Filipino Inventions And Other Bullshit

I've recently stumbled across a site on the net that collects Urban Legends in the local scene. The name of the site is Pula.ph, sadly the site is no longer active, but the layout work done by the webmaster is something I will be forever be grateful of (I couldn't even find his name on the site).

Now you ask, why am I grateful that I found a site that debunks Urban Legends when I consider myself as a skeptic who automatically avoids forwarded mails passed more than twice and with at least 5 people in the email list like rape in a dark alley?

Answer: Inside that site, some urban legends aren't even classified as legends by most of Filipinos. Some of them are facts that we've come to acknowledge as real shit. As real as math, as real as grammar - because these are facts we learn from school.

So we come to a little subset of what's in that site plus a few I've added on my own accord regarding a quaint topic we call:

Bullshit Things That They Teach In School.

Bullshit #1:
Agapito Flores invented the Flourescent Light. As it turns out, Flores wasn't even instrumental in GE's effort in creating the lightbulb. By the time he supposedly came up with the idea, the flourescent light bulb was already available in GE's catalogue of shit-you-didn't-invent. And to think I can remember my science teachers chanting this guy's name. (pula.ph)

Bullshit #2:
Eduardo San Juan invented the Lunar Rover. He even appears in science text books as one of the greatest Filipino inventors of all time. He was supposed to be working for Lockheed when he came up with the design, with additional notes that he used a naked umbrella frame to make the radio trasmission dish. Bullshit debunked, it wasnt even Lockeheed doing the project. Whether or not this guy even stepped foot into Lockheed or Boeing is even debatable. (pula.ph)

Bullshit #3:
Armalite or M16 came from the name "Armando Literio" another Filipino inventor. To quote pula.ph it says:

According to this page on ClassicFirearms.org, the M-16 was first developed in 1956 by Eugene Stoner, "a prolific and talented inventor of small arms." It was originally named the AR15, and came to be known as the M16 later on, with the name AR15 reserved for the semi-automatic version of the rifle. There's no indication given that Eugene Stoner was Filipino, or had any Filipino background. His obituary says he was born in Gasport, Indiana, in 1922, and educated in Long Beach, California.

Oh man, even that's just a steaming pile of dogshit. I've always thought that guy's name is too shitty to be true. It's like saying the Indian named Beeyam Dabolyu invented the BMW cars we know today.

What else did we make up as part of our curriculum?

Bullshit #4
Jose Rizal was a devout advocate of Freedom. Hell, he even has his own Relgion now. Rizalistas, right? Rizal is a passive writer at best. If he were living today, he'd probably be this asshole we have here, blogging his life away while advocating everything that's not useful. He's the fucking coño rich kid player of his time who wanted the Philippines to be a province of Spain as most of the elitistas now are trying to convert the Philippines to an annex of the United States through trade. We messed up in choosing our national hero so badly, the Rizalistas had to hide a document of him trying to dissuade the Katipuneros from launching a rebellion, not because they weren't ready as originally claimed, but because he didn't want to be labeled as the brain of the revolution and that he wanted to kiss more Castellano ass.

Bullshit #5
The Kalantiao Code
The Kalantial Code as it turns out, isnt even older than my Great Grandmother. Id est, before my Great Grandmother was born, the code didnt even exist. So, when it's not the scientists or the Rizalistas that are whipping out shit-ala-mode, it's the historians making a dogshit festival for students to feast on. You can read more about this travesty here.

With all these things known, I wouldn't be surprised if they said the Multiplication Table is just propaganda by the american government to keep us down.
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Just how much of our curriculum is made up for the heck of having something to teach to kids?

I remember having watched a special in Discovery Channel about new findings regarding Napoleon Bonaparte's death back in Highschool. As it turns out he had been poisoned using arsenic, and didn't die of sickness as written in our books. I checked published sources online and found the data of DC as correct. So I approached my History Professor and aptly corrected her after one of her lectures and corrected her in the most polite way possible.

You know what answer I got? "Dare you question a curriculum that's older than you just because you saw some show on TV about Napoleon? Do you like batman to be in our list of heroes too?"

This is the kind of Neanderthal thinking that keeps our history no more reliable than the weekly issue of Hiwaga Comics. Just because something is old doesnt mean it's perfect. If that were the case, we'd be sending off grannies in the Miss Universe pageant. These people are afraid of change.

I have a suggestion. I say we just ditch the entire social studies curriculum and just each these kids how to mix cement. That way in case they do screw up in life, they can thank their teachers they were taught something veritable, tangible and useful.

I'm thinking of a project that I can do now to whip up a storm. If people can make their own histories, I can as well. Next post will be about this project.