Immigration

Immigration is the hot subject this week.

I believe we should both strengthen and secure our border. However, I don't think we should do this under the pathetic pretense of "National Security".

We should enforce immigration because its fair...
We ask people who come into this country to undergo a process of selection. It should be a uniform process. It should be strictly enforced. Why is it that this we should expect this only apply to people with whom we are not neighbors?

But there's an unwritten agreement...
With who? Business. If you come to this country, Pedro, we'll take that fake SS card, call you Mr. Smith, and pay you minimum wage.

Yet, it is EXACTLY this agreement that keeps minorities down...
As long as illegal immigrant labor supply enough work to meet business demand, America has no need to change its immigration policy. Even worse: Because supply is being met, wages are being kept low. If there's no shortage of labor, wages don't rise. Even though immigrant labor puts cash into the economy, Americans don't see that. Americans see that low end labor gets paid crap and we can't get a job because Pedro will do it cheaper. Nevermind the fact that you couldn't pay that same American minimum wage to pick fruit or pick up trash.

So I say send them home and tighten borders!
I say it because I share a heritage with some of these people. I say it because I want people to be treated well. If illegal immigrants were to avoid working in the US for 1 month, the yells for labor would become so great that they'd have no choice but to re-evaluate the process of entry. They'd have no course of action but to eat crow. Maybe then Americans would realize how much they need immigrants, and this would no longer be an issue.

Nature or Nurture

I got into a discussion on the idea of Nature vs. Nurture as the fundamental cause of sexual orientation. This is an interesting topic and I think I'll share.

I understand that central to the idea of Nature is the idea that there are biological preferences that allow you to be "pre-programmed" with your orientation. Since your pre-programmed, you cannot help be what you are. I find this to be one of the most offensive statements I've ever heard.

I realize that there may be biological preferences that can nudge you toward one direction or the other, but to try and justify your choices with your DNA is just rediculous. I don't put a value on whatever choice you make, but please understand it is a choice.

However, your choices are shaped in accordance with your ethos and your fears, and ethos is built around your life experiences and how your were raised. When specifically dealing with sexuality, it's a slightly different story. While ethos is important, fear's a bigger influence. It's been found that the types of things that frightened us as children are the types of things that arouse us as adults. It makes sense, and is an explanation to why certain people tend to seek out abusive mates. Between this idea and the stupid way we treat victims (I'll save that rant for another time), you can fully explain the abuse cycle.

I also think that DNA as an argument is a very dangerous argument. Are you willing justify murder because the murderer has a hunter gene that makes him more likely to kill? Perhaps you should punish these people beforehand?

It's a very scary thought.

On Evolution and Intelligent Design.

Evolution is a theory - However, it's been pretty well backed up by the fossil record. You can make and test hypotheses with it, and once you've accepted it you can use that knowledge as a building block to other interesting uses (for example: allele usage in determining a genetic common ancestor).
Intelligent Design (ID) should not be taken lightly. While it is not credible from a scientific standpoint, I like to think of it as an enemy of evolution. That's a good thing. An enemy will tell you where you are weakest. ID does that for evolution.
A high school student who has studied evolution does not come away with enough knowledge to effectively argue against any of the main arguments that ID brings against evolution. The points ID makes, namely issues with irreducability and closed systems are valid arguments. There are also rebuttals to these arguments, but a high school student doesn't learn them. That's the chink in our armor, that we arent' giving our students enough of information to argue the matter effectively.
If we gave them this information you'll see a lot of this argument die away. Unless you know what's really happening, the arguments are pretty effective at poking holes in evolution and making it seem uncredible.
The content of the rebuttal arguments aren't difficult, though they can be a bit lengthy to explain and I am not qualified to explain them. They're out there though. It's just usually given to 3rd year bio majors. Most people aren't 3rd year bio majors (I'm not, but I know people who are), and so most don't get the rebuttal information.
I think we SHOULD keep an open mind, and we should know what people think are holes in our theories. We should work on either acknowledging these holes exist, or explaining why they're not holes at all. The automatic naysay of an unpopular theory advances our understanding not one bit. In fact, it sets us back because it locks us into a paradigm that does not embrace or admitting our understanding may be incomplete. If we fail to question and understand, then we've stopped learning.

