American Minds. Another 100 Years Of Influence In The Philippines? Duh!

American minds? They don´t necessarily agree with each other, and that´s the beauty of it all – with an open mind, you can make sense upon nonsense of all that chaos and confusion upon the waters of democracy. The Yankees are the greatest act in history, but that doesn´t mean they´re perfect. Many an American is bone-headed; that doesn´t mean the Yankees can´t teach us something.

I´m a Filipino celebrating a century of American minds in the Philippines. The Yankees have been teaching us Filipinos for the last century; we don´t like everything they deliver, including lectures, but hey, you can also learn from bad examples.

Filipino to American, I give credit to whom credit is due: The state-sponsored American education of the Filipinos began almost 100 years ago when William Howard Taft, later to become President of the United States, as Governor General and head of the Philippine Commission, the colonial government in the islands, signed Act 1870 creating UP, the University of the Philippines, on 1908 June 18 (University of the Philippines Los Baños: A Century of Challenges and Achievements, by science manager-historian-author-poet Fernando A Bernardo, in press). UP was the Filipinos´ first institutional great lesson in thinking: Think big and think country and think international. But we were not paying attention.

Today, American thought is almost anathema to the University of the Philippines, at least to the nationalists who reject English as the dominant medium of instruction in school and media, except print. Not me. To teach, to communicate, to learn I prefer the English language as I, too, am a victim of colonial education.

UP, the University of the Philippines is the institution that has shaped my mind, this BSA ´65; it is an institution I cannot reject for being colonial-minded or subservient to the American mind. It is only subservient to itself. You are what you think.

In fact, the Earth is now a borderless world – so, likewise, must be our thinking. So, American minds keep knocking on our doors. My door is always open, come in!

American minds come in all guises, or disguises. Like today, Thursday, August 2, as I start writing this, I sit admiring even as I use our brand new desktop PC with all the power that my money can buy. Money can´t buy everything, but this time, it´s everything to me, a writer, editor, publisher, nerd in need of a high-powered PC.

Yes, this PC is American minds, plural. The innovation, art & science that went into the making of the components, the technologies – consider the processor, motherboard, hard disk, CPU case, monitor, keyboard, mouse – are all Yankee in origin, if manufactured in China.

What do I have? ´Truly the world´s best.´ Intel claims that on her Core 2 Duo desktop processor. This is the Hilarios´ Core 2 Duo 1.86 GHz processor with 2 GB of DDRAM housed in a PowerLogic tower case with a Conroe1333-D667 motherboard by ASRock, a Radeon X1550 graphics card, a 320 GB hard disk, and a 17-inch LG Flatron LCD monitor to boot. My children and I have been using it for a week; I have used many a PC in many an office since 1985, and I find this one truly a mix of the best minds.

I´ll tell you more about it in a parallel way:

(1)That I´m happy that that desktop PC is now ours – it´s above standard.

(2)That I´m unhappy with Intel´s grammar – it´s below standard.

Happy with Intel´s Core 2 Duo July 26, a Thursday, I pick up the Hilarios´ PC order, which I have already described above; add to the assembly an internal Asus DVD Writer optical drive, an A4Tech Anti-RSI keyboard, and an ekes optical 3D mouse to make it work. Ah, and it´s good-looking! And the monitor; the colors of LG´s Flatron are gorgeous; never mind the fonts but the images are perfect.

An Intel Core 2 Duo PC! I´ve been dreaming of such a desktop for exactly a year. It was on July 27 last year when Intel launched the Core 2 brand of CPUs. The website says (intel.com) ´… The Intel Core 2 Duo processor family is designed to provide powerful energy-efficient performance so you can do more at once without slowing down.

I like the sound of that: ´So you can do more at once without slowing down.´ Being a multi-tasker, ever since I learned to open many windows in Microsoft Windows, I have always had problems with memory-hungry Microsoft Word, from Word 97 to Word 2000 to Word XP (2002) to Word 2003 – I have yet to learn to like Word 2007 along with Windows Vista. Word has always crashed on me, for want of physical memory. Today, the past is epilogue.

Unhappy with Intel´s Core 2 Duo grammar I bought my Intel´s Core 2 Duo from Prologue Computers (Los Baños) and there picked up a copy of the Intel brochure on the processor itself. The headline was this:

Up to 40% more performance and 40% more energy efficient.

That´s the new Intel Core 2 Duo desktop processor according to the Intel brochure. That is incorrect. I mean, it has incorrect grammar. It also has bad euphony.

You see, ´performance´ is a noun and ´energy efficient´ is an adjective. In marketing, that´s poor performance. This is good marketing:

Up to 40% higher performance and 40% higher energy efficiency.

Even that performance can be improved upon. I know because I worked as a copywriter in a Makati advertising agency (Pacifica Publicity Bureau) with Telly Bernardo and Nonoy Gallardo in the mid-1970s and learned something from them.

This is better copy:

Works for you 40% more and saves you 40% more.

And this is even better copy:

Runs your software the fastest and saves you the most energy.

See? I don´t mind the best American mind knocking on my door or sitting on my desk. I have my own.