Inspiration and Adios!

I had a stroke of inspiration while working today. When there are no news stories worth commenting on, I will entertain you with horror stories, such as "When the Baseball Team Came

Through" and "The Life of a French Fry." But those stories will have to wait until August, because I'm going to Mexico on a mission trip. I will most likely be disconnected from the outside world for the entire time (especially if hurricanes keep forming). I shall update everything when I get back.

I leave on a positive note: I finally broke the seven minute mile! 6:55. That is slow. But it is also faster than a lot of people. I am happy. The next barrier will be 6:40.

Edmond the Hun

My Life: Bowling

I am not a good bowler. Today I bowled a 68 and a 69. One spare. No strikes.

Islam vs. the West: What Do We Do?

There are many questions about the relationship between Islam and the West, and I have few answers.

First, there is the issue of the two opposing sides of Islam. There is the group that the media portrays as the majority of Muslims ~ the peaceful, simple, happy Arab folk who just want to practice their religion. There's the other group that hates all Americans, or at least, Christians and Jews, and wants to kill them all and will sacrifice their own lives to do it. Now, obviously, both of these groups can't be practicing true Islam.

Christians have the ugly Crusades in their history, but those Crusaders were acting in contradictory to the teachings of the Bible, and they weren't acting like Christians. Are these irrational sucidal radicals doing the same thing? Is Islam really (as we'd like to believe) all about peace? But then where do these radicals get their antics from? Or are these radicals practicing true Islam, and it's the peaceful folk who are ignoring the "kill the infidel" parts of their religion? I don't know enough about Islam and the Koran to know which side is practicing true Islam, but I know it can't be both.

I also know that a Muslim killed a filmmaker in the Netherlands because he thought the guy had insulted Muslim women in a film, and his religion required that he make the guy pay. He said to the family something like (not exact quote) "I don't feel your pain, I'm not sorry, and I'd do it again." He knew he was following his religion! What do the peaceful folk say to that?

Second, if true Islam involves murdering Americans (or Christians and Jews), would that provide grounds for banning Muslims from our country, or making Islam illegal, or something else to that effect? The London terrorists lived freely in Britain, and there are still radical religious leaders there who are openly anti-British. A huge step in preventing future terrorist attacks would be to simply eliminate them from the country. If they can't live here and plot things under our noses, it's much harder for a terrorist attack to take place.

Of course, we do have the whole freedom of religion issue. We can't just discriminate based on religious beliefs. That's why we left Britain in the first place. But what if the religion is openly against our government? If there was a religion that said that raping and killing young girls was the pathway to heaven, do you think anyone would have a problem with locking up people who practiced that religion? These radical Islamists are a danger to society. But what about all the peaceful Muslims, you say? But if true Islam involves murdering people, I say, then they're supposed to be killing people too. All the more reason to kick them out.

But even if true Islam involves murdering Americans (which it may not), and we further conclude that it is a great danger to our society, that brings us to a third question:

Can we lock people up or kick them out solely for their beliefs? Even if they believe it's OK to do illegal things, can we really do anything about it before they've actually done anything illegal? We've never challenged the right to anything so fundamental and intangible. As it stands, we can't arrest a Muslim before he kills a Christian in the name of Allah. But if we knows he's supposed to be killing Christians, then aren't we being stupid to sit there and wait for him to kill someone before we arrest him? Why not prevent the crime if we know it's going to happen? Because we've never said it was illegal to merely believe anything. Everything in our law system is based on actions.

I don't know if true Islam is about murder. And, even if it is, I don't know if it would be right to make its mere belief and practice a crime. But I do know that if Islam was illegal and all Muslims were deported, our country would be in much less danger of a terrorist attack.

Until I find more answers,

Edmond the Hun

Movie Review: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (4 of 5)

I was a little apprehensive about this movie, afraid that Tim and Johnny would ruin a classic book and movie. But they didn't. While not perfect, they've created a very exciting, enjoyable, and entertaining film.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is rather dichotomous in its approach to the book. On the one hand, it follows it much more closely than the original, including or correcting several scenes in wonderful interpretations, and adding nothing stupid. On the other hand, it makes great changes to the character and history of Willy Wonka, and it greatly screws up the ending.

