When Trump talks about the Wall, it reminds me of a radio show
in which a physicist and the famed 1934 MVP curve ball pitcher, Dizzy Dean, were being
interviewed.
The physicist -- who had either failed to examine a baseball and
notice that it had raised threads or was just a rather bad scientist -- argued,
using a smooth cue ball as his model, that curve balls were not real, but an
illusion. That without imparting new forces on a ball in flight, it could
not be made to curve. (The actual physics is more complicated, but a baseball
can curve because the rotational forces of the ball have discretely different
impacts as the ball slows; the friction of the raised threads in the atmosphere
creates changed forces on the flight of the ball as it slows. An easy way to
think about it is that once the ball's velocity drops below a threshold level,
the threads "catch" the air and steer the ball in a new direction.)
But no one on that radio show was giving any lectures about
irregular surfaces, rotational forces, and threshold levels. Instead, Dizzy
Dean proposed a simple experiment:
"Put the professor behind a tree and I'll bean 'em."
Build a mile long stretch of wall somewhere and hold a contest
to see if people can get under or over it with equipment they can carry there
for, say, 10 miles. Once you find a model that cannot be transgressed, you can
begin to do the environmental impact, societal, legal (eminent domain),
respectful (e.g., avoid Navaho sacred sites), and other (e,g., discussion of international
relations, xenophobia, and immigration broadly) tasks that must be done before
you turn it into a $20-50B project (as $5.7B is according to all experts, a
lie, intending massive overruns).
Note that this is the first and last time I will ever compare
Trump to a physicist. H's not even as smart as Dizzy
Dean -- who, it may be noted, dropped out of school in the 3rd grade, and was
famous for saying on air: "The Good Lord was good to me. He gave me a
strong right arm, a good body, and a weak mind."
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