MANILA: At a busy tricycle terminal in Manila, driver Edgar Soriano slips a coin into a karaoke machine and belts out his favorite song while waiting for passengers.
Karaoke is wildly popular in the archipelago nation where it’s never too early — or too late — to grab a microphone and sing a tune.
Machines can be found everywhere from cheap bars in far-flung villages to modern KTV joints in the cities, and many families have their own or rent one for parties.
For as little as five pesos (nine US cents) a song, many in the poverty-afflicted country can experience a few minutes of joy in the day.
Soriano, 53, smiles as he stands in a tiny eatery on a hot weekday afternoon singing the lyrics of British musician Albert Hammond’s “When I’m Gone,” which he seems to know by heart.
The karaoke machine is one of six at the terminal, but drivers and passengers waiting for a ride appear unbothered by the competing songs reverberating through speakers.
“I always sing that song, it’s my favorite,” said Soriano, wearing a long-sleeved Jordan top and tracksuit pants.
After consulting a well-thumbed plastic folder of songs, street sweeper Bernardo Aguire, 67, settles on Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” and pops a coin into the slot.
It is a bold choice in a country where the song has reportedly gotten people killed — allegedly because they sang it poorly.
Aguire, unfazed by the stories that have become an urban legend, finishes his rendition unscathed.
Felomina Hernane, 52, owns the eatery where the karaoke machine cranks up at 8:00 a.m. and doesn’t stop until 10:00 p.m. or later, seven days a week.
She bought the machine to attract customers and it’s been a boon to earnings, bringing in as much as 18,000 pesos a month.
“It’s a huge help for my business,” Hernane said.
Hernane said singing makes the drivers happy.
“It entertains them,” she said.
“It’s a way to relax after driving.”
In a crowded neighborhood in Manila, tricycles deliver karaoke machine casings to stores where they are fitted with speakers, amplifiers and televisions.
Their prices depend on the quality of the electronics inside them, with a basic machine starting at around 19,000 pesos and a premium version topping 46,000 pesos.
Alfred Condez works at a store overflowing with machines in various stages of assembly. It takes several hours for employees to finish wiring one, and customers are often happy to wait.
“We love singing,” said Condez, 40.
As if to prove his point, he picks up a microphone and stands on the footpath to test an assembled machine’s sound quality, his deep voice echoing into the noisy street.
The busiest period for the karaoke assembly business is November and December, when Filipinos hold Christmas and New Year parties, said Condez. His shop sells as many as 10 machines a day in those months.
Karaoke took off in the Philippines in the 1980s, said Krina Cayabyab, a vocal instructor and associate professor in the University of the Philippines’ music department.
But she said the country’s love of singing was deeply rooted in its colonial past, starting with the Spanish and then the Americans, whose music was absorbed by Filipinos.
“It’s really tied into that reproducing and borrowing of stuff that Filipinos would hear,” Cayabyab said.
Singing is one of the few affordable entertainment options for many Filipinos.
In a hardscrabble district of Manila, children and young adults gather outside a small store where the karaoke machine is in high demand.
“My friends and I are just hanging out because it’s boring at home,” said Honey Servito, 24.
“I’m not really a singer, it’s just that when we have nothing better to do at home, my friends and I go here and sing,” she said.
“It takes away my stress and boredom.”
‘We love singing’: Filipinos find joy in karaoke
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‘We love singing’: Filipinos find joy in karaoke
- Machines can be found everywhere from cheap bars in far-flung villages to modern KTV joints
- Singing is one of the few affordable entertainment options for many Filipinos
Still inhabited termite mounds in South Africa found to be more than 30,000 years old
- Study says the mounds existed while arge swathes of Europe and Asia were covered in ice
- Calls for more research on termite mounds given the lessons they offer on climate change,
CAPE TOWN, South Africa: Scientists in South Africa have been stunned to discover that termite mounds that are still inhabited in an arid region of the country are more than 30,000 years old, meaning they are the oldest known active termite hills.
Some of the mounds near the Buffels River in Namaqualand were estimated by radiocarbon dating to be 34,000 years old, according to the researchers from Stellenbosch University.
“We knew they were old, but not that old,” said Michele Francis, senior lecturer in the university’s department of soil science who led the study. Her paper was published in May.
