Not mentioned in the Garden of Eden specifically, the Ugli fruit was found growing naturally in Jamaica about 300 years ago.
It's a cross between a tangerine and a pomelo or perhaps a grapefruit.
A related fruit is the tangelo, which has been growing in China for about 3000 years. How did such fruit come about?
It's odd that fruit exists. And yet it is "natural." But some fruit are now hybridized, or they have had something done to them called "genetic engineering." In many cases these fruit cannot recreate themselves, since the bees don't know what to do with them, or they don't multiply quickly enough to be good eggs, commercially speaking. So scientists get busy and try to prod them into greater tonnage. For thos e who worry about the "naturalness" of a product, this seems as gross as Frankenstein. The Ugli Fruit even looks like the Frankenstein of the Citrus World!
I don't know what it means to say that something is natural. Is what's natural, good?
If you act naturally, are you behaving well?
Isn't human civilization based on acting artificially, according to local customs?
Should anyone go about without deodorant, we might say, this person smells just like nature intended them to. Wouldn't it be better if they used an artificial deodorant, like the rest of us?
Humanity has changed nature. We breed dogs from wolves into Dachsunds and other ankle biters, according to all kinds of bizarre criteria: ability to walk with heads high, ability to chase Frisbees, ability to grow very long fur.
We try to exterminate mountain lions in various parts of the country (or at least we used to do this, but now the nature people are claiming this isn't good, and we should stop trying to tamper with nature).
What is the right boundary between man and nature? Are we part of it? Are we stewards of it? Do we have the right to exploit it? do we have the right to exterminate viruses?
The Ugli fruit (pronounced Oo-glee) is just atrocious in every way, physically. God could not have designed such a hilariously mishapen fruit, at least not without laughing. Shouldn't we retouch it a bit, and give it a better wrapping? It tastes something like a sweet grapefruit, but the individual pieces are somewhat chewier.
Try one: you might like it.
55 comments:
I believe that the earth (the "biosphere") is not a static system. Change occurs, and sometimes dramatically.
Philosophically, in the Kantian sense, nothing that happens on our planet--including all the synthetic, concocted substances we've created--can really be "unnatural" since it's "of" the earth (a closed system--unless you believe in extra-terrestrial intervention).
But we know that ecological systems can be fucked up to no good advantage, either through over-exploitation or poisoning or imbalances of various kinds.
The obvious fact about the earth is the human explosion which has occurred over the last 1500 years. There was a Nature special last week which documented a rat problem in Southeast Asia--every 45 years or so (I forget the exact increment), certain tropical forests flower and drop huge amounts of fruit. The rats suddenly begin rapidly reproducing to exploit this new food bonanza, then when it's used up the rats attack the agricultural tracts of the inhabitants nearby. It's a cyclic rat plague, not unlike locusts.
Our over exploitation and manipulation of the biosphere has permitted mankind to become a literal plague--we're reproducing way too fast, and using up everything in sight.
We're headed for disaster. Everyone knows this. But no one talks about it. It's the elephant in the room.
Manipulation of fruit and vegetables is aimed at maximizing output--much as efficiency and mechanization was aimed at increasing production during the Industrial Revolution. But changing the natural evolution of species may have unforeseen consequences. Species which have grown up slowly, over time, subject to the checks and balances of evolution, carry certain values. Mammals, for instance, naturally build up immunities over time to common bugs. It's not a perfect system, but it has value.
If we start manipulating species overnight, we may upset balances and values inherent in the slow advance of incremental change which slowly "perfects" species through progressive mutation and selection. By speeding up the pace, introducing false mutations through manipulation, we may be doing harm to these ecological systems.
This isn't a new idea. And it isn't about liberals and conservatives. It's about what effect radically altering the conduct and structure of complex ecosystems may have on US--on OUR ability to survive and thrive.
World human population needs to be reduced by at least half. Either we can do it voluntarily, or nature will take care of the job for us. Option #2 won't be pretty.
World human population needs to be reduced by at least half. Either we can do it voluntarily, or nature will take care of the job for us. Option #2 won't be pretty.
Right then. Let's kill everyone in Asia and Africa. Or the Americas, Europe, and Australia. Either or.
Or maybe we'll all count off 1s and 2s. The 2s get it.
It can also be done through voluntary controls, or through taxation rates (the Chinese method), it doesn't mean actively killing. It might mean reproducing less, by getting vasectomies, or encouraging gay couples, which at least don't reproduce.
I don't know how many people the earth can sustain. We're apparently at about 6 billion now. Malthus predicted the population explosion would end badly. Water rights will be one problem. Food sources another. Disease yet another potential issue. Asteroids might hit the planet. The closest habitable planet is about 4.5 billion light years away, according to an article in Scientific American. At least they believe that in our galaxy there may be as many as 50 billion habitable planets (300 trillion stars, and many of them have planets).
Meanwhile, we're stuck here.
What happens now in Africa is that doctors save the kids and then they overburden their ecosystem and die later in wars over the remaining turf. Hutsu and Tutsi type stuff.
People do have to think more holistically. But it's really hard to do, since there are so many factors to consider, and always there is some factor that we haven't considered, and then we're hinkmeistered.
See, Kirby, the problem with those controls is you have to either impose them on everyone (a la China or the world government in Ender's Game) and everyone hates them (and by extension the government)
or
you have to "encourage" people to use them (as has been happening in the West for a good 50 years) -- and the problem with that is that stupid people don't pay attention to such encouragements -- as the song says, the "common people" "dance and drink and screw because there's nothing much to do." So we develop into something resembling Idiocracy.
Or we can step up efforts to develop cheap and effective desalinization plants and work on sustainable & hyper-productive growing methods (like the guy who grows 3 tons of veggies a year on 6000 sq ft of backyard) and not have to worry about such bs.
