Post #184,398
11/18/04 5:58:55 AM
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Western Europe is committing slow suicide
The birth rates have decline to a point where they don't even come close to replacing the population. All radical Islam has to do is keep reproducing and they will overwhelm Europe with sheer numbers.
[link|http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/international/europe/18birth.html?8hpib|Empty Maternity Wards Imperil a Dwindling Germany]
"Germany's falling birthrate, like that in much of Western Europe, is entering its second generation. This means not only that mothers continue to have one or at most two children - too few to reproduce the population - but also that the number of potential mothers has dwindled.
...
Germany, like several of its neighbors, is running out of the people it needs to sustain its advanced social systems and public infrastructure.
"There will be 10 million fewer young people in my lifetime"
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without new immigrants, Germany's population would wither from 82 million to 24 million by 2100. If the country maintained its current rate of 230,000 immigrants a year, it would still shrink by 700,000 over the next 15 years."
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Post #184,422
11/18/04 12:53:57 PM
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Must resist the yellow ho^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^hmuslim menace!
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Post #184,436
11/18/04 4:10:22 PM
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Gaia?
Could this be the means of the planet protecting itself from a un-housebreakable species seen to pollute everything it touches? Using the oceans as an infinite toilet is as alive as the fact: cruise ships Still dump all their shit (pure shit being the more innocuous content of all the shit dumped). Medical syringes, etc. still wash up on beaches. Yada ad infinitum.
Perhaps going out with a whimper is like this. Clearly far less terminal than the Bang!nuke approach -- but it seems to be a race to beat out that quicker option; a few more Shrubs with Bagmen may foreclose on the natural way of planet deinfestation of pesky marauders.
Ah.. maybe we can extend our profligacy to Other little balls of dirt. Except.. that requires time to Terraform (first build then destroy - little Sivas are We) and next-quarter Trumpish visionaries will have none of that.
Gooo ---> Germans:
Lead the way to planetary recovery; no opposed-thumbs in the successor species, I predict.
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Post #184,459
11/18/04 8:23:00 PM
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More likely
More likely it is a result of those countries reaching a sufficent level of education and enlightenment that people are not effected by peer pressure from culture and religion into having kids.
Jay
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Post #184,465
11/18/04 9:11:35 PM
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Therefore we're now breeding for...
really WANTING kids badly. Even if it means compromising your own lifestyle.
People think that evolution has stopped. HAH! We are just throwing up different kinds of roadblocks.
Cheers,
Ben
I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
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Post #184,524
11/19/04 1:39:38 PM
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Uhhh...Ben...
People think that evolution has stopped. No, people think that evolution is one of several alternate, competing "scientific theories". Haven't you been keeping up? jb4
shrub\ufffdbish (Am., from shrub + rubbish, after the derisive name for America's 43 president; 2003) n. 1. a form of nonsensical political doubletalk wherein the speaker attempts to defend the indefensible by lying, obfuscation, or otherwise misstating the facts; GIBBERISH. 2. any of a collection of utterances from America's putative 43rd president. cf. BULLSHIT
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Post #184,528
11/19/04 1:56:23 PM
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Which people?
Oh. THOSE guys.
Imric's Tips for Living
- Paranoia Is a Survival Trait
- Pessimists are never disappointed - but sometimes, if they are very lucky, they can be pleasantly surprised...
- Even though everyone is out to get you, it doesn't matter unless you let them win.
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Nothing is as simple as it seems in the beginning,
As hopeless as it seems in the middle,
Or as finished as it seems in the end.
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Post #184,529
11/19/04 2:22:43 PM
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Depends on which people you talk to
I am personally astounded at how many people I know who are intelligent, have reasonable backgrounds in science, accept that evolution is how we got to be what we are, but believe that somehow civilization has eliminated the process of evolution in humans.
Those are the ones that I was talking about.
If you want to talk about the ones who lack a basic understanding of science, well, I don't think that "keeping up" is the phrase that comes to mind when it comes to keeping track of them...
Cheers,
Ben
I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
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Post #184,550
11/19/04 9:22:26 PM
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Veered off
I think it has veered in a different way than
if we weren't "civilized".
Let's face it: My genes are not meant to be
passed on. I'm fragile, weak, and certainly
could not compete or provide for offspring
in a hunter / gatherer society.
The reasons I and my kids exist are due to a
combination of a protective society and medical
science. And they will continue to breed under
the same umbrella.
It doesn't mean evolution does not happen, but
it does mean that many traits that would have
been nipped in the bud early on are allowed to
continue living. This might be good, adding
diversity to the gene pool, or this might be
bad, sucking out vital resources without returning
anything back.
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Post #184,552
11/19/04 9:39:35 PM
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And that is evolution in action
And it is a nice compensation for the several millenia of evolution that we've had for dealing with nice fast-moving plagues that are able to hit humans now that we live in large population centers.
Evolution has always had to deal with unexpected turns in what is best. In fact that is the purpose of sex - to allow quick recombining so that a population can adapt to a new situation far faster than mutation alone would allow.
Cheers,
Ben
I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
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Post #184,535
11/19/04 4:34:42 PM
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Sci Fri: Richard Dawkins + 'Intelligent Design\ufffd'
Anyone catch [link|http://www.sciencefriday.com/| these] back-back gems today?
