Joining A Debate

While reviewing visitor data to Gil The Jenius, a local website, Zonai, was prominently listed. It appears that within a cyberforum debate concerning the use of English by The Fools in the legislature, a side topic came up about Puerto Rico being or not a Third World country.

Let Me dismiss one aspect of this immediately: whether The Fools in their legislative pigsty want to speak English or not is about as relevant to Our progress as whether cows poop east or west. Hell, at least the cows produce something useful. [For a Jenius post on local "bilingualism", you know what to do.]

As for whether Puerto Rico is Third World country or not (this link has My initial take on the matter), what brought The Jenius into this Zonai discussion was a post by a member named lakemaster, who thought my Sobering Territorial Statistics post was germane to the ongoing discussion.

A member named Orocovis (also the name of the town where My father was born) scolded lakemaster for posting a link to a personal blog and added this link as an economically-based "answer" to Puerto Rico being "Third World or not?" (Puerto Rico appears as #47 in the World Rankings of Gross National Income at Purchasing-Power-Parity per Capita and Year. Whew.)

First of all, My thanks to lakemaster for dropping in to visit. Second, My Sobering Territorial Statistics post was comparing and contrasting Puerto Rico's median family income to those of Guam, the Marianas Islands, American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands and how We fared poorly in the comparison. At no point is The Jenius arguing that Puerto Rico is a Third World country, only that We weren't doing as well as We would expect.

In third position, Orocovis rightly describes this blog as personal, but missed the obvious fact that the statistical data is objective, or at least, developed separately from The Jenius, and provided with a link to the original source. The tone of his writing is respectful and worthy of the time taken to read it, so it seems careless of him to dismiss a blog post without verifying its true origin.

And lastly, it was a pleasant surprise to discover this debate, for it was quite engaging, well-mannered, often playful and though the original topic weighs toward the banal end of My scale, it was clearly worth My time in discovering it. A special salute to lakemaster, Orocovis and cruisegirl for their efforts and here's hoping the rest of Us can emulate their fine example.

The Jenius Has Spoken.