The overall production is fantastic, which is no surprise, considering Tim Burton's long line of credits. Great casting for everyone, including all of Charlie's family as well as the other four children. The factory itself is a work of art, creatively creating all the random elements of the chocolate-producing arena. And while the special effects aren't breathtaking, everything is fun and bright and real-looking, from the blueberry Violet to the squirrels to the great glass elevator. It's just great eye-candy (pun intended). Upon learning that all the Oompa Loompas were played by one person, I was worried that it would come off as creepy, but it just made it all the more entertaining. Deep Roy (whoever that is) produces lots of laughs with his antics.

Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka is predictably eccentric and hilariously odd, a perfect match for Wonka's personality. His off-handed coldness disappointed some critics, forgetting that that's the whole point of his character. Random, impulsive, having no regard for the children---that's part of who he is. Yet I still think they took it a little too far. By giving him short cropped hair and a high voice, he unfortunately seemed girly or gay at times, and the Michael Jackson comparisons induced by the sunglasses aren't flattering. Still, he is far more amusing than frightening. The addition of Wonka's childhood flashbacks have been criticized as well, but for the most part they were interesting and explanatory, a book-to-movie change that actually works.

The ending was also troublesome in that it skewered the theme. The main point of the books was that it's not good to be greedy, selfish, or watch TV all day. Apparently Hollywood was too afraid to preach these morals, leaving that merely to the lyrics of the Oompa Loompa songs that mixed with cool sounds, flashing lights, and fun techno dancing (quite entertaining, actually). Instead, they turned the ending into a happy feel-good thing by having Wonka join Charlie's family, since he never really had one. How touching. The importance of family is certainly a value that needs preaching, but it felt contrived and just didn't go along with the rest of the movie---the other kids failed because they were brats, not because they didn't have a loving family.

But maybe I'm just being too picky. It's a kid's movie about chocolate, for goodness' sake. And at least it doesn't surrender anything to all that low-carb, low-calorie, low-fat, low-everything diet craze that I'm so sick of by now. Chocolate is still chocolate, and it still tastes good. Charlie will entertain you and make you laugh, at the same time reminding you that family is important and that always getting what you want isn't. It will also make you hungry.

Edmond the Hun

Prison Reform Needed Badly

We've always known that too much money went into keeping prisoners happy. I talked about it a little when Martha Stewart was under "house arrest" in her million dollar home or whatever the mansion was worth. Just recently I heard on talk radio that it costs somewhere from $20,000 to $35,000 a year per prisoner. That's outrageous! But in case there are still those who doubt that US prisons aren't too expensive...

I've said before, although unfortunately there's no written record of it in this blog, that our prisons are so nice that people in financial trouble might as well do something illegal instead of trying to survive on their own.

Well, it's finally happened.

William Crutchfield shot his mailman seven times. He raced to the police station and turned himself in. He was heavily in debt and wanted to commit a federal crime so he could go to prison and get three square meals a day and have nothing to worry about. This is a smart and clever man. He recognized the problem in our prison system and took advantage of it.

Too much of our tax dollars are wasted in keeping prisoners happy, healthy, available to video games, the Internet, and anything else they could possibly want. Someone has finally directly taken advantage of it and exposed its flaw.

Too bad it took something this drastic to bring about a change. And yet I doubt there will be any changes made at all...

Edmond the Hun

The Constitution: Under Construction

Since O'Connor retired from the Supreme Court, the journalists and columnists have been unloading nonstop about the Constitution and the Supreme Court and the problems therein. Here's the root of the issue:

The Constitution is not very specific about a lot of things. So when the Supreme Court has to apply it to a specific case, it is often unfortunately ambiguous. To make matters worse, our society has evolved so much in these two hundred years that even if the Constitution had been very specific, it still wouldn't cover a large part of the Supreme Court cases today.

So what do the justices do? When it's not black and white, we've moved out of absolutes and stepped into a matter of opinion.