Old friends, Israel and Palestine

So my friend Tim recently got a hold of me again. I've been trying to get a hold of him for months. It appears that his email filter was blocking everything from mail.com, which had the additional consequence of blocking anything that ended in mail.com...

Including hotmail.com, which is where my primary e-mail address has been for the last 9 years.

The thing about a good friend is that years can go by and you can not speak to one, but when they show up, it's just like old times. This is one of those friendships.

It took about 2 messages before we started talking about politics. We started talking about Israel and Palestine. Both of us are pro-Israel, however, I'm not opposed to the idea of land for peace. Tim thought Sharon and Bush were twisting the knife in the back of Israel.

For the sake of brevity, I'll try to paraphrase the arguments.

Here's the initial volley from Tim:

• My point against that is simply that America has been Israel's FRIEND since her birth in '48. Our muscle behind them has been one of the man reasons all the arabs in the middle east haven't wiped Israel off the map and pushed all the jews "into the sea" as they keep claiming they want to do. As a Christian, fundamentally speaking, it is WISE to befriend Israel, God's people and foolish to curse or attempt to ruin them. Given those two things, let's add a third, that if it was US being reguarly blown up from people coming across the border from Mexico, do you think our solution would be to give them southern California and Arizona to try to appease them? What Bush did is hypocritical, plain and simple. Not only that but it is a knife in the back to the Israelites whom we've supported for more than fifty years now. We HELPED DRAW those borders for Israel as a country back in '48 and now we're redrawing them, giving their land away to her enemies...

Yes, folks, this athiest has a fundamental christian friend. One of the weird things about Christians, one of the requirements for their end of world scenario involves having a strong Israel. You'd think they'd want nothing to do with the place. Oh well.

Of course, for this to be a dialogue and to have any value worth posting on my blog at all, I obviously took a different course. I think that Sharon's actions are the best possible given the situation.

The Gaza Strip is already inhabited by a primarily muslim population. It's value as a strategic position (the original reason why it was acquired), has diminished a great deal with the advent of long range missile technology. It's primarily desert and Israel still controls the main avenues of water in the area.

Giving this land to the Palestinians has two benefits:

1. It may lead to peace (possible, though not likely)
2. It will give Israel the moral highground.

If a peaceful Palestine emerges from the land deal, then the cost was worth it. It could lead to more land deals in the future. Everyone wins.

However, if (as everyone expects) the PA does not manage to keep the peace, Israel can say with impunity that it cannot be expected to give up more land as it does not lead to peace.

If there's really a problem, then an attack from a Palestinian state could be seen as an act of war, which could allow Israel to reannex the land. Though to tell you the truth I don't see that as happening. It would undermine the Israeli propaganda position, which I'll get to in a moment.

What's really ironic is that a Palestinian state would never have been formed without Israel. Israel allowed Palestinians enough space to foster their own national identity. Do you think they would have been able to gain their independance from Jordan or Egypt...think again.

What Sharon has finally realized is that Israel isn't really high in public sentiment around the world. Some of that sentiment is well founded. Some of that sentiment is richly undeserved, for example, a few years back there was news footage all over the news that Israel had killed this boy (whose last name was al-Dura). It was caught on tape and generated a huge reaction from muslims....except the entire thing was faked. Additional footage was found that shows the entire thing was staged, they dead boy even propped himself up from his prone position! Sad thing was that the retraction did not receive nearly as much coverage. There's a lot of anti-semetic propaganda out there and it was a front that Israel wasn't fighting on...

Until now.

If Palestinians chaffe so badly under Israeli control, let them be free. See what they do. If they are peaceful, then Israel hears the pleas of it's former citizens. If they are not peaceful, then at least Israel gave them the chance, and they blew it.

Even the evacuations have a place. In order for Israel to be seen as rational. The Israeli people must be seen to suffer by this action. Israel must be willing to sacrifice for peace. This shows that sacrifice. It shows that they are serious.

Perhaps that's also why Sharon is redirecting settlers to the West Bank. My guess is that that's the next area that will be negotiated if peace is obtained in Gaza.

Tim thought I was naive. Reminded me that Israel is HATED by its neighbors.

I responded that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same result was madness. Israel has been trying to forcefully stop bombers for at least the last 20 years if not longer. It wasn't going to just stop.

