blackshama's commentary on Philippine issues

I am in the process of finishing lectures to the Science, Technology and Society (STS) class and we were discussing the medieval origins of science. In this tale, two popes are significant. Pope Sylvester II or the mathematical pope reigned from 999-1003 and is credited by setting the mathematical foundations of modern science in the West. The other one Pope John XXII (reigned from 1316-1334) is not very known to us today but he issued an edict that all scientific studies must have experimental proof since alchemists were into making fake gold at that time. Also we discussed that the university is really a medieval institution and what we call pompous rites of passage like the college recognition and university graduations are medieval survivals in a 21st century University of the Philippines. The students don't realize that there is even a more significant medieval survival at UP. And this is none other than the closed door election of the Board of Regents of the UP president!...

A still from "Amigo" by John Sayles The late William Henry "Scotty" Scott, esteemed American historian and lay minister of the Episcopal Church in the Philippines wrote in "Ilocano Responses to American Aggression 1900-1901" that a few years after the Philippines was finally recognized as independent, the nationalist trend of the 1950s led the Department of Education in 1951 to interview the few surviving veterans of the Filipino War against American Imperialism a.k.a "Philippine-American War" and the then present generation of Filipinos about the war. So thorough was the American colonial education system and its historical cleansing of that period in history that Filipinos knew more of the revolt against "backward" Spain and friar abuses than the American atrocities of the anti-imperialist war. This historical amnesia poisons US-Philippine relations to this day. No amount of dancing to the beat of "Papaya" by former US ...

Pope Paul VI famous for the "Smoke of Satan" homily   "The smoke of Satan has entered the Temple of God"  quote is probably Pope Paul VI's most (in)famous soundbite. He allegedly said it during a homily at St Peter's basilica and delivered in Italian on 29 June 1972. I remember very well that in the turbulent 1970s, a fiendish spell of "Devil" and "Antichrist" movies starting from the iconic "Exorcist", "the Omen" and to the equally infamous and atrocious "Amityville Horror" became the staple of cinemas. And my sisters were fans of this genre and so I got to see them all!  Of course a Pope giving a public address with something like "Satan" in it would, to understate it, attract public and media attention (and thus became the inspiration for the "Devil" movies of the 1970s)  So to this day Catholics and non-believers want to find out what the Pope really meant. And so that will inclu...

The blurbs have it that President Noynoy Aquino sold his Porsche . He says it puts undue "risk" to his security detail. It's about time that the President develops a sense about the office he was elected into. Besides he wasn't elected against his will! The Porsche ended up as a PR disaster and caused the President's approval ratings to crash and burn. The Juana Change spoof tells it all But despite the Palace apologists saying that he used his own money to buy, the question is what on earth will he use it for? This is the same question is now thrown at the "Pajero bishops" of the Catholic Church! He was reported to need it for "stress release" and the rumor mill started to grind. The "tsismis" mill said that he releases stress and the accelerator on deserted Hacienda Luisita roads. Any idiot would know that it would be easy to make the Porsche crash by 1) putting a roadblock without reflectors, 2) put a pipe laying type of dig...