This opinion thing creates a flaw out of the provision that a simple majority of nine selected (not elected) people can determine the meaning of the Constituition when applied to a specific case. If the decision was 9-0, even if it was an opinion, there might not be too much controversy over whether they made the right decision. But, oh, when the Supreme Court decides 5-4!

How do we know that that's the right decision, that it's the correct interpretation of the law? If one of the 5 voters switched, than the complete opposite decision would be made. There are a hundred different scenarios for that possibility, and the fact that it could happen so easily shows that any 5-4 decision is unreliable. How can five people set in stone the meaning of the Constitution if almost as many other people disagree? It's like it's all up in the air. Since there's so much disagreement, how can we be sure that the 5 side has made the right decision?

It's a fundamental flaw. It worked before because Supreme Court justices didn't link themselves to parties and ideologies, and were actually more concerned about what the Constitution said. Now every potential nominee is labeled as "conservative" or "liberal." It's not a group of people interperting the Constitution anymore. It's a nine-member congress that the President can't veto.

How do we solve this, then? I don't exactly know. I know this much: when there is a case that the Constitution does not adequately cover, whether by being too general or too outdated, then it is something for the people or their elected representatives to decide, not nine justices without check or balance. So there has to be some way to move these cases into the public arena, or at least the Congressional arena, for debate and discussion that results in action. Not only does this increase of involvement ensure that the fate of the nation is not hinged upon five people's opinions, but it ensures that democracy is still a part of our so-called democracy.

I haven't worked out specifics on when such transfer should happen or how it should work, but I know that, if done right, it would be much better than the system we have now. The Constitution needs amending.

Edmond the Hun

Capitalism In Action: The Employee Discount

Ah, the wonder of capitalism! When one business offers a special deal for a certain product, competing businesses that offer the same product have to do the same thing, or risk losing customers. If one cell phone company offers free nights and weekends, they all have to. If one fast-food restaurant offers a low-carb salad, they all have to. It'd be a lot easier if one company had a monopoly on a product, but then it wouldn't be as fun, and they wouldn't have to offer special deals. That's part of capitalism.

GM decided to boost lagging auto sales by giving their employee discount to everyone, forcing Ford and Chevrolet to offer similar packages. This would be like McDonald's cutting all their prices in half. And it appears to be working---their sales are up.

But the question no one seems to be asking: If everyone gets the employee discount, what do the employees get?

Edmond the Hun

The Truth About Terrorism

So terrorists have struck again, jolting us again out of our supposed world of safety that we naively fall back into time after time. This time it's a subway in Great Britain.

There are two truths about terrorism.

Truth number one is that it is impossible to stop. No matter how hard we try, terrorism can not be stopped. If someone wants to blow up a subway, all they have to do is build a bomb, catch a ride on the subway, and set it off. To stop the bomb from getting on the subway, you would have to personally search every single passenger's baggage, or use a foolproof machine. Even that wouldn't guarantee detection. And who says the terrorist has to get on the subway? What if he just sets it off at the station? Now you have to check the baggage of every single person that enters the station, whether they board a subway or not. But what if he sets it off just outside the station? Now you have to check the baggage of every single person out in public, which is simply impossible. The only way such a plan is even remotely conceivable involves complete video surveillance of everywhere, and even that would only guarantee detection, not prevention.

Terrorism is impossible to stop, but even more so in a democracy or republic. Security is inversely proportional to privacy; to add to one, you must subtract from the other. If people are getting worked up about a Chicago security system that can detect gunshots, just think how they would react to a complete, all-encompassing system. To have total security, you must have no privacy, and that is unacceptable in today's society.

But the inevitability of terrorism leads many to abandon truth number two: Terrorism must always be fought against. We are still required to do everything we can to prevent it from spreading further and from happening again. That is why we cannot leave Afghanistan or Iraq until we achieve victory. Whether or not you believe Iraq was a threat in the past, there are obviously terrorists there now, and it's our duty to fight them.

