Web prowl
The Economist endorses John Kerry here and reports here on the Homo floresiensis, the new hominid species discovered in Indonesia. Read The Transparency International
Corruption Perceptions Index 2004, where the Philippines ranked alongside Eritrea and Uganda. Here's a blog for classical music aficionados by the classical music critic of The Hudson Review. Download the eDonkey, the p2p program that has recently overtaken Kazaa in popularity.

Why we read blogs
In the novel Checkpoint, Jay, the exasperated former teacher who plots to assassinate President Bush, says that he spends hours reading blogs. A would-be assassin reading blogs—stretching our credulity? Nah. Blogs are so ubiquitous and popular now that a would-be assassin reading blogs is just as natural and plausible as a pimply fourteen-year-old writing one.

Why do we bother reading blogs? There are far too many books to read and too little time to read them before we die, why spend precious time reading, much less commenting on, blogs?

I myself mostly read informational blogs with links to articles/essays I would otherwise have missed, but from time to time I chance to find interesting blogs that are online journals of anonymous bloggers. Most of these blogs are uninteresting and juvenile, but some are as engrossing as any other good pulp fiction. Sometimes, the anonymous blogger’s personality would so pique my interest that I would begin clicking the archives beginning from day one. On this day in September, this particular blogger tells us, she and her boyfriend broke up on account of a singularly slutty girl from the neighboring College of Arts and Letters, who inexplicably dazzled her boyfriend with Shakespeare and Dostoevsky. Another blogger writes that on such and such night, while clubbing at Eastwood, he was suddenly confronted by the cosmic insufficiency of his physical looks upon sharing a table with Cogie Domingo. Yet another blogger writes about the dilemma he faced when he met Imelda Marcos in the living room of a friend’s house: should he harangue Mrs. Marcos on the human rights abuses of the conjugal dictatorship? Or would a stiff upper lip suffice to protest?

For readers with more voyeuristic inclinations, there are also bloggers who chronicle their sexual activities a la Xerex or Anais Nin. But as far as I know, no Filipino blog yet corresponds with the now defunct British Belle de jour, the, er, vivid blog of a high-class call girl.

I have friends who write blogs, but, no matter how I prod them, they never deign to give me their web addresses. And I understand. They pour out their deepest sentiments onto their blogs and to let someone they actually know get access to those sentiments can be, well, frightening. They are, in their writing, exposing vulnerabilities, telling their blog readers things about themselves they would normally be ashamed or diffident to tell people they actually know.

In the secular and godless world of our country’s youth, the blogosphere has taken the place of the confessional, each comment triggered by each post an absolution. Through these confessional blogs, we meet people without the civilizational affectations they put on in the outside world, offering us a view of pure undistilled humanity.

Reading all those blogs, what have I learned? That bloggers are just like normal people we meet during the course of our lives. They are either:
1) happily in love ; 2) has fallen out of love and; 3) desperately wanting to fall in love. All of us, of course, think we’re just in a transition, that the youthful exuberance of our days can somehow deny the inevitable possibility that we could be stuck for good.

Second Call for Proposals for the year 2005/2006 -- European Commission's (EC) Erasmus Mundus Programme
The programme supports European top quality Masters Courses and provides EU-funded scholarships for third country nationals participating in these Masters Courses as well as scholarships for EU nationals studying in third countries. The programme comprises four concrete actions, namely : (Action 1) Erasmus Mundus Masters Courses; (Action 2) Erasmus Mundus Scholarships; (Action 3) Partnerships; and (Action 4) Enhancing Attractiveness. Participation of third country nationals is foreseen in Actions 2, 3 and 4. The deadlines are as follows: Action 1 - 31 October 2004, Action 2 - 31 March 2005, and Action 3 - 31 May 2005. Click here for the website.

Che Guevara, On revolutionary medicine:

We must review again each of our lives, what we did and thought... We must do this with profound critical zeal and arrive finally at the conclusion that almost everything we thought and felt in that past period ought to be deposited in an archive, and a new type of human being created.

