The Obsolete Wall

Not so long ago…

“In our opinion the German people wish to have one united country. If the Soviet Union had lost the war, the Soviet people themselves would object to a line being drawn through Moscow and the entire country defeated in war. We wouldn’t like to have a line drawn down the Mississippi river.”

~John F. Kennedy

JFK was talking about the Berlin Wall, an infamous stretch of concrete supposedly put in place to keep the losers of World War II within the sight of Russian eyes. This wall kept the German people, mostly survivors of the war, not participants in it, from creating any more trouble. Although the tactic worked, the punishment was more severe than most of the people’s crimes. For decades the people of Eastern Berlin were oppressed. Their city was dreary and their eyes seemed to reflect that feeling. The opposite side, West Berlin, was a bustling, thriving hub of modernism. West Berlin kept up with the changes of the world. Its economy advanced. East Berlin remained stagnant. JFK was noting the distressing nature of the wall. I can’t help but wonder, “How would it have been different if JFK had succeeded in convincing the Soviets to tear down the wall?”

The analogy is not completely accurate for this day and age, I know. But I still love the quote. The idea of putting up a wall along the Mississippi is at once funny, appealing, and as ridiculous as a border between the United States and Mexico. And even though Mexico isn’t part of the U.S., it COULD be. If the U.S. didn’t incorporate and assimilate, we could at least be united in our goal to help the people of Mexico get better living conditions so they wouldn’t need to leave their homes. The two main problems they face are the drug pushers, and the government. Their government is unable to keep up with the drug lords. Either the drug lords have an invisible hand threatening the Mexican government, or the government is inept enough that they can’t control the malicious elements in their society. Either way, the result is the same: the mob rules.

People in America worry that the drug smugglers will have an easy time getting their drugs into the U.S. These worriers want to put up a wall because it makes them feel more secure. Unfortunately, a wall will not help the people who resort to drug smuggling to make a living wage decide to get a normal everyday job. It will only slow them down a little. In other words, a border wall doesn’t correct any bad behavior, it only creates a delay. A wall won’t promote aptitude in the Mexican government. It will only hide the lack of skilled governance. In fact, and sadly, a border wall would be a blatant exhibition of a lack in U.S. governance. A border wall would show how much the American people lack in empathy for their southern neighbors. A border wall would show the lack of control the American people have over their own government. A border wall between Mexico and the U.S. would show how the people of the U.S. have a lack of courage.

In conclusion, it is my opinion that an open border is not the problem. Lack of caring, lack of skilled and competent governing, lack of empathy and compassion, and lack of courage; these are the problems.

Saturday Morning Cartoon Time

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When you’re  a child, time is divided into categories: breakfast time, school, recess, dinner time, bed time. Time is this nebulous concept, because there seems to be no standard for the divisions. It’s only when we learn about hours, minutes, etc. that we start to develop a sense of length in time.

There’s time enough in a day to do a lot of things. But there’s also time enough to waste. One great stress reliever is to just veg-out in front of some cartoon fun.

Cartoons even have their own sense of time. I was watching Transformers with my boy and the Decepticons and the Autobots both have ways to travel through space and time. Its fun to imagine what you would do if you had one of those portals. My day job would be so much easier. Flying through space as if there’s no time barrier at all. That would be amazing. And vacation time? Forget about it! We could go visit our family and friends all over the world with the travel time at its ultimate minimum. Leisure time at maximum.

In fact, as far as Saturday morning leisure time is concerned, if I had a portal system, I wouldn’t even have to leave the couch ever. I’d open up a portal big enough for the cereal cupboard, get the cereal out, then open up portals to the bowls and spoons. And forget the fridge, I’d open up a portal to the cow and get milk on my cereal straight from the udder!

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Well, and now with that thought, I’ll leave you to have fun with your own imagination…What would YOU do with a portal through space and time? The possibilities are immense!

Love Is A Sandwich

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Don’t quote me on this, but I’ve heard that within the Japanese language there is no word for love. They have words for respect and admiration and even extreme like, but no word with a direct literal meaning of love.

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This is interesting to me (and you, my one Japanese reader), because we know that love is inexpressible. Unlike my mustard calligraphy above, love is not so easily spelled out. By the way, for my non-Japanese reading readers, the word in mustard is the Japanese for sandwich. And yes, I misspelled it. According to my friend Shin, I missed a character in the middle. Funny…like an incomplete sandwich.

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But you were probably wondering why a sandwich is love and why love is a sandwich. You’re probably thinking lunch is a sandwich, not love. Love is love, unless you’re really hungry, and then you might embrace a sandwich like a long lost lover. That’s what you’re probably thinking. That’s what I was thinking. If we just thought of it that way, we’d be right, but we wouldn’t be very philosophical.