Francis said the mounds existed while saber-toothed cats and woolly mammoths roamed other parts of the Earth and large swathes of Europe and Asia were covered in ice. They predate some of the earliest cave paintings in Europe.
Some fossilized termite mounds have been discovered dating back millions of years. The oldest inhabited mounds before this study were found in Brazil and are around 4,000 years old. They are visible from space.
Francis said the Namaqualand mounds are a termite version of an “apartment complex” and the evidence shows they have been consistently inhabited by termite colonies.
Termite mounds are a famous feature of the Namaqualand landscape, but no one suspected their age until samples of them were taken to experts in Hungary for radiocarbon dating.
“People don’t know that these are special, ancient landscapes that are preserved there,” Francis said.
Some of the biggest mounds — known locally as “heuweltjies,” which means little hills in the Afrikaans language — measure around 100 feet (30 meters) across. The termite nests are as deep as 10 feet underground.
Researchers needed to carefully excavate parts of the mounds to take samples, and the termites went into “emergency mode” and started filling in the holes, Francis said.
The team fully reconstructed the mounds to keep the termites safe from predators like aardvarks.
Francis said the project was more than just a fascinating look at ancient structures. It also offered a peek into a prehistoric climate that showed Namaqualand was a much wetter place when the mounds were formed.
The southern harvester termites are experts at capturing and storing carbon by collecting twigs and other dead wood and putting it back deep into the soil. That has benefits in offsetting climate change by reducing the amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere.
It’s also good for the soil. Masses of wildflowers bloom on top of the termite mounds in a region that receives little rain.
Francis called for more research on termite mounds given the lessons they offer on climate change, sustaining ecosystems and maybe even for improving agricultural practices.
“We will do well to study what the termites have done in the mounds. They were thought to be very boring,” she said.
Yes, some animals can have babies without a mate. Here’s how
- Females of species have the ability to reproduce asexually, without sperm from a male, in a process called parthenogenesis
- It can occur is when a female’s egg fuses with another cell, often a cell leftover from a process that allows the female to create the egg
A boa constrictor in the UK gave birth to 14 babies — without a mate.
Is it a miracle? The result of a secret rendezvous? Probably not. Females of species have the ability to reproduce asexually, without sperm from a male. The process is called parthenogenesis, from the Greek words for “virgin” and “birth.”
Some plants and insects can do it, as well as some amphibians, reptiles, birds and fish. A stingray named Charlotte that was thought to have become pregnant by this method died this week at an aquarium in North Carolina, though she never delivered and it is unclear if she was ever pregnant.
Some wasps, crustaceans and lizards reproduce only through parthenogenesis. But in other species it’s rare and usually observed in captivity.
It tends to occur in situations where females are separated from males, said Demian Chapman, who directs the Sharks & Rays Conservation Research Program at the Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium in Sarasota, Florida.
The boa in the UK, a 6-foot, 13-year-old Brazilian Rainbow Boa named Ronaldo, gave birth last week after having no contact with any other snakes for at least nine years, according to the City of Portsmouth College, which kept the snake.
One way parthenogenesis can occur is when a female’s egg fuses with another cell, often a cell leftover from a process that allows the female to create the egg. That cell, known as a polar body, gives the egg the genetic information it would normally get from sperm. The cell starts dividing and that leads to the creation of an embryo.
It’s unclear how prevalent parthenogenesis is in the wild, Chapman said. But it has happened outside captivity among smalltooth sawfish, an endangered species in Florida’s coastal waters.
“We think the females reproduce like that on some occasions because they haven’t found a male because there are so few of them,” Chapman said.
Offspring from parthenogenesis have less genetic variation, Chapman said, which can lead to developmental problems.
“A litter produced by sexual reproduction is usually much larger than one produced via parthenogenesis if it’s an animal that gives birth to litters,” Chapman said. “And you will often see individuals in that litter produced by parthenogenesis that don’t develop correctly in some way.”
Ants perform limb amputations on injured comrades to save their lives
- These ants were observed treating injured limbs of nestmates either by cleaning the wound using their mouthparts or by amputation through biting off the damaged limb. The choice of care depended on the injury’s location
WASHINGTON: Limb amputations are performed by surgeons when a traumatic injury such as a wound from war or a vehicle accident causes major tissue destruction or in instances of serious infection or disease. But humans are not alone in doing such procedures.