Song of the moment
Currently listening to Jiang Jun by Zhou Jie Lun (the music video’s cool too):

The tip of time all pointing towards you, losing the place to which you will return,
You will advance but in the end you still have to get used to surrendering
The results have been determined, the 6th step will be your greatest mistake,
I restrain from making any movement, used to plotting in silence
First hand with a cannon is just a polite gesture
Horse acting as a screen, remaining calm so that I can overcome strength with gentleness

This bloodless battle will only have the pride wounded
The rules of winner and loser is no different from the reality,

Watch me, my fingers relaxed, my eyes sharp as a dragon, treat the enemy as invisible
Having endless strategies, my attack swift as the wind, with a single chariot running over your dispirited face

Facing the tides, I am deducing what is overcoming movement with inactivity, wondering if the mist in the woods can be a smokescreen

In the end, my plot will succeed and you will give up defending,
I looked up into the sunset, your head lowered leaving the scene in silence
Listening to me as I talk about success and failure is common, you don’t have to take it to heart, because I am only fitted to be the one and only.

The General joins The Lady
While we are immersed in the spectacular fall of our own Gen. Garcia (courtesy of his reckless son and multiloquent wife), here comes news from Burma of a far more spectacular fall: Gen. Khin Nyunt, the prime minister, has been arrested on charges of corruption and is now, as BBC reports, under house arrest.

Khin Nyunt belongs to the troika of powerful generals--the other two are Than Shwe and Maung Aye--who control the military junta in Burma. It was only a year ago when Khin Nyunt was demoted to the prime ministership. His arrest now can thus be seen as the culmination of the long-rumored power struggle among the three generals.

This is sad news for Burmese democracy activists all around the world. Khin Nyunt was widely seen as the more progressive and reasonable of the generals, favouring talks with pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. After his appointment as prime minister, he announced a seven-point roadmap to democracy.

It has been a favorite political pipe dream in many a Burmese activist's mind that Khin Nyunt would bolt out of the SPDC, ally himself with Aung San Suu Kyi and seize power in a People Power revolution. Who could have known he'd just end up under house arrest himself? Tsk, truly sad news.

Hong Kong, Southeast Asia
Yesterday night I happened to catch my sister watching a Hong Kong travelogue with Korina Sanchez on ABS-CBN.. Hoping that my sister would gradually lose interest and surrender the remote to me, I stayed for some time in front of the TV, intent on switching to Channel V the soonest I get the chance.

So there I was half-heartedly watching when suddenly I heard Korina saying that Hong Kong can be found in Southeast Asia. I almost fell off my chair: Hong Kong is certainly NOT in Southeast Asia--unless there had been some major tectonic movement in the past week.

And then after a few minutes, to further plunge the nation into hitherto unexplored depths of ignorance, Korina introduced an aquarium in Hong Kong as being “the biggest in the world.” How could that possibly be when I saw in one documentary a far bigger aquarium in Okinawa, Japan. That one had a whale inside; all I saw on Korina’s purported biggest aquarium in the world was a fairly large stingray.

The travelogue also featured Taheebo, a medicinal concoction, Korina informed us, that is imported from Brazil. Now, why would she think we would be interested to hear about Taheebo from Brazil on a Hong Kong travelogue? That portion, it turned out, was brought to her TV audience courtesy of Taheebo the company itself.

Has Sunday night primetime programming on ABS-CBN fallen this low? Or was Korina’s staff so smitten with Hong Kong it had no time to check the facts?

The snoring general
Obstructive sleep apnea, the ailment that has prevented Gen. Garcia from attending the investigations in aid of legislation (i.e. congressional circus), is, according to this Manila Times editorial, nothing worse than snoring. Well, doctors can be just as misleading as lawyers once they put their mind into it.

ASEAN Research Scholars
The Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore invites applications from ASEAN citizens (except Singaporeans) enrolled for an advanced degree at a university in an ASEAN country for consideration as ASEAN Research Scholars. These fellowships are offered to students working in the Humanities and Social Sciences on Asian topics, and will allow the recipients to be based at NUS for a period of three months. The aim of the fellowships is to enable scholars to make full use of the wide range of resources held in the libraries of NUS and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Scholars will be expected to commence on 1 April 2005.

Successful candidates can expect the following benefits:

a. A monthly allowance of SGD$1,750 which will be subject to tax
b. A one time travel subsidy of up to SGD$1,000 on a reimbursement basis upon being accepted for the fellowship.
c. Access to library and computer resources on campus.

