The smartest birds are members of the crow family

Of about the 10,000 species of birds in the world, the most intelligent are crows and their cousins: ravens, jackdaws, jays, and magpies. They can be taught, very quickly, to speak.

Sikreto sa kapangyarihan at tagumpay

Marami nang naisulat tungkol sa mga mahahalagang katangian na kailangang taglayin ng isang tao upang makamit ang hinahangad na tagumpay. Para sa isang matagumpay na mangangalakal, maaaring sabihin nitong sipag at tiyaga ang naging sikreto sa tinatamasang karangyaan. Maaari rin niyang sabihin ang pagiging maabilidad ang kanyang naging sandigan sa mga hamon ng buhay. Kung sa perspektibo naman ng isang Machiavellian, katanggap-tanggap na manggulang ng kapwa upang makamit ang tagumpay na ninanais sa anyo ng kapangyarihan. Eh paano naman kung nakasalalay sa isa o ilang tao ang susi sa inaasam mong kapangyarihan o tagumpay? Ang sagot diyan: Siguraduhin mong "gusto" o kasundo ka ng taong tulay sa iyong mga mithiin. Bakit mas pinipili ng mga partidong pulitikal ang mga artista, boksingero, basketball coach kaysa sa mga kandidatong mas kwalipikado sa posisyong tinatakbuhan? Napaka-simple diba? Dahil mas "gusto" sila ng botante. Huwag na tayong lumayo, sa kahit anong organisasyong kung saan may direktang pakikilahok ang namumuno nito sa pagpili ng mga magiging opisyal ng organisasyon, hindi pipili ang pinuno ng mga taong makakatrabahong hindi niya gusto, kahit sabihin pa natin na ang taong hindi niya pinili ay mas kwalipikado sa taong pinili at kasundo niya. Ano naman ngayon? IMBES NA ANG PINAKA-KWALIPIKADONG TAO ANG NAPIPILI, MAS NAPIPILI ANG MGA TAONG MAS GUSTO AT NAKAKASUNDO NATIN. Mapalad ka kung ang taong iyon ay bukod sa pagiging kagusto-gusto, taglay niya ang mga kwalipikasyon na kinakailangan para sa kaakibat na tungkulin.

*Pagkatapos ng Edsa*

Lumipas na ang ika-6 na anibersaryo ng Edsa Dos na wala man lang akong nabasa o nabalitaang pagdiriwang na kadalasang nagaganap upang gunitain ito. Nakakamangha ang panahon. Kung kahapon gusto mo, kinabukasan isusuka mo na. Marahil wala na ngang makitang dahilan ang mga Pilipino upang ipagdiwang pa ito.

"Ikaw" ang problema!

Dadaan ang mga pulitiko. Ngingiti sa iyo. Kakamayan ka. Ano ang gagawin mo?

1, 2, 3, *poof* and they became crocodiles! Time's up! Ang galing-galing 'no? Parang naglalaro lang.

Panahon na naman ng pagpili at pagdedesisyon. Kabila't kanan ang mga pakitang-tao at paghahalina ng mga kandidato sa samabayanang huhusga sa kanilang kapalaran. Hindi niyo ba napapansin, tuwing halalan lang ang mga 'yan mababait?! Kitang-kita naman ang laking pagbabago sa paligid tuwing papalapit na ang eleksyon. Nakakalungkot pero masaya na ako sa pinunong hindi pabagu-bago ang pagganap sa kanyang tungkulin. Hindi siya mabuti tuwing eleksyon lang. Hindi siya aktibo tuwing eleksyon lang. Hindi siya mapagbigay tuwing eleksyon lang. At lalung-lalo na, hindi siya tao tuwing eleksyon lang. Hayaan na lang niya humusga ang mga tao kung nararapat ba talaga siyang ihalal muli o hindi.

Hindi masama ang pagpapakitang-gilas. Pero kung kaya niyo naman magpakitang-gilas tuwing eleksyon, bakit hindi niyo na lang ginawa 'yan habang hindi pa ganun kataas ang pamumulitika sa bansa hindi tulad ngayong papalapit na ang eleksyon? Mas lalo tuloy nagmumukhang kawawa ang sistema dahil pana-panahon lang ang pagbibigay niyo ng magandang serbisyo sa mga tao. Tapos aasa pa kayo na ibibigay ng tao ang tiwala sa inyo? Hindi niyo ba naiisip na kaya siguro kayo nananalo sa mga posisyong tinatakbuhan niyo dahil wala nang ibang pagpipilian maliban sa inyo? Ngayong papalapit na halalan, huwag niyo muna hanapin ang problema sa paligid niyo. Nasubukan niyo na ba tumingin sa salamin? Baka kasi nandoon lang ang problemang hinahanap niyo. Tingnan niyo. Ngingiti pa 'yan.

