I've never even driven a motorcycle before, so in addition to an interesting if not tough restoration project, I can hopefully learn to ride without fear of a throttle blip sending the front wheel over my head.

If you've never before ridden, learn on a cheap 250 Ninja, or a Honda Rebel, or some small displacement bike of similar ilk.  Don't learn on a one of a kind restoration project that could be badly damaged in a spill.

Small bikes are freely available in most marketplaces, economically priced, and easily sold, since everyone likes using them to learn to ride.  Learn on something you don't have to worry about before you start showing off your project.

I would say the legal process is much more daunting.  That is why these criminals come the relatively, east and fast way.  The legal way requires thought, planning, investment, a non-criminal background, and the forethought to put in the time, and effort as the payback horizon is longer.  In general, it requires a person of higher character, and ambition.

The barrier one has to overcome in legal entry is cerebral, and involves things like patience and resource management (not to mention the ambition to emigrate in the first place, I will NOT in any way denigrate those who go through the legal conundrums to come to our shores).  The barrier to many who come here illegally are physical, overcoming physical obstacles and conditions.  I'm not saying we should have open borders.  I like the prohibitions we have in place, like I said I think we've set up selection for something that works very well here.  If someone's only crime is entering illegally, they've been able to stay out of trouble and are productive residents says me they're people we want, and we should find a way to keep them. 

With luck I will stop posting here altogether, but I did want to share the one and only soapbox I did with my Genetics class.  It was absolutely the only time, and the only time I have ever discussed my political views with one of my classes ever.  But the subject matter was highly relevant to what we were discussing, and the subject has been a hot-button issue.

I was discussing population genetics, and the effect migration has on allele change under Hardy Weinberg equilibrium.  We had just done a genetics problem showing an allele change to my own home town by a population of immigrants.  The change in allele frequency was substantial, far greater than could be obtained by mutation, genetic drift, or selection.

My class has a number of foreign born students, and I asked if immigration to the US was facile or difficult.  Those with the relevant experience said it was extremely difficult.  I asked if they thought it was easier to immigrate illegally.  Most thought not, due to the geographical and law enforcement barriers to entry.

I then asked what enabled a person to overcome such difficulties.  Most of my students mentioned something about determination and ambition.  I asked if those were good traits for Americans, and my students answered as a body yes.  I then mentioned that many personality traits, such as perseverance and ambition, are genetic in origin.  Those people are bringing in damn good alleles.

I then invoked the principle of selection, which biologists in the lab and breeders in the field use to isolate desirable alleles.  You set of some sort of barrier to survival or fecundity, say by putting an antibiotic in bacterial medium.  Only those bacteria resistant to the antibiotic can survive; this is the nature of drug selection.  Immigration here has never been very easy, hence we've inadvertently and accidentally set up a selection for alleles promoting perseverance. 

I then put in the one and only of my own personal views.  I truly believe that what has made America the most powerful nation on Earth has been the election for these alleles.  There are nations just as large, like Brazil, just as many natural resources that have never achieved what we have.  I believe that it is because they never had the selection that we inadvertently set up here.

My one and only soapbox (beyond making the least bit of fun of the POTUS from time to time, but I make far more fun of myself).  Like I said, most of it is based on very well understood science.  Admittedly the last bit was my own thoughts.  Those of you worried about immigration should worry about something else.  So long as there are strong barriers against it immigration, whether legal or illegal, will bring us the sort of superlative alleles that will keep America and Americans great for generations to come.

Yeah, if we can get past the brain-dead ideologically driven Conservacrats who can't get past the "why should I have to pay?" part of the equation we could drive down teen pregnancy and abortion rates to never before seen lows.  Like I said, we just don't seem to have the wisdom.  Conservacrats claim to be the fiscally responsible ones, but heaven forbid it interfere with their Invisible-Man-in-the-Sky derived ideology.

I agree that we are programmed to have sex and reproduce and it's a biological function. But you still haven't answered the question as to why I should have to pay for your decisions?

First, even the wisest among us can make a bad decision.  Do you think it was a good decision for United to drag that guy off  the airplane?  Was it a good idea to turnt hat jet around because a guy was bitching about a $12 blanket?  Just a couple examples.

Why do you have to pay?  Because we don't like throwing kids out on the street to starve.  Makes us feel bad about ourselves.  You'll pay either way.  It just that the contraceptive costs you way less than the kid.

The best way to turn a poor person into a less poor person is to allow them to control there reproduction.  We have the science to do that, we just don't seem to have the social willpower.  Make long-term contraception more available and you'll cut down the abortion rate.  It really is that simple.  I know there are ideologically driven folks in this site that vehemently object to free anything from the government, and I get that.  But widespread availability of contraception makes really good sense in OUR society.  It made no sense in the society of two thousand years ago because girls married young.  Not so anymore.

By the way, can anyone say what the actual consequences of this action were, other than blowing millions of dollars worth of technology (ours) to bits?  Yeah, an airbase got blown up, but Assad has lots of those.  According to the news Syrian jets were flying out of the one hit hours later.  Do we actually have aims in Syria?  Are we after regime change?  How are we going to get it?  Are we sending in troops?

While I approve of anything bad done to the monster than is Assad, the Mango Mussilini's missiles may make more malady than magnanimity.  Us at odds with the Russians benefits ISIS.  And the last thing we need is to be drawn into another foreign quagmire.  I would say that I hope the Cheeto Jesus knows what he's doing, but I am afraid I already know the answer to that one.