Applicants are invited to email/facsimile/mail their curriculum vitae, a 2-page outline of their research proposal in English (this may be accompanied by a longer statement in a Southeast Asian language) to the address below by 15 November 2004. Arrangements should also be made by which at least two letters of reference, one of which is from your principal supervisor, are sent confidentially to the same address by the same deadline. The research proposal must include the following details:
1) how the fellowship will contribute to the research; 2) the types of
sources to be consulted in Singapore; 3) proposed work plan during the
fellowship.

You can look forward to excellent library and internet computer facilities at NUS' main library
(<library at the Institute of South East Asian Studies (ISEAS) [<
Manager
Asia Research Institute
5 Arts Link
Level 4 Shaw Foundation Building, AS7
Singapore 117570
Email: joinari@nus.edu.sg
Fax : 65 67791428
Website: <

Utada Hikaru
The Washington Post has a feature story on Japanese pop princess Utada Hikaru, who has recently dropped out from Columbia because "it wasn't as difficult as I was hoping it would be." She also has recently released her first English album. Here is what she has to say about her early marriage (she married at 19):

"When I first got married, everyone said, 'You're too young' and 'Why don't you wait?' I figured a lot of marriages fail, right? . . . If I waited until I was 35, I wouldn't be better equipped or more prepared to be married than I am now."

Invite
Inaanyayahan po namin kayo sa taunang Lilt & the Verve isang poetry reading na gaganapin sa BOBS CAFE, torre lorenzo towers,taft cor vito cruz, manila(below Starbucks) sa October 22,2004 ng 7:30 ng gabi.

Isang maliit po itong selebrasyon para ipagdiwang ang pang 20 taon namin bilang literary and arts folio ng De La Salle University.

Ibebenta po ang mga tickets ng P 75 na may kasamang libreng 'drink' at finger foods. Sana suportahan po natin dahil parte ng malilikom na halaga ay mapupunta sa fund ng isang premyadong manunulat na syang unang bumuo ng aming organisasyon noon 1980's.

Salamat at mabuhay po ang mga alagad ng sining! Kung interesado po kayong magperform ng spoken word or poetry performance-hybrid itext nyo lang po ako ASAP sa numerong
09166108151 para maayos po natin sa programa.

The rich are different from you and me
What was Gen, Garcia's wife thinking when she made all those incriminating declarations of affluence? Was she on medication or what? The haughtiness was reminiscent of Queen Antoinette of France who, when told the people of Paris had no bread to eat, memorably quipped, "Let them eat cake." The queen's head was hacked off; it is doubtful whether Gen. Garcia would ever spend a day in jail.

I myself have grown jaded with systemic government corruption that my thinking now is that: If you must corrupt the government's coffers, please be at least discreet about it because I don't want to read about all the venal details on the papers. It is unnerving for proles to hear tales of grandeur.

Few weeks ago, I had the same feeling when I heard of GSIS executive Garcia's taking a loan to buy a Volvo. How would you feel about the Volvo if you were on those GSIS queus waiting for your benefits to be released for the fourth week? The gall.

Now, I don't know whether the allegations hurled against him are true, but this I know: Garcia must be incompetent. Why? Because it is a basic principle of sound personal financial management never to buy a car using a loan. A car is a non-performing asset; it doesn't earn you anything. (Even Megastar Sharon Cuneta knows this. I saw her dispensing financial advise on young stars once, telling them not to buy a car unless they are in solid enough financial situation to buy three or four of them.) Garcia is also probably married so he wouldn't be wanting to impress the girls with a brand new car now, would he?

How can we we expect Garcia to soundly manage GSIS finances when he himself doesn't know how to manage his. With his Volvo-buying-on-a-loan spendthrift ways, he would probably end up bankrupt soon.

How will American novelists vote?
Amy Tan is for Kerry "because I have a brain and so does he." Jonathan Franzen is also for Kerry because inter alia Kerry's wife is "hot hot hot." See your favorite American novelists' political preference here.

From The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath:

I said maybe if you loved a woman it wouldn't seem so boring, but Eric said it would be spoiled by thinking this woman too was just an animal like the rest, so if he loved anybody he would never go to bed with her. He'd go to a whore if he had to and keep the woman he loved free of all that dirty business.

