Wayne W Walls

I took an Intro to Philosophy class in college and one of the biggest assignments was a final paper. In the paper, we were supposed to follow the philosophical method of argument to answer one of several question prompts. This post is just the paper I submitted. “Is Democratic Government Necessary to Achieve an Ideal Society?” Definitions The terms used in this question have the potential to be quite nebulous. Before I attempt to provide and support an answer to the question, I will present my own definitions and distinctions to ensure that you, the reader, and I, the author, are seeing in our minds the same things as we move through this work. An “ Ideal Society ” is that community of people who can provide for all its members the highest possible standard of living. Absolute economic equality is not necessary to have this ideal society, but it is required that some reasonable or even generous standard be made for what poverty is, and no person can exist below that standard.  ...

I am a fan of the podcast Planet Money . As the title would suggest, the podcast discusses issues related to money and economics . And sometimes they take listener questions and turn the answers into entire episodes. And at the end of the episodes, they ask for listeners to send in their questions. A few years ago I sent them an email with a question I had. They did not reply. A little while later I replied to that email just to basically try to get them to see it and respond. They did not ever reply. But I thought my question was pretty good, so I am posting it here for anyone to read. My Question About Investing It is common good advice that to plan for your future and work towards a happy retirement you should save some portion of your income and invest that money. When you invest your money, the plan is that the money works for you, so that even when you are not working, you are still making money.  If the rate of return of your chosen investments is sufficient, and you are ab...

I bought the CDs for Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings and the expansion Age of Empires 2: Conqueror's Expansion many years ago. I installed them on the desktop PC my family had at the time, and the games installed and worked just fine. No issues. Those games were a couple of my favorites. But life gets busy and I kind of forgot about them. Many years later, I remembered them again, and so installed them on the computer I had at the time. The games still installed and played problem-free. This year, I again remembered I owned these games, and in order to play them again I would need to install them on my current computer. I figured since it went well in the past, it should go well this time. I also thought that as technology advances, computers just naturally get better, so if my very old computer from over 10 years ago could handle playing these games, surely my newish computer should do just fine. I loaded up the discs and clicked "install" on the installation wizard tha...

I love the internet. I love the possibilities the internet offers to allow people to share things with the world. No matter who you are or what you are passionate about, you can put something out there, and other people in the world can find it. That is so extremely exciting to me!  I have heard lots of people (mostly on podcasts ) talk about how there used to be gatekeepers which would control what the public was allowed to see , hear , and read. Lots of people might have interesting, uncommon ideas to share, but the gatekeepers (such as publishing company executives or broadcast television managers) would choose what would be published, and therefore what was available to the public. It wouldn't matter the value or merit of an idea, if the small number of gatekeepers didn't want it out in the world, it would not get out there. But now, thanks to the internet, the gatekeepers have lost much of their power, and anyone can share what they want with the world. Information is now ...

 Sometimes you want to go out to eat somewhere, but aren't quite sure where to go. And it can be hard to think of options on the spot. Plus, the pressure of trying to decide while you are already hungry doesn't help. I hope the following list of restaurants in the Lakeville, MN and Apple Valley, MN area can help you make that decision. And it never hurts to look over all of your options before choosing. The list is not in any particular order. Just because a restaurant is higher up on the list does not mean that I think it is better than another. If you know of a restaurant I've missed, please let me know about it in the comments, and I will be sure to add it. I want this list to be as helpful as possible. 1.  Simplee Pho   This is a great little restaurant in Apple Valley on Galaxie Avenue that serves Vietnamese and Chinese food. Definitely one of my favorite restaurants. One of my recommendations for ordering here is to order from the Dinner Special section. Those dishe...

 I have been watching the TV show Colony on Netflix lately. I believe it originally aired on USA network, but I am late to the series and didn't actually watch it on its home network. The show is a sci-fi drama about an alien invasion that takes place around Los Angeles. The alien invaders use collaborating humans to institute a very strict and heavy-handed authoritarian government. One of the noteworthy key features is that the aliens installed very tall walls that keep various areas segregated. The inability to freely travel causes lots of problems for the characters in the show. In the show, the alien invaders are often referred to as RAPs, which I believe is short for raptors. I'm not entirely sure why they are called raptors. Maybe it is a clue that the aliens look like dinosaurs or birds? In the beginning episodes of the show, you see the effects and technology of the aliens, but you don't actually see the aliens themselves. You see the walls they put up. You see the...

