Two borders

(1) Over at x4mr's blog he has invested a number of posts in discussing what he refers to as "the border", a state lying somewhere between sleep and alertness. In more technical terms, it's the boundary between alpha and theta sleep, and also the point at which our brainwaves reach the same frequency as the lowest-frequency version of the Schumann resonance.

For those who visit it, the border is apparently a weird, wonderful and terrifying realm, a place where life-changing events can and do occur for those lucky, or unlucky, enough to experience them.

For whatever reason I have never been to the border ... apparently my sleep habits preclude it, and I just ram on through without ever noticing the border is even there. I seem to be in the majority in this regard.

Anyhow, what brought this to mind was an article in this morning's NY Times discussing the role sleep apparently has in helping us remember things ... and now I am wondering what it is those who have made journeys to the border remember that the majority of us do not, and why they have a need to remember it.

(2) Salon has an article (you may have to sit through a brief ad to get access) today about the more physical border to our south, and the possibility some of the same mercenary companies involved in Iraq may shortly be assisting along the US-Mexico border as well.

Blackwater, which is seemingly about to be evicted from Iraq for killing civilians and lying about it, is planning to open a large military-style training facility in the desert east of San Diego. Meanwhile, the company has been been lobbying for at least a couple years to get a stake in the border protection, as has rival DynCorp.

Maybe I'm being illogical here, but if we as a nation feel we need to spend more money on border security, why don't we agree to spend it on, you know, hiring and retaining more border patrol agents rather than funding private security companies with dubious track records? Or is national security yet another thing the administration thinks should be privatized, even if it costs more? (Which, presumably, would relegate the Border Patrol to yet another form of "socialized welfare".)

I'm not sure we need more guys with guns running along the border shooting at people while being outside any formal chain-of-command. That niche is already filled ... and while I think those guys are extremist kooks, at least they aren't taking millions of my tax dollars to provide their "services".