If you had a hose on the side of your house and your neighbor's house was on fire, would you say that it wasn't your problem and you shouldn't waste your time dealing with it? No! You would turn on your hose and extinguish whatever you could! Likewise, the problems in Iraq are our problems. There is no reason to pull out of Iraq. There is no reason to say it's not our responsibility. We are all descended from one man. Iraqi lives are not worth less than American lives. If a human's life is endangered, it is the responsibility of every person---who is in the position of defending it---to defend it!

Terrorism, like sin, is impossible to prevent. But, like sin, we keep fighting it anyway, striving for the perfection we know we can't reach.

Edmond the Hun

Book Look: Life of Pi

I'm 32 pages into Life of Pi by Yann Martel. It's called "a novel," in the "fiction" section, but it's presented as based on a true story and as the closest the author could possibly get to what actually happened. So far, it's unique and promising. It's written from a character's first-person view, but not in a normal fictional narrative. It is more like an autobiography or memoirs, giving the impression of an older person looking back on his life explaining things that affected it---an "uncle" that taught him to swim, memories of the zoo his father owned, humurous little anecdotes---hardly a novel in its conventional sense.

Pages 15-19 could stand alone as a short essay about the misconception that animals don't like living in zoos and would rather be out in the wild, where it's better and more natural for them. It's a very convincing argument, too:

"In a zoo, we do for animals what we have done for ourselves with houses: we bring together in a small space what in the wild is spread out... A house is a compressed territory where our basic needs can be fulfilled close by and safely. A sound zoo enclosure is the equivalent for an animal... Such an enclosure is subjectively neither better nor worse for an animal than its condition in the wild; so long as it fulfills the animal's needs, a territory, natural or constructed, simply is, without judgment, a given, like the spot on a leopard..."

Interesting stuff. I just hope it doesn't get too bogged down with essay-like tangents and sticks with the main story. That's why I couldn't finish Moby Dick. I don't care about how many species of whales are and what their differences are! I want to see them hunt the whale! But so far, the tangents in Life of Pi are both interesting and relatory, and I believe I am about to get to the main part of the story.

Edmond the Hun

Sad and Scary: Clinic For Online Addiction

This is so sad and scary...

China is a country that is rapidly catching up to the U.S. in many aspects, from a greater demand for oil (which increases prices for everyone, including us) to their level of technology. And those online video games and chat rooms affect their youth just as much as it does us, if not more.

Apparently, these young people are so addicted that China has opened its "first officially licensed clinic for Internet addiction." In other words, people are spending so much time online that they need help---and they're getting it.

Listening to these kids sounds like they're druggies or drinkers. Read this paragraph from the article:

"In school I didn't pay attention when teachers were talking," one 12-year-old said. "All I could do was think about playing the next game. Playing made me happy, I forgot my problems." He spent four days in an Internet cafe, barely eating or sleeping.

Four days! I'm amazed that someone would be stupid enough to do that! But I know it's not just in China. I'm sure there could be twice as many stories about teenagers in the United States who could use this clinic. It's just so sad that it even has to exist.

People have always wanted to escape. But instead of just drugs and alchohol, now there's the Internet to help you do that. What is this world coming to?

(Source: www.canada.com)

Edmond the Hun

Current Events: Revenge of the Homeowner

This is amazing. Logan Darrow Clements is attempting to get the rights to build a hotel on the property of one of the Supreme Court Justices who voted for the decision that it's constitutional to build things like hotels on private property if it will bring in more tax dollars.

Ingenious! The Supreme Court has infringed on the rights of private homeowners, and Mr. Clements is bringing it right back at them by applying the policy to one of their own homes. He has to get a majority vote from some kind of five-man council, but I don't see how they could not give him the rights to do this. The Supreme Court has declared it legal! The only way the justice could save his house is by becoming more of a bad guy---things like intimidation and bribery, unless he can find a way to prove that his house will provide more tax dollars than a hotel.

Mr. Clements is kind of a weirdo---he's an anti-government extremist who supports Ayn Rand's philosophies (he even wants to provide a copy of her novel Atlas Shrugged in every hotel room instead of the classic Gideon Bible). I obviously don't support everything this man stands for, but I certainly support his attempt to show the Supreme Court justices the reality of their recent decision.

I'll be rooting for him all the way, and keeping you updated as well.

Edmond the Hun