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Before I proceed, I should mention that I worked with Roxas briefly, when he was guest co-host on this TV talk show I used to host. One day, while waiting for the show to begin, I heard him singing to himself. “And so you’re back,” he sang tonelessly, “from outer space…”

“That’s a gay anthem,” I pointed out.

“No, it isn’t,” he said.

“Yes, it is,” I said.

The following week, he said, “You’re right!”

I repeat this story not just because I’ve seen The Martian twice (it’s terrific), but because it highlights two things about Roxas: he did his due diligence (found out if “I Will Survive” is indeed a gay anthem) and admitted error. Come to think of it, Roxas is a terrible singer and maybe his handlers should let him sing at campaign sorties. This would show that he is able to laugh at his own expense, and demonstrate folksiness more effectively than having him lift sacks of produce.

Read our column at InterAksyon.com.

After you watch The Martian, impress everyone by science-ing the shit out of it, from topography to hacking the rover. via Wired.

This is the least NSFW scene we could find.

The first time we see Jimmy Shive-Overly, he is taking pictures of his genitals with those cute disposable “Help us make memories” cameras at the wedding reception of his ex-girlfriend. (Hire a photographer, people. It’s bad enough that we have to sit through your boring two-hour video before dinner is served). He proceeds to get himself thrown out of the reception. The first time we see Gretchen Cutler, she is stealing one of the wedding gifts at the same reception, thinking that it is a food processor (Tough luck: it’s a blender). The two meet while waiting for a taxi, and having nothing better to do, they go back to his place.

Read our TV column The Binge at BusinessWorld.

On Monday we published our Basic Questions for Presidential Candidates, and on Wednesday we got invited to merienda with Mar Roxas at Bahay na Puti, the Araneta compound in Cubao. The occasion was a meet-and-greet with bloggers which naturally turned into a Q&A. We got to ask many of our questions and Carlos Celdran, Cecile Van Straten, Ramon Bautista and other prominent personalities in the social media asked a lot more.

The candidate fielded questions and gave well thought-out replies which recognized the complexities of the issues. No easy answers and glib sound bites—as a nerd we appreciate the thoroughness, but this could be a disadvantage in campaigning. How to boil down the issues into digestible tweetables in our short attention span age: there’s a job.

Our column on the meeting with Mar is out on Monday. If the other candidates would like to invite us to coffee and answer our questions, we would be happy to accept. Before the merienda, we got to stake out Mar Roxas’s library and judge his taste in reading matter.

This is a serious library, all books bound or covered and organized according to the Dewey decimal system, a rebuke to those of us who use the psychic library system (“I know where the book is. I feel it is somewhere in this direction…”).

There were all the requisite history, biography, sociology, philosophy and economics titles. It is comforting to know that someone aspiring to the presidency has access to the “classics” of contemporary intellectual thought.

However, we were more interested in the candidate’s fiction choices. We believe that the novels and stories one has read speak of his humanity. (That’s why it’s called “humanities”, duh.)

It’s like going through someone’s iTunes playlist to find out if you want to be associated with them. (“You have Air Supply. Goodbye.”) Except that given how easy it is to download songs, movies, and books today, digital files are a less reliable gauge. Books, the tree products kind, you have to seek out. Dostoevsky in hardcover: we can talk.

Someone in this house has read the Arthurian myths, as evidenced by the well-thumbed copies of T.H. White, Malory, Mary Stewart. Did we say T.H. White?

When we commended Mar Roxas on the contents of his library, he explained that it used to be his father’s office and many of the books had been acquired by his father. There are fewer books after 2007, he added, because that’s when he started reading on an iPad.

We approve of Mar Roxas’s library. If the other candidates would like to invite us to check out their personal libraries, email us or leave a comment.

P.S. During the Q&A we remembered that during a recent viewing of our favorite Ishmael Bernal movie Salawahan (1979), we suddenly realized that the main characters are called Gerardo and Manuel Roxas. Mar’s full name is Manuel and his brother Dinggoy’s was Gerardo.

Some mold attacks milk and spoils it. Other mold helps make cheese, like Camembert, because it protects the cheese from contamination. Credit: Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

The cheese they buy is alive with fungi; indeed, many cheeses require a particular species of mold to properly ripen. To produce Roquefort blue cheese, for example, cheese makers mix Penicillium roqueforti into fermenting curds. The mold spreads throughout the cheese, giving it not only a distinctive blue color but also its (acquired) taste.

To produce soft cheeses such as Camembert or Brie, on the other hand, cheese makers spray a different mold species, Penicillium camemberti, on the curds. The fungus spreads its tendrils over the developing cheese, eventually forming the rind. When you chew on a Camembert rind, you’re eating a solid mat of mold.

Read Carl Zimmer on Stinky Cheese.

Reminds us of the time the nuns at a Catholic school summoned our friends to school to reprimand them for giving their kid “rotten food”. Her recess time snack was Roquefort, crackers and grapes. Technically, the nuns were correct: cheeses contain mold and fungi. That’s why they’re so yummy.

At home, the cats keep trying to steal our Brie.