Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Not-Quite-Science Forum Science will save us

Why is welfare and unemployment always equated with laziness and such. I will grant you that a percentage of people who are on welfare are abusing the system but many are not.

If you read stories about the increasing numbers of people who are showing up in soup kitchens are applying for WIC you may realize that they are people who are hard workers and intelligent. However their employment does not pay them enough to make all the ends meet even if they have only two kids.

I will mention the old saying that I think DA is trying to get out...Who decides, who decides?

Who decides what stupid is? Grades in school? Many geniuses aka Einstein did horribly in school.
Does lazy mean they do not have a job? Ok, a disabled vet who cannot work due to injuries? Are they lazy? Or what about Stephen Hawking? How long did it take him to be able to publish his works? I am not sure of his economic situation before he became world renowed but perhaps there was some government handout involved.

What are your criteria for stupid and lazy and I can show you examples where if we used your program society would have lost a great influence.

Tell me, what good were all the people of great influence when we have still managed to screw this planet, deplete fish stocks, wage war on nature, and generally make things difficult? When GW kicks in and rising sea levels give us less livable land, with more desert or permafrost...and the burgeoning world population (an extra 3 billion in the next 40 years). You got a recipe for freakin mayhem. Someones gotta decide what's what before people end up scratching each others eyes out for a sniff of real estate or a lick of disease free water. There will come a time when your philosophical sensibilities will be irrelevant.

Easy.

So you don't have any reasonable grounds to disagree, just a little matter of the methodology.

Easy.

I would think methodology would be a reasonable ground to disagree. I am quite sure everyone has days where "just kill everyone" sounds like a great option. Problem being, it's been tried and has only succeeded in making things worse.

Question: What great accomplishment came out of Hitler's program?

I am not pulling a "Jew card" just simply asking if you can give me one example how any form of genocide has helped the state of the world.

Now, back to reality. All power to idealize humanity will ultimately corrupt and destroy those who are implementing the program. I hate Bush and his evil cohorts as much as you do. The problem is not Bush, it is those behind him that have patiently pulled the strings, kissed up to the right people and spread the money correctly who have destroyed our country and our world. It is not the stupid people that worry me, it is the power-hungry, self centered, megalomanical, intelligent power brokers behind the stupid front man that we have to destroy.

Don't let the Bush smokescreen pull the focus away from who is really in charge. Cheney and the companies he is beholden to.

At age 13, Pianka was seriously injured in a bazooka blast in the front yard of his childhood home in Yreka, California.

Well, I think that explains about everything...

But seriously, some people in this forum seem to be expressing their own distorted opinions based on what seem to be some gross misrepresentations of Pianka's lecture at Texas Academy of Sciences.

Point 1: Pianka certainly has personal opinions on the human race, but this is far from him saying that a majority of the world?s population should be exterminated. Point 2: During the lecture in question, Pianka was, apparently, only making the claim that 90% of the population would some day fall fowl (ha, ha!) of an airborne disease such as Ebola or something like avian flu. Subsequent to the lecture some real brain-boxes (the main culprit being Discovery Institute member Forrest Mims) added 1 and 2 together and got the Third Reich (which, I suppose, is numerologically correct, if you happen to be into that kind of thing).

Of course, I wasn?t at the lecture and can?t vouch for what he said at the time (who knows, perhaps Pianka presented his lecture in a satirical manner that was just a little too subtle for some folks to comprehend), but I can read what Pianka is saying now.

Here?s an excerpt from a statement Pianka made on his UT website after the subsequent controversy that arose after his lecture:

I have two grandchildren and I want them to inherit a stable Earth. But I fear for them. Humans have overpopulated the Earth and in the process have created an ideal nutritional substrate on which bacteria and viruses (microbes) will grow and prosper. We are behaving like bacteria growing on an agar plate, flourishing until natural limits are reached or until another microbe colonizes and takes over, using them as their resource. In addition to our extremely high population density, we are social and mobile, exactly the conditions that favor growth and spread of pathogenic (disease-causing) microbes. I believe it is only a matter of time until microbes once again assert control over our population, since we are unwilling to control it ourselves. This idea has been espoused by ecologists for at least four decades and is nothing new. People just don't want to hear it... I do not bear any ill will toward humanity. However, I am convinced that the world WOULD clearly be much better off without so many of us... We need to make a transition to a sustainable world. If we don't, nature is going to do it for us in ways of her own choosing. By definition, these ways will not be ours and they won't be much fun. Think about that.

I love the last few sentences. Everytime the hurricane season gets worse, or there are unexpected droughts or floods all I think of is that we are a plague of sorts and Nature is trying it's darndest to control us.

The silly thing is that if we chose to live with smaller houses, less urban sprawl, in intelligently designed communites (NOT HOUSING COMPLEXES) with a bit of forethought to efficiency we would not have most of the problems we do.

In Arizona there is a place designed by an Italian visionary architect, the name of the place is called Arcosanti. For those of you interested in truly revoltinary ideas for change google it and be amazed.

They're the same reasons that we don't eat each other

The report says that the camera man filming the event was asked to stop. "The general public are not ready to hear this". Piankas now getting death threats and he recants. It was never supposed to be public, just for the benefit of those who may one day have the keys to the fridge where they keep the ebola.

And as for "the same reasons we don't eat each other." WHAT????

As the Big 'yin Billy Connolly said..."Why don't we eat each other? The world's low on food and high on people. Makes sense, we solve the food and population problem in one go. If everyone ate one person we half the population. I'll eat someone you don't like and you eat someone I don't like. Where's the damage in that?"

The man's gotta point... do you think welfare scroungers taste any worse than cows?

Easy.

Ah, yes, why consider the simple explanation when you can go straight to a convoluted conspiracy theory.

Good to see we have yet another TFH in our midst.

Alright..I give in. Pianka was probably the victim of Forrest Mimms III who was probably jealous that Pianka was receiving the Distinguished Scientish award. For the record I was playing the Devil's Advocate and creating a lively debate. I was going to see how far I could take it...probably advising us to eat those on welfare was the lowest I could manage. Sorry Soilguy for my insults, they weren't sincere.

From another website...I've known of Forrest M. Mims III for some time (at least since flap over his dismissal from Scientific American years ago) and he seems to be a character (at least). Based on that and apparent absence of corroborating accounts, I (at this time) believe this to be a more accurate account. [Note also that Dr Mims has petitioned to have the distinguished scientist award revoked even though the award has nothing to do with Pianka's overpopulation beliefs and despite the fact the Mims himself was booted from SA for beliefs not related to his columns.]

Pianka does not advocate forcible population reduction...neither do I. Uncle Al comes pretty damn close though.

Easy.

OMG...just noticed some buffoon has awarded me five stars. I hope it wasn't for my comments written under my alter-ego Dr Mengele. Must have been Uncle Al.

Easy.

Easy, I rated you with the five stars in spite of what you were posting. I think everyone should start off with five stars.

Is Uncle Al a fictional character? Does anyone know?

Uncle Al is as real as you are though I'm not sure I'd want him as my uncle. ;-)

Justine. I appreciate that. You are obviously not a bufoon. I have spent time reading posts and getting a flavor of people here. It's self evident that you have more than a common share of both humanity and humility.

Easy.