New research shows that some ants perform limb amputations on injured comrades to improve their survival chances. The behavior was documented in Florida carpenter ants — scientific name Camponotus floridanus — a reddish-brown species more than half an inch (1.5 cm) long inhabiting parts of the southeastern United States.
These ants were observed treating injured limbs of nestmates either by cleaning the wound using their mouthparts or by amputation through biting off the damaged limb. The choice of care depended on the injury’s location. When it was further up the leg, they always amputated. When it was further down, they never amputated.
“In this study, we describe for the first time how a non-human animal uses amputations on another individual to save their life,” said entomologist Erik Frank of the University of Würzburg in Germany, lead author of the research published on Tuesday in the journal Current Biology.
“I am convinced that we can safely say that the ants’ ‘medical system’ to care for the injured is the most sophisticated in the animal kingdom, rivaled only by our own,” Frank added.
This species nests in rotting wood and defends their home vigorously against rival ant colonies.
“If fights break out, there is a risk of injury,” Frank said.
The researchers studied injuries to the upper part of the leg, the femur, and the lower part, the tibia. Such injuries are commonly found in wild ants of various species, sustained in fights, while hunting or through predation by other animals.
The ants were observed in laboratory conditions.
“They decide between amputating the leg or spending more time caring for the wound. How they decide this, we do not know. But we do know why the treatment differs,” Frank said.
It has to do with the flow of hemolymph, the bluish-greenish fluid equivalent to blood in most invertebrates.
“Injuries further down the leg have an increased hemolymph flow, meaning that pathogens already enter the body after only five minutes, rendering amputations useless by the time they could be performed. Injuries further up the leg have a much slower hemolymph flow, giving enough time for timely and effective amputations,” Frank said.
In either case, the ants first cleaned the wound, likely applying secretions from glands in the mouth while also probably sucking out infected and dirty hemolymph. The amputation process itself takes at least 40 minutes and sometimes more than three hours, with constant biting at the shoulder.
With amputations after an upper leg injury, the survival rate documented was around 90-95 percent, compared to about 40 percent for unattended injuries. For lower leg injuries in which just cleaning was performed, the survival rate was about 75 percent, compared to around 15 percent for unattended injuries.
Wound care has been documented in other ant species that apply an antibiotically effective glandular secretion to injured nestmates. This species lacks that gland.
Ants, which have six legs, are fully functional after losing one.
It was female ants observed doing this behavior.
“All worker ants are female. Males play only a minor role in ant colonies — mate once with the queen and then die,” Frank said.
So why do the ants do these amputations?
“This is an interesting question and it does put into question our current definitions of empathy, at least to some extent. I do not think that the ants are what we would call ‘compassionate,’” Frank said.
“There is a very simple evolutionary reason for caring for the injured. It saves resources. If I can rehabilitate a worker with relatively little effort who will then again become an active productive member of the colony, there is a very high value of doing so. At the same time, if an individual is too heavily injured, the ants will not care for her, but rather leave her behind to die,” Frank added.
Athens Acropolis introduces private visits for 5,000 euros
- These group visits will be held outside of normal opening hours and are limited to a maximum of five people each
- Normal visits cost 20 euros or 30 euros for a combined ticket with other sites
ATHENS: The Acropolis in Athens, one of the world’s most visited ancient monuments, has begun offering private visits for 5,000 euros ($5,400), setting off protests from the site’s guards.
According to the official website of the culture ministry unit that manages the hilltop site, these group visits will be held outside of normal opening hours and are limited to a maximum of five people each.
Normal visits cost 20 euros or 30 euros for a combined ticket with other sites.
“The Acropolis Experience now offers visitors the exclusive opportunity to enjoy this perfect architectural expression of the Greek spirit in private,” says the Hellenic Heritage website.
Up to four group visits can take place at a time, beginning at 7:00 am or 8:00 p.m. on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
According to Greek media, the first such private visit took place on Saturday with a Russian couple and their private guide.
On Tuesday, the site was offering unguided visits starting July 12 and with guides starting August 2. The site says tours can be conducted in English, French, German, Greek, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
The program set off controversy when it was first announced last year, and the union that represents guards at archaeology sites said it opposes these private visits that by-pass the usual official guides.
“We were never given any information about how these visits are organized,” said the union’s president Georgia Kondyli.