 I wrote a post that was a roundup of links to other people's websites before, a "Link Roundup". I wrote that because I had recently found some interesting stuff across the web and I wanted to quickly share it . This roundup post is going to be different than that previous link roundup because this roundup will be of only blog posts on this site. I have written, at the time of writing this blog post, 86 blog posts . Some of those are doing decently well. I believe the article on my site with the highest number of pageviews has just over 3000. I have several posts around 1000 total views. Many in the 300-700 views range. But I've also got lots of posts which have very few pageviews. Like in the 10-30 views range. They are good articles. The content is useful and interesting , and I believe they should be getting seen more often than they are. Less than 50 views is too few views. So this roundup post is intended to give a little extra attention to those underperformin...

 I think it's cool to read stuff written by local writers. I like to blog and think building a website is really fun. So I am especially interested in reading the blogs of local bloggers . Unfortunately, there isn't a directory that I'm aware of which curates and organizes bloggers by their home base. Since it doesn't exist, I figured I would try to collect as many of the local Apple Valley, Lakeville , Farmington, Eagan, Rosemount, Bloomington, Edina, Minnesota bloggers into one place as I can. This list won't be very long because I haven't found many of them. It is possible that there are many more, but I just haven't come across them. If you are a Minnesota blogger , or know of a Minnesota blogger that I've missed, please comment with their site info on this post and I will do my best to incorporate them. Thanks in advance! Mak & Cheese Mak & Cheese is a blog written by a woman who calls herself MaK . The blog hasn't had a new post sinc...

 When it comes to political ideologies, there are rarely any perfectly clear-cut definitions of anything. Any particular term is likely to mean different things to different people. So some might call it Socialist, some might call it Marxist. Maybe it's Leftist. Or Anti-Capitalist. Whatever it is called, I listen to some educational podcasts that discuss issues related to these philosophies. I really enjoy these podcasts, so I wanted to recommend them to you so that you can try them and hopefully like them. Economic Update First up is my favorite of this category: Economic Update . Economic Update is hosted by Professor Richard D. Wolff. Richard Wolff is an economist that views things from a Marxist perspective. The Economic Update show is a radio show that is broadcast and syndicated on several radio stations. It is recorded as a podcast so that you can listen at any time from the internet. They also record video of Prof Wolff doing the show, so it is also a video you can watch....

 Almost 2 years ago I created a post titled Best Music 1 , with the intent of making it a semi-regular feature of the blog. I would just suggest a list of songs that I'm really liking at the moment. Well... I didn't end up posting another Best Music blog post. But today that changes. I was scrolling through my list of Spotify playlists and I stumbled upon one I made a long time ago, and found that I was really liking it right now. The playlist is a rock music themed list. I'm going to keep it pretty simple, so I'm just going to list the songs below. Enjoy! Bottom of a Bottle by Smile Empty Soul Cold (But I'm Still Here) by Evans Blue Rich Kids by New Medicine Fire Up The Night by New Medicine The Way You Like It by Adema New Disease by Spineshank Courtesy Call by Thousand Foot Krutch Move by Thousand Foot Krutch Citizen/Soldier by 3 Doors Down Headstrong by Trapt Stupid Girl by Cold Suffocate by Cold Other Articles to Read: Employers Should Pay To Train Employees No...

  Fulton is a brewery located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I have never been there (I guess I'm not even sure if they have a taproom or not), but I love their beers. Their IPA " Sweet Child of Vine " is very good! It is definitely one of the beers I buy from the liquor store most often. I had seen it at the store before, but I had never actually had it until I had it on an airplane. I took a flight out of the Minneapolis airport, and in-flight, they only had domestic light beer and Sweet Child of Vine. I had it and thoroughly enjoyed it. Another of their beers I really like is " Chill City Chugger ". It is a golden lager, but it just tastes like a better version of a typical light beer. My favorite beer from Fulton, though, is " Lonely Blonde ". It is an American Blonde Ale. It is a lighter tasting beer, but still has lots of flavor. I like all sorts of very flavorful craft beers , like IPAs and Stouts, so compared to that stuff, it is fairly light. So...

 For all of the obvious bad that resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been some silver linings. The ones that come to mind for me all have to do with transforming the way people work. I've read news stories about people who had to take time off from work to care for their kids while schools were shut down. I'm sure there are plenty of people who didn't enjoy that situation, but many people suddenly realized how much they enjoyed being home with their families. They realized how unimportant work was in their lives. They wanted to prioritize things that made them happy , such as quality time with family. While that sort of thing seems wildly obvious, there were many people who needed a shock to their routine - such as the one the pandemic provided - for them to realize it. People get stuck on auto pilot and just keep repeating the same basic day for years. The pandemic helped them wake up and see what was really important to them. Another accidental benefit that ca...