(Briefly encapsulated [link|http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/2004/Nov/hour1_111904.html| here].)
Discussion of the MO via which Creationists spawn new catchphrases / now mean to add stickers to texts, "This is just a theory" :-0 {So Don't Be Fooled!}
Simplest response I can come up with. The sticker thingie is a perfect analogue for,
Log entry:
The Captain was on the bridge. And he was sober.
Dawkins is a treat; crisp but not terse, complemented nicely by Ira's having Read His Book, The Ancestor's Tale, modelled a bit after Canterbury - thus readable in little snippets.
Makes short work of above thesis, in oblique ref to Creationists as religious ignoramuses -- pointing out that the Pope is just as exasperated with these ilk, for giving religion a bad name.. This was merely a brief diversion from much more interesting matters -- while also clarifying another staple of the ignoramus arsenal of mindfucks:
The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics ---> entropy, chaos.
"Closed System" saith he, and explains.
Life: supremely non-random.
Authentic English spoken too, always a treat.
moi
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Post #184,578
11/20/04 7:14:52 AM
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Hmm.
There was some research done a few years ago about how paranormal and supernatural activity and perceptions might be explained by electro-magnetic fields on the human brain. There were some cases like where a person who said her bedroom was haunted removed her electronic alarm clock from the room and everything stopped. There were also some experiments where researchers were able to reproduce "a religious experience" by inducing certain types of electronic-magnetic fields in someone's brain which was kind of a reversal of the previous effect.
As an ultimate acid test, the documentary makers got in contact with Richard Dawkins who thought it was intriguing enough to participate. The researchers could not induce "a religious experience" - but they noted afterward that he was far from the first. A questionaire they had put together for participants showed a very strong trend of people who had few or no religious convictions were not able to be so induced. It was implied that Richard Dawkins was perhaps an extreme case of that.
However, both the researchers and the documentary makers were careful to not draw any sort of conclusion. Particularly as the researchers are not held in high-esteem for pursuing this type of resarch...
Wade.
Is it enough to love
Is it enough to breathe
Somebody rip my heart out
And leave me here to bleed
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Is it enough to die
Somebody save my life
I'd rather be Anything but Ordinary
Please
| -- "Anything but Ordinary" by Avril Lavigne. |
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Post #184,744
11/22/04 5:40:48 AM
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We may know quite too little about 'fields'
to conceive very good experiments, but it may be as good an analogy as any, for the sorts of things latent in our jelloware, and what might trigger these.
Many wondered, after Life After Life [Mood? Moody?] - whether the white/light, black tunnel effect might be hard-wired into our nervous system; then there were the correlations: of 17 IIRC items cited by his interviewees (all of whom had been 'clinically dead' for some period) there were 7-9? which were common to some %large of his samples.
I find the 'more solid' of such reports intriguing, but I doubt we shall find a transistorized substitute for {somehow working through} the metaphysical ropes - in our model-building of the largely Unknowable.
(6-D phase-space might be a bit small to play in, though -- just a guess, mind you.)
Ain't it just like! uppity bipeds to imagine someone else can do the work for us? Maybe at $7/hr, too.
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Post #184,478
11/18/04 11:22:04 PM
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nah, just quit naming yer seed
bring em on, yellow black brown and red, say hey, grin and do your job for your jeans so Adolf Benjamin Ramon Joseph Sayeed Kim Wong will clearly understand where he was come from.
regards,
daemon
quiz which one is the aboriginal american name(s)
that way too many Iraqis conceived of free society as little more than a mosh pit with grenades. ANDISHEH NOURAEE
clearwater highschool marching band [link|http://www.chstornadoband.org/|http://www.chstornadoband.org/]
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Post #185,025
11/25/04 4:52:07 AM
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Hmm... My guess, Wong.
If that's not it, second guess: Ramon.
But actually, *none* of those names feels all that much like an Injun [Oops, last-second addition before posting:] or Eskimo [/Oops] one.
[link|mailto:MyUserId@MyISP.CountryCode|Christian R. Conrad]
(I live in Finland, and my e-mail in-box is at the Saunalahti company.)
Your lies are of Microsoftian Scale and boring to boot. Your 'depression' may be the closest you ever come to recognizing truth: you have no 'inferiority complex', you are inferior - and something inside you recognizes this. - [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=71575|Ashton Brown]
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Post #185,040
11/25/04 10:14:34 AM
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I am lucky I guess as I dont anticipate any
adult surprises. I have a suspicion about one but cannot get a confirmed. I might be wong but it would be the result of extremely short term relationships where my name was bawb. The whole screed was directed towards the atitude of why are white folks special.
regards,
daemon
that way too many Iraqis conceived of free society as little more than a mosh pit with grenades. ANDISHEH NOURAEE
clearwater highschool marching band [link|http://www.chstornadoband.org/|http://www.chstornadoband.org/]
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Post #185,032
11/25/04 8:29:18 AM
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My guess: Joseph (13 kB .jpg)
E.g. [link|http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/a_c/chiefjoseph.htm|"Chief Joseph"]
[image|http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/images/joseph1.jpg|0|Chief Joseph|263|225]
But his given name was Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, or Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain.
Cheers,
Scott.
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