Interview
Time magazine interviews Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai.

Che Guevara in Peronist Argentina
He helped liberate Cuba, tried to foment a revolution in Zaire, unsuccessfully led an insurrection in Bolivia; but why did the internationalist Che Guevara overlook his home country Argentina?

When asked why he wouldn't join the protests against the authoritarian regime of Juan Peron (Che's parents were rabidly anti-Peronist and, of course, upper middle class), the young Che was reported to have testily retorted, "only if you would give me a gun."

Incidentally, did you know that, contrary to what was portrayed in a famous musical, Che Guevara's only interaction with Evita Peron was when he in his youth wrote her a letter asking for a Jeep? I often wonder whatever happened to that letter: the most famous Latin American in twentieth century addressing the most powerful woman in perhaps all of the continent's history.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
I would never have picked up The Bell Jar had it not been the selection of the online book club I joined recently. Sylvia Plath was the poet who killed herself by shoving her head into the oven. I had consciously avoided authors like Sylvia Plath for a long time ever since reading about a character in Larry Mcmurtry' Evening Star who was obsessed with Camus and ended up in prison with a shitty view of life and human nature. I had then lumped Camus, Woolf, Dostoevsky, Sartre (exactly how many philo majors had this philosopher corrupted? was my thought then) under the heading "suspect literature," never to be touched.

The nice thing about being forced to read a book (like in school) is that sometimes you end up really liking it. As I did The Bell Jar. The book is an autobiographical story of a girl's descent into madness and subsequent rehabilitation. It is more or less a retelling of Plath's actual experiences when she was about to graduate from her college: her winning of writing prizes, her straight A's, her being rejected in a creative-writing class, her early suicide attempts.

How to describe the book? The narrator Esther is Holden Caulfield-- only female, smarter and neurotic. If you are interested to know how it is to more or less suffer a nervous breakdown and spend time in a mental asylum, reading The Bell Jar would be time well spent. I found the ending particularly touching. Esther was waiting to be called for her final interview before she gets approved to leave the mental asylum for good, and she was not quite sure whether she was sane enough:

But I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure at all. How did I know that someday - at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere - the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?
xxx
I had hoped, at my departure, I would feel sure and knowledgeable about everything that lay ahead - after all, I had been "analyzed." Instead, all I could see were question marks. I kept shooting impatient glances at the closed boardroom door. My stocking seams were straight, my black shoes cracked, but polished, and my red wool suit flamboyant as my plans. Something old, something new. . .

But I wasn't getting married. There ought, I thought, to be a ritual for being born twice - patched, retreaded and approved for the road, I was trying to think of an appropriate one when Doctor Nolan appeared from nowhere and touched me on the shoulder.

"All right, Esther."I rose and followed her to the open door.

Pausing, for a brief breath, on the threshold, I saw the silver-haired doctor who had told me about the rivers and the Pilgrims on my first day, and the pocked, cadaverous face of Miss Huey, and eyes I thought I had recognized over white masks.
The eyes and the faces all turned themselves toward me, and guiding myself by them, as by a magical thread, I stepped into the room.

We know that years after that incident, the bell jar again descended on Sylvia Plath. In the imagination of every student of literature, Sylvia Plath in her kitchen dying of gas asphyxiation looms as large as the image of Virginia Woolf wading into the river to drown, or closer to home, Maningning Miclat jumping off the FEU building with a bunch of flowers.

Book launch
Liktao at Epiko: Ang Takip ng Tapayang Libingan ng Libmanan, Camarines Sur by Dr. Zeus Salazar will be launched at the Museo Conciliar del Seminario de Nueva Caceres in Naga City on October 15 at 2:00 P.M.

The archaelogical find (liktao) is a burial jar cover found in Libmanan, Camarines Sur which has since been donated to the Museo by collector and archaelogy enthusiast Ermelo M. Almeda. The find has been a subject of an earlier study by retired UP professor Dr. Ma. Lilia F. Realubit and Ermelo M. Almeda. UP professor Dr. Ma. Lilia F. Realubit says, “Liktao at Epiko provides archaelogical evidence for the Bicol epic of Ibalong and the kingdom of Handiong.”

