Wading In

Wall Street needs you to sacrifice Fairfield Daily Republic / The Other Side July 28, 2011 By Kelvin Wade If you’re like me you’re angry and disgusted by what you’re seeing in Washington during these debt-ceiling negotiations. I’m angry with President Obama for going to the trouble of putting together a debt commission and then dithering on the results. I’m tired of the audacity of hope. I want to see the audacity of action. Add to that a pandering Democratic Party that wants to keep feeding the fiction to voters that we can have meaningful deficit reduction and not touch entitlements. Good luck with that. Finally, we have an impotent Speaker of the House, John Boehner, who can’t control this crop of freshman tea party congressmen who act more like suicide bombers than statesmen. They’re ready to reduce the republic to rubble if they don’t get their way. The most disgusting thing is the Republicans have been willing to drive the ...

Is your smartphone making you dumber? The Other Side / Fairfield Daily Republic 7-21-11 By Kelvin Wade Google is frying our brains. OK, it’s not exactly frying our brains but it’s changing how we use our brains. In a collaborative study, professors from Columbia, Harvard and the University of Wisconsin recently found that people aren’t likely to retain information that they can easily look up on the Internet. In one experiment, subjects were given some trivia information that was placed in one of five computer folders. The subjects were better able to recall what folder the information was in than the information itself. The implication is that when asked a question, instead of thinking about the answer, we think about where to find the answer. Technology appears to be changing how we think. Think of the impact technology is having on our brains in your daily life. What’s your best friend’s phone number? Your brother’s? Mother’s? ...

Thugs don’t make good friends The Other Side, Fairfield Daily Repulic 7-14-11 By Kelvin Wade This week is the 20th anniversary of the release of John Singleton’s movie, “Boyz N The Hood.” When it was released, I went to see it downtown at the Fairfield Cinema II. The movie is about a single black father trying to raise his son, Tre (Cuba Gooding Jr.), to avoid the pitfalls of living in South Central Los Angeles. Tre’s best friend is killed in a drive-by shooting and Tre goes out with his boys looking for revenge. The crucial scene comes when Tre gets out of the car before doing anything stupid. I was reminded of the movie when I heard about the five teenage suspects arrested for the robbery of Travis Dairy and killing of owner Ho J. Kim. If these five young people committed this crime, they’ve not only taken a life but they’ve thrown their own lives away. I was optimistic that arrests would be made in this case, due ...

Keeping the American Dream alive Fairfield Daily Republic July 7, 2011 By Kelvin Wade The nation turned 235 this week in the midst of tough economic times. Unfortunately, when times are hard, Americans become more xenophobic. Deportations are up. Georgia has passed a law cracking down on illegal immigrants that has left millions of dollars in crops rotting in fields. Several states are mulling Arizona-style crackdowns. But even while we’re fed up with illegal immigration, a recent Gallup Poll shows the majority of us still think legal immigration is a good thing for America. A new documentary on HBO called “Citizen USA: A 50 State Road Trip” by Alexandra Pelosi should be must see TV for every American right about now. Rent it on DVD when it comes out. The mostly apolitical hour-long documentary briefly interviews newly naturalized American citizens all over the country. A newly minted American citizen from Iraq living in Nebraska is asked why he came to America. He gives the most freq...