Let’s consider how we make a sandwich: we build it.

So the Japanese language isn’t necessarily incomplete with its lack of the word love, is it? Since love is built, we could possibly start with admiration, and advance from there to respect. These are only concepts though. Love can’t be given in words alone, like a sandwich can’t be made with bread alone.

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Love has to be shown through actions. At least in my philosophy, that’s how it works. You could tell someone you love them their whole life, but if you never did anything to show it, would the words even be true? Isn’t compassionate service is one of the highest functions of love? For love to be complete, like a sandwich, you have to put all those layers together, put it on a plate, and serve it.

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Oh yeah, and add a little cheese. 🙂

Introduction to Fisking

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Because I’m planning some fisking in future archive elements, I thought I’d break down the mechanics of a fisking, especially for those who may not have heard of fisking. The idea is fairly straight-forward. It’s a method of reducing long, wordy documents into bite-sized bits that can be proven or disproven on their own.

The method of fisking is sometimes considered to be a way to show how every point of a written piece is wrong, but even that is wrong. A fisking can show agreeable points as well as illogical points. Some people focus on the negative. That’s not necessarily the reason for a fisking, at least not when I do it.

The method is named after a man, Robert Fisk, who was a journalist from England. He deserves his name on the method, and in my personal opinion, his name fits the method very well. His name sounds a little like the word fix. Those things that need fixing, may also need fisking. No written piece of seriousness should be considered beyond fisking. If you’re making statements (like this one), then you need to be able to back them up with facts.

Scientific discovery, for instance, is founded on curiosity and questioning. How many facts are needed to make a statement true? How many scientists make a scientific community? How many lies make a person a liar? How long does one have to spend in a university until the mind is sufficiently wiped? How many spies have been brainwashed in less than an hour? How far will I take this tangent?

That’s far enough.

It’s time to look at the process. Let’s say someone made a statement like this instead of the question above: “Spending time in a university will wipe your mind.” Then they back that statement up with two following facts: 1. “I’ve personally witnessed the downward spiral of my friend who went to Eyemafraida U.” 2. “Going to university is expensive.”

Then the fisking goes like this, with the original statement in regular text and the rebuttal in italics:

Spending time in a university will wipe your mind.

Presented as fact, this statement is more of an opinion. The statement is a broad generalization, including everyone, because it excludes no one. How did the person come to this conclusion? Read on…

I’ve personally witnessed the downward spiral of my friend who went to Eyemafraida U.

This is one person, not everyone. Assuming the witnessing wasn’t biased, this “fact” still only includes one instance. It’s difficult to base a generalized rule on a single outcome.

Going to university is expensive.

This may be true on its own, but it’s irrelevant to the mind-wiping topic. When talking about minds, you can’t rationally tangent to bank accounts and make an accurate conclusion.

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So that’s how fisking works. You can see how it presents each sentence and each point clearly, and then subsequently proves or disproves each on its own merits. Can fisking be done poorly? Of course. Can it be done incorrectly? Absolutely. Can it be done to create a bias where none may have existed before? That’s for sure. It may be even more true that fisking can be ignored. Do people read any more? If fisking helps encourage people to read, then I’ll participate in it. I hope people learn the thrill of reading, even if it’s through an extensive rebuttal process. I also hope that people can see the value of debunking. To paraphrase a great scientist: Finding the truth behind science will require us to let go of what we “know” and to debunk the “facts” as they’re fed to us. On to fisking!

Living Healthy While Killing The Neighbors

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This is my house, where I live. I don’t have diabetes, but the children in the neighborhood do.

As you can see, someone stole my welcome mat. If I ever find out who did it, they’re going to meet the tiny flying products of my shotgun. I make my own shells, and I lace the shot with granulated cane sugar and chocolate chips. I don’t know firsthand, but I’ve heard that when you get hit by my shot, it stings, but you suddenly crave a glass of milk.

By the way, the first welcome mat got stolen too, so I glued this new one down. They must have really wanted that mat because they busted it right out of the frosting glue and took it anyway. I don’t really question why someone would take things off my house or my porch. Everything’s so yummy. Even things that have sugar inside are coated with sprinkled sugar.

Also evident in the picture, you can see I’ve xeriscaped the yard. Nothing needs watering. I prefer to save the water for the farmers who actually need it. I’d rather have things grow like wheat, oranges, and avocados—things I can actually eat.

What you can’t see in the picture is that I have a fully complemented fitness room on the second floor of the house. I believe in being fit. I believe in living healthy.