I told him he was right, Israel's neighbors DID hate her. That's why she needed to look elsewhere for allies, and there would be no allies to support her unless she took actions to make herself seem reasonable, to take the moral highground, and to show that she was serious.

Sharon is making a risky gambit. However, it's the only way that I could see leading to results except brutal suppression.

The ability to be a bad truth-teller.

You know, I'm not going to lie about it, I lie a lot. Not pathologically, and almost never believably. In fact, most of the time, I want it to be unbelievable and have a voice I use to express these lies.

However, I tell such unconvincing lies, that when I tell the truth people don't believe me.

Don't ask, it's not like I understand it.

Let me give you a couple examples:
Example 1: Compliments unwelcome
There is a young woman who I really like. She's attractive in all the right ways, she's astoundingly smart (certainly smarter than I am, and I'm smarter than most), incredibly hard working. She has honest to goodness priorities, morals, and goals, and is quite possibly one of the nicest people you'll ever met.

Needless to say, I'm smitten. People who know me, cower in fear, because you know how picky I am. I've known her for years, and to be honest, she's never failed to impress me in all that time.

The problem: She doesn't believe me when I tell her anything. Well, maybe not anything, but the other day I told her that I thought she was smart. I was amazed at the fact that she understands and is okay with biology and chemistry.

I was being completely sincere, she didn't believe me. Few people ever believe me when I give complements.

Example 2: Deeds Refuted
Aside from my weekly donations to the NoHo food bank (don't act like I'm changing the world, I give 2 loaves of bread a week) I also make a small yearly donation to CotN (Children of the Night), which is a group in Van Nuys that tries to take underage and young adult prostitution off the streets of L.A.

Problem: People rarely believe me if I tell them. I don't tell a whole lot of people, it's a private thing. However, most people's initial reaction is one of shock (You do what? BS! Really? Nah...Really?) and it usually takes 3 or 4 times of telling them, yes, yes I do this, that they actually believe me. Of course, most think better of me after it, but that's not why I do it.

I mean come on people, read the last two posts for cryin' out loud. Few people ever believe that I practice what I preach.

Example 3: The jig is not up
I have several friends, who shall remain nameless, who have secrets. This is actually one of the few times I actually have fun with my little ability. I can spill their secrets right in front of people, sometimes even to important people, and everyone doesn't believe me.

Really the best way for me to keep a secret straight, is to blurt it out.

Funny truths I've told that were not believed:
It would be like trying to stick a marshmallow in a piggybank (In response to, I know you want to "F" me.).
Dude, you are so gay.
I don't know what I'm doing.
No sir, I can assure you the man of this house does no cleaning.
She doesn't follow TAC&D logic (Love your pets, but don't...LOVE your pets.)
No, he's not that way he's just special.
Really, I'm completely normal. I just surround myself with those who are not.
Adde parvum parvo manus acervus erit ('Add a little to a little and soon you have a large pile,' it is my outgoing signature at work. I've only had to explain it to a customer/boss twice.)

I have my favorite, but the person I know is too much in my company to tell it. He/She even reads this on occasion. Besides, it's not like I'd repeat the same trick a third time (I've posted innuendos on other blogs in the last year).

Why I'm an atheist (Cont'd)

This quote is even better than the last one, and is more down to earth...

An Atheist loves his fellow man instead of a god. An Atheist knows that heaven is something for which we should work now - here on earth - for all men together to enjoy.

An Atheist knows that he can get no help through prayer but that he must find within himself the inner conviction and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, to subdue it and to enjoy it.

An Atheist knows that only in a knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellow man can he find the understanding that will help to a life of fulfillment.

An Atheist seeks to know himself then and his fellow rather than to know a god.

An Atheist understands that a hospital must be built instead of a church.

An Atheist knows that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said.

An Atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanquished, war eliminated. He wants man to understand, love and accept all of mankind. He wants an ethical way of life. He knows that we cannot rely on a god, channel action into prayer, or hope for an ends to our troubles in a hereafter. He knows that we are not only our brother's keepers - but keepers of our lives foremost, that we are responsible persons and the job is here and the times is now.

Madalyn Murray O'Hare, Murray vs. Curlett, 374 U.S. 203 (1963)