Salazar provides a detailed analysis of the jar cover and links it to other Philippine and Asian cultural traditions. Writing in Filipino, Salazar provides evidence that Libmanan could well be the first socio-political center in the Bicol peninsula. “Ang Libmanan ay isa sa mga imporanteng sentro ng pagbubuo ng estado sa Pilipinas mula pa noong unang mga dantaon B.K.”

Dr. Zeus A. Salazar received his doctorate in ethnology from Sorbonne University and degree in AB History (summa cum laude) at UP. Salazar was among those anthropologists who revealed the “Tasaday Hoax” and conceptualized the “Pantayaong Pananaw and “Bagong Historiograpiyang Filipino”. Now retired from teaching, Salazar devotes his time to writing. He also just finished a two-volume book on Pres. Estrada. Salazar hails from Tiwi, Albay.

Dr. Realubit, chair of the book launch, says that a lecture by the author will follow the book launch.

Songs heard lately
Obsesion by Aventura
Infinitely danceable sound from a bachata band from the Dominican Republic. Currently number one in at least one world music chart I saw.

All Nite by Janet Jackson
Janet Jackson may no longer be Beyonce hot as she was in the eighties, but she still has her groove. Definitely bigger than Michael Jackson now. Wardrobe malfunction was a good career move.

Let's get it started by Black Eyed Peas
Weeks ago, I was talking about Black Eyed Peas with a fifty-year-old man. I was surprised Black Eyed Peas has such a huge fan base. Apparently, the man was fascinated by the life story of Apol, which he saw on Maalaala Mo Kaya ( or magpakailanman? ). He said he couldn't help but listen to the band because his son, a huge fan, is practicing some dance steps for school. I suspect even Digs Dilangalen is a fan.

Burn by Usher
Usher has given the phrase kiss and tell a whole new dimension. And only a genuine megawatt superstar can get away with such a girlie dance sequence (as Usher can be seen executing at the end of his Burn music video).

If I Ain't Got You by Alicia Keys
Keys seems to me a Mary J. Blige wannabee, but in this song at least she pulls it off.

Web prowl
How do French politicians prove they've got what it takes to hold public office? They write lots of books, according to Newsweek. The PCIJ reports on the dwindling circulation of Philippine newspapers. Britain's St Andrews University has launched The Poetry House, which aims to be "the most authoritative guide to information about poetry across the English-speaking world." The political scientist Stanley Hoffman calls for the withdrawal of American troops in Iraq .

Love pakshet
The blog Love finds its reason asks:

Ang kalapati, sabi nila, kailangang ikulong sa bahay nya ng tatlong buwan, para kapag lumipad na sya kasama ng iba pang kalapati ng kapitbahay, pagdating ng hapon sa iyo sya babalik.
Pero bakit ang puso ko, ikinulong ko ng anim na buwan, nang pakawalan ko hindi na bumalik sa akin?

Elfriede Jelinek, Nobel Prize winner
The Nobel guessing game for literature is over. This year's Nobel laureate is the Austrian novelist and playwright Elfriede Jelinek (read the Nobel bibliographical notes here). The Nobel committee cites her "musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power." If you read German, she has her homepage here.

I gather that Jelinek was in nobody's shortlist to win this year's prize. Names bandied about were those of Vargas LLosa, Atwood, Adonis, Roth, Kundera, Ismail Kadare of Albania. As usual, the announcement of Jelinek's name has elicited dissent from the literati. Why, those in the know say, Peter Handke is the more deserving Austrian. An anonymous reviewer for Amazon has this to say:

The only point to the exercise, whether with the knife, or any of Jelinek's books, is to immerse yourself in the low, degraded, human experience of being a piece of meat and nothing more. This writing is on par with the notes left behind by the psychotics at Columbine, the rambling of the Unabomber, etc. There is no art here, and nothing to be learned.

I haven't read any Jelinek so I wouldn't really know. Amazon has four of her books for sale: The Piano Teacher, Lust, Women as Lovers, and Wonderful, Wonderful Times. To sample her kind of writing without placing an order online, you can read her take on Brecht and a piece called I want to be shallow.

Filipino-American idol
Jasmine Trias was mobbed at the airport. I wish Camille Velasco would also come to the P.I. I don't know if it's just me, but I always thought Velasco was the more talented one.