Tonight I Can Write by Pablo Neruda

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through the nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night, whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

Musee des Beaux Arts by W.H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in the corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

From the Diary of an Almost Four-Year-Old by Hanan Mikha'il Ashrawi

Tomorrow, the bandages
will come off, I wonder
will I see half and orange,
half an apple, half my
mother's face
with my one remaining eye?

I did not see the bullet
but felt its pain
exploding in my head.
His image did not
vanish, the soldier
with a big gun, unsteady
hands, and a look in
his eyes
I could not understand.

If I can see him so clearly
with my eyes closed,
It could be that inside our heads
we each have one spare set
of eyes
to make up for the ones we lose.

Next month, on my birthday,
I'll have a brand new glass eye,
maybe things will look round
and fat in the middle -
I've gazed through all my marbles,
they made the world look strange.

I hear a nine-month-old
has also lost an eye,
I wonder if my soldier
shot her too - a soldier
looking for little girls who
look him in the eye -
I'm old enough, almost four,
I've seen enough of life,
but she's just a baby
who didn't know any better.

The Diameter of the Bomb by Yehuda Amichai

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
with four dead and eleven wounded.
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard. But the young woman
who was buried in the city she came from,
at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
enlarges the circle considerably,
and the solitary man mourning her death
at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
includes the entire world in the circle.
And I won't even mention the crying of orphans
that reaches up to the throne of God and
beyond, making
a circle with no end and no God.

Eating Poetry by Rumi

My poems resemble the bread of Egypt - one night
Passes over it, and you can't eat it any more.

So gobble them down now, while they're still fresh,
Before the dust of the world settles on them.

Where a poem belongs is here, in the warmth of the chest:
Out in the world it dies of cold.

You've seen fish - put him on dry land,
He quives for a few minutes and then is still.

And even if you eat my poems while they're still fresh,
You still have to bring forward many images yourself.

Actually, friend, what you're eating is your own imagination.
These poems are not just some old sayings and saws.

Walking Around by Pablo Neruda

It happens that I am tired of being a man.
It happens that I go into the tailor's shops and the movies
all shrivelled up, impenetrable, like a felt swan
navigating on a water of origin and ash.

The smell of barber shops makes me sob out loud.
I want nothing but the repose either of stone or of wool.
I want to see no more establishments, no more gardens,
nor merchandise, nor glasses, nor elevators.

It happens that I am tired of my feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It happens that I am tired of being a man.

Just the same it would be delicious
to scare a notary with a cut lily
or knock a nun stone dead with one blow of an ear.
It would be beautiful
to go through the streets with a green knife
shouting until I died of cold.

I do not want to go on being a root in the dark,
hesitating, stretched out, shivering with dreams,
downwards, in the wet tripe of the earth,
soaking it up and thinking, eating every day.

I do not want to be the inheritor of so many misfortunes.
I do not want to continue as a root and as a tomb,
as a solitary tunnel, as a cellar full of corpses,
stiff with cold, dying with pain.

For this reason Monday burns like oil
at the sight of me arriving with my jail-face,
and it howls in passing like a wounded wheel,
and its footsteps towards nightfall are filled with hot blood.

And it shoves me along to certain corners, to certain damp houses,
to hospitals where the bones come out of the windows,
to certain cobbler's shops smelling of vinegar,
to streets horrendous as crevices.

There are birds the colour of sulphur, and horrible intestines
hanging from the doors of the houses which I hate,
there are forgotten sets of teeth in a coffee-pot,
there are mirrors
which should have wept with shame and horror,
there are umbrellas all over the place, and poisons, and navels.

I stride along with calm, with eyes, with shoes,
with fury, with forgetfulness,
I pass, I cross offices and stores full of orthopedic appliances,
and courtyards hung with clothes on wires,
underpants, towels and shirts which weep
slow dirt tears.

The largest bird can’t fly

The ostrich, at more than eight feet tall and 350 pounds, is the tallest and heaviest bird, but it does not fly. It can run at about 35 miles per hour. The wild turkey runs 30 miles per hour, the California roadrunner runs 26 miles per hour, and the common pheasant has been clocked at 21 miles per hour.