Jurassic wall

Netnet Camomot . 

SINCE it’s 80 percent food and 20 percent exercise, surely you’ll lose weight if you stop eating. But how?

It’s already 2019, self-driving cars will soon serve this year’s babies who won’t need to learn how to drive nor required to have a driver’s license. If self-driving cars are possible, wish ko lang there’s an app that can help suppress our appetite.

The Philippine Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Northern Mindanao had its first ever regional conference on Jan. 17 and 18 at Grand Caprice, Cagayan de Oro. Among the topics for the technical sessions were the many ways technology is taking over our life, jobs and businesses, and this is not merely a figment of an extremely active imagination since it’s already happening—Facebook, anyone? The senior-moment brain did tend to wander when artificial intelligence, blockchain and bitcoin were discussed, still, it had no choice but to listen to the pros and cons of technology which did excite its senior-moment expectations of the near future.

Hopefully that future will also have animals in sanctuaries where they can roam free and allowed to be their natural selves instead of being imprisoned in zoos, ocean parks, circuses, safaris, theme parks, tourist attractions, etc. where they’re maltreated and forced to entertain fans. A future where veganism is the norm rather than the exception which will make my piggies happy and at the same time prompt me to wonder if I can avoid animal products forevermore. A future fully switching to green energy and an absolute stop to plastic usage, and where there’s a law for each human being to plant at least ten trees annually on his birthday.

Those born in the ’80s and ’90s are now parents to this year’s babies. Babies who will learn everything they need to know from smartphones and tablets or whatever they will be called a few years from now. They won’t have to learn how to write in cursive since their phones will do that for them. Almost everything will be done by artificial intelligence and robots and we can only hope their “humans” will be able to control them. Imagine a house being designed and constructed by robots—unimaginable? Hmmm.

Minimalism will become possible in a paperless society where data, books, business documents, planners, photos, etc. are all stored through online storage apps. Perhaps visas can become obsolete in a world where a person’s details are available online through a mere scan of his eyes or fingerprints, which can also be used for transactions that for now require passwords.

Years ago, these scenarios were called science fiction. Now, all these are or will soon be our reality.

Thus, we can see where US President Donald Trump is coming from whenever he insists on building a wall along the US-Mexico border. He’s 72 years old and we can safely guess he’s old school and believes in a wall that can stop potential criminals from entering the US. Add to that his billions of dollars that have somehow detached him from most people’s reality—well, the rich don’t worry about where to get their next meal since it’s already a given that they’ll always have money for basic needs.

It’s the big things that they may ponder on: the brand of plane they prefer, where to build the helipad, if there’s a need to add more helicopters, say, one for each child. Try listening to rich people—their 20 is not P20 thousand but P20 million. With that higher level of purchasing power, of course, they can’t understand why you have no money to buy rice.

There’s nothing wrong with being rich if the wealth comes from legal sources and it’s being shared with other people.

US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also has her own view about the rich, saying, “a system that allows billionaires to exist” is immoral and that to “‘be a billionaire and own more than millions of families combined’ is not an aspirational or good thing.” But she did add, “I don’t think that necessarily means that all billionaires are immoral.”

She wants to have a 70-percent marginal tax rate on people earning more than $10 million. Whoa.

Ocasio-Cortez, 29, has made history as the youngest woman elected to the US Congress. There are now talks that she may become president and if that’s her ultimate dream, she has to wait till she’s 35, the minimum age for a US presidential candidate. She’s the new breed of politicians—female, young, determined, vocal, dynamic and, well, a millennial.

While the senior-moment fats are waiting for a diet they can adopt for a healthy lifestyle, the millennial is already patenting the perfectly healthy lifestyle. That kind of dynamic.

So, Trump has to adapt with the 21st century’s national security measures to help himself realize that building a border wall is such a Jurassic idea and will only evoke a feeling of, I wonder, as the Great Wall of China continues to enjoy being one of the new seven wonders of the world.

The Berlin Wall, on the other hand, was destroyed in 1989—28 years after it was built—when the Cold War was about to end. Let that be a learning-from-others’-mistakes lesson for Trump.