Mys sister also told me that Velasco, unlike Trias, didn't come to the audition with a coterie of supporters and well-wishers. Velasco went alone.

I don't know how to judge singing, but Trias's voice sounds generic to me. Velasco's singing voice, with that timbre of hurt buried deep inside and betrayed by her vocal trills, is more distinguishable (I immensely liked her rendition of One Last Cry). Velasco was also the prettiest among the American idol finalists.

When you come to really think about it, what one needs to be a pop star is not so much a perfect voice but a distinguishable one. Just look at where Barbra Streisand's croaking voice brought her. And who said Ely Buendia can sing?

Hungry people who need people
The government took a fine time to introduce welfare state policies. In the midst of a fiscal crisis, the Arroyo administration is now seriously considering a six-billion-per-month food voucher program to alleviate the hunger felt by 15.1% of Filipino households.

What makes this news interesting is that the food program has drawn criticism from the CBCP and certain leftist groups, people you would normally associate with such programs. CBCP public affairs head Bishop Deogracias Iñiguez even called the program a mere "palliative measure" that would be ineffective in the long run. This got me thinking. Father, if I were hungry, with nothing to buy me food, with no one to loan me money, I wouldn't really care whether the food-voucher program is a mere palliative measure ineffective in the long term as long as it palliates my hunger. If I eat nothing, in the long term I would be dead.

The hunger statistic is not as bad as it looks though. The SWS survey says that of the 15.1 percent of households experiencing hunger only 3.3 % experience it ALWAYS.

I think Sec. Bunye said it well: "Relief, however temporary, is called for as we lead on in the more fundamental and larger reforms that would deal with poverty permanently." One quick caveat though: The government should better deliver those "fundamental and larger reforms" because dole-out measures like the food-voucher program are habit-forming. Once we get used to it, we'd begin feeling we couldn't live without it.

Pinoypoets workshop
Anyone interested to join the 1st Pinoypoets Poetry Writing Workshop scheduled on Nov 13-14 to be held in Antipolo? Panelists include established/ published poets/ Palanca awardees.

Please check out groups.yahoo.com/group/pinoypoets for details.

A farewell to Hillary's dreams of world domination?
Vince Morris, a reporter for the New York Post, was incredulous when political strategist/Bush factotom Karl Rove claimed that last week's presidential debate was President George W. Bush's best. The reporter asked Rove: "Really? You can say that with a straight face?"

Of course not. Bush lost that debate. He was surly and seemed to be not in control of facts. Kerry made full use of his patrician air (that grayish hair, the almost Jewish nose, the demeanor that seems to suggest Shakespeare) and looked more presidential than the US president himself. The conventional analysis suggests that the debate gave Kerry a new momentum to catch up with the front-runner Bush. Kerry has once again a fighting chance, they say.

Does this mean goodbye to Hillary's dreams of world domination? If Kerry wins, John Edwards will be vice-president and heir to the throne, effectively sidelining Hillary. And anybody who has seen John Edwards smile can imagine how formidable a presidential campaigner he could be. Besides, pace feminists, Hillary isn't getting any younger.

Some people argue, including Clintonites no doubt, that the coming November election is a good one for the Democratic party to lose. A second term for Bush would probably preside over a second Vietnam in Iraq and an economic downturn to boot. The GOP would therefore get the blame, thereby brightening the prospects of the Democrats in the long term -- including Hillary's in the 2008 elections.

The heart bypass of Bill Clinton therefore came in a most opportune time. He got an excuse not to campaign for Kerry, without alienating those Democrats who support the latter's candidacy. If Kerry botches next month's elections, Bill Clinton may be back at the Oval office in four years' time. With more free time to entertain the interns.

Star Cinema screenwriting scholarship
A month-long program to be handled by Philippine Cinema's premiere writers designed to discover and develop aspiring screenwriters.

Official application forms may be obtained at the Star Cinema Creative Department, 3rd Floor, ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp., Sgt. Esguerra Ave., Diliman, Quezon City.

For more details, call 415-2272 local 3931 or email Carmi_Raymundo@abs.pinoycentral.com.Deadline of applications is on October 6, 2004.

New blog
George Soros has a blog here.