Ranked as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and built in the fifth century BC, the Acropolis has attracted ever growing number of tourists, driven by cruise ship passengers.
The site received a record four million visitors last year or an increase of 31 percent from the previous year, forcing the organization that manages the country’s historic sites to institute timed visits.
‘Singing nation’: How karaoke took over the Philippines
- Karaoke is ubiquitous in the Philippines, from malls to bars and roadside eateries
- Popularized in the 1970s, it has since become the Philippines’ national pastime
MANILA: Videos of Filipinos singing their hearts out at karaoke machines and belting out showstopping numbers from stars like Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey have been raking in millions of views on social media.
One such clip posted on YouTube in 2012, with Zendee Tenerefe singing “I Will Always Love You,” attracted over 26 million viewers, winning the young girl an invite on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” in the US.
While it shot her to international fame, performances like that of Tenerefe are not a unique sight in the Philippines, where people croon at singing machines at shopping malls, public transport terminals, roadside eateries, restaurants, designated karaoke bars, and in the privacy of their homes.
In public areas, Filipinos can belt their favorite hits for as little as five pesos ($0.80) a song, with the accessibility contributing to karaoke becoming a favorite pastime for everyone, regardless of social status and age.
The love for singing is so widespread that cities have been issuing ordinances regulating the time and day Filipinos can engage in public signing as the hours-long sessions usually run until the early morning.
“Karaoke culture is popular in the Philippines, as it is part of a communal activity in every celebration, whether with a family or a circle of friends,” Patricia Dizon, communication lecturer at the University of the Philippines, told Arab News, observing that its origins date centuries before the Japanese musician Daisuke Inoue invented the Juke-8 — the first karaoke machine — in 1971.
European explorers who arrived on the shores of the Philippine archipelago regularly took note of the natives’ keen musical abilities. The 16th-century Venetian scholar Antonio Pigafetta, for example, observed the Filipinos he met “played so harmoniously that one would believe they possessed good musical sense.”
Meanwhile, Antonio de Morga, a Spanish colonial official who in the late 16th and early 17th century served in the Philippines, referred to the Filipinos as a “singing nation,” as they sang during every activity.
Spanning ages, geographical locations, and social strata, the love for singing is an iconic feature of the culture, and people in the Philippines now have wide repertoire of songs to choose from in today’s ubiquitous karaoke culture.
“While karaoke has long been associated with our titos (uncles) belting the songs of Tom Jones, as well as our ates (elder sisters) singing the infamous ‘Kitchie Nadal Medley,’ there are even newer songs available at the present, including those by the likes of (P-Pop or Pinoy pop groups) SB19 and BINI,” Dizon said.
Although the first karaoke machine was created by a Japanese, it is the Filipino entrepreneur Roberto del Rosario who holds its patent and developed the Karaoke Sing-Along System in 1975.
The system, which features the prerecorded music of popular songs and lyrics on a video screen, has turned karaoke into a central part of pop culture in the Philippines
In cities, Filipinos are treated to a wide range of options to get their fill of the entertainment. Establishments called KTV (karaoke television) rooms are popular for night outs, where groups can rent a private room to sing and order food and drinks. There are also karaoke bars for more courageous people to sing in public.
Law student Crystal Arcega, 26, and her friends frequent such bars to blow off steam in the middle of a grueling academic semester.
“I usually go for karaoke during midterms or after finals season. It’s a great way to hang out with my friends, especially after a long day,” she said.
“When I was younger, we would go to a karaoke booth in the mall every Sunday to sing after going to Mass. It was very wholesome.”
Both in her childhood and now, the love for singing has always had an important social or family dimension to it.
“Karaoke is a way for us to bond,” Arcega said. “Whether it’s to unwind or make memories with our loved ones, I think karaoke as an activity makes us come together and focus on a single thing that we can do together.”
Some, like Emmelle Petalder, 25, also do it alone, at home, with voiceless tunes that are widely available on YouTube.
“This happens two to three times a week,” she said. “Whenever I feel like it, or when there’s a song stuck in my head.”
She usually goes to KTV bars with friends to celebrate special moments as the social nature of karaoke draws everyone in.
“When Filipinos do karaoke, everyone sings along, even those who are not holding the mic,” she said.
“Karaoke gives us the opportunity to let those feelings out by singing our hearts out.”
