over the Philippines and not just from Manila & the other well known places

* Fearless views (sounds like an Inquirer tagline) and comments from me and you

* Videos, photos...relevant stuff

* Much more...

So what's my niche? Frankly, I have no niche...it's all topics under the sun. So there.