G.M.:
No need to get sarcastic.
Killing? Mankind is very good at that, both within its own species, and to other species.
Humans aren't rats or locusts, but the terms of our existence are basically the same. Living things are opportunistic. Where there's space, and food, creatures will increase.
But we no longer have any natural predators to keep us in check. Viruses and bacteria might do the trick, but we're using science to mitigate that threat (probably we won't prevail against them in the end, though).
Water wars are, in effect, checks on population. In fact, wars we may think of as about principles, or territory, or terrorism, for instance, are really just the consequence of excessive crowding. Space is a natural resource, just like water, or food, or fuel. Put people too closely together, and all the other problems mushroom: Sewage, waste, water, sanitation, friction expressed as violent disagreement and factionalism, etc. These are all really about population in relation to the sustainability of the environment.
We can live like rats, or insects, but is that the ideal paradigm? Is Bombay the human dream? Is damming the Yangtse River really in anyone's interest, over the long haul?
We can't farm or mine or dam or de-salinate our way out of this crisis. Human population growth will outstrip every attempt to accommodate it.
The answer isn't in increasing capacity--that's already long-gone--but in reducing demand. It's that simple. Either we do it in an orderly fashion, or take the consequences.
Wringing your hands and worrying about rights and conflicting priorities...well, that's all very nice, but you're still staring reality in the face.
Untold devastation and suffering.
We can't farm or mine or dam or de-salinate our way out of this crisis. Human population growth will outstrip every attempt to accommodate it.
Why do you hate people?
It did occur to me that the system isn't necessarily utterly closed. There is the possibility of Christ multiplying the loaves, for instance.
Hume argued against any kind of miracle, with the push toward toward science.
But let's hold out hope for divine intervention.
Divine intervention in these cases tends to look too much like flood and fire for my taste.
At the population density of New York, (2181/sq mile), we could fit the population of the planet into 2/3 of the United States (with room to grow both north and south). New York is a pretty nice place to live. We could then farm the rest of the world and have far more than enough food -- with the added benefit of only mucking up the North American Continent.
And we certainly can desalinate our way to survival -- we just need to spend as much on desalinization research (something that will save millions of lives) as we do on breast cancer research (something that saves thousands of lives).
Or we can just assume that the problems of overpopulation will be in places where we don't live and say eff all to 'em.
Or we can start forcibly eugenicizing people. That's always fun.
the fundamental incentive for survival in every living species every living thing is:: be fruitful and multiply:: bacterium do it viruses do it plants do it rodents everything has this tendency and where the natural limits are severe or the environment is not conducive something seems to find a way to survive anyway
we've gone through an extensive period of optimizing the possibility for human life -- let's say the past 200 years -- despite the most devastating wars and epidemics known to the history of mankind -- to curtail the impetus to be fruitful and multiply is to effectively coerce nature to treat the natural principle of expansive growth as something we have somehow determined we need to control
who will decide this
it's been tried and entertained in the 20th century by the visionaries of humanism and positivism
it is one thing to be a steward of nature it is quite another thing to presume to be a manager
what hasn't been tried with much effort are the principles which would allow for freedom for anyone to live out the dignity they need to live out...the legacy of the best of christianity upholds this
i am convinced that there is enough arable land enough water enough space enough knowledge in the collective treasure of mankind to sustain billions more people--
there may not be enough love
it will be man and his selfishness
man and his pride
man and his foolish belief in his/her own arrogance that will do humanity in
we need to see the world and work in the world not so much as scientists but as artists artists who undrstand the significance of limits and are willing to work creatively within the limits of a given space
man might do well to acknowledge the prevailing mysteries in nature rather than stand so proud in having uncovered but a few of her secrets and exploited them often for good but sometimes for very corrupt reasons
unless the seed dies
mother nature is more subtle in her variety more plentious in her offerings more adaptable and fruitious than we would allow in our presumption to know...reality is far more clever than her observers...what's the obsession to control her???
more people working for their own and their neighbors' sustenance
face up to the humiliations of wreckless capitalism
she's capricious and she loves to dance and her moves are always changing and always staying the same and always changing
man is enslaved in the illusion of freedom
no freedom without self sacrifice
let the species and the varieties be fruitful and multiply
we tend to contort nature into our imperfect perceptions
science desires to control the fruitfulness of the world in much the same way HE! has subjugated the natural fruifulness of woman -
chemical slavery everywhere i look
the slow degradation of presumption
women walking with death in their minds -- smiling
attractive but impotent in body and mind
either we are invested in co-operating with natural law or we are phrenetically ignoring natural law and imposing a contrived system of programmatic ignorance--a nuclear reactor on the verge of cracking
bow to the powers of nature we do not comprehend
kneel to the force of life
more powerful than our keenest thoughts
a scientist recently stated to me that a petroleum refinery is as natural as a beaver dam -- the difference as i have thought about it is that the beaver is intent upon a rather immediate survival while the petroleum refinery is aimed far beyond the sustenace of one family in one place -- the evolutinary model allows for these kinds of statements -- however mans' will adn grandiose ideas adn pride and a spirit of wrecklessnes and careless must prevail -- to justify the refinery -- a beaver dam slows the natural flow of a stream and perhaps effects life down stream for awhile perhaps making trees grow more around the pond dn other forms of life find optimal habitat like trout -- whereas the refinery is pretty damn toxic and pretty damn smelly -- the first forest csar here was intent on killing the 20 or so beavers on our lake because they took too many trees in his estimation...i thought this absurd for i saw in the beaver a very well adapted critter with very humble needs..well the csar killed all but one little family adn ws very proud of his management ability...a year later he was hit with a heart attack and died -- the beavers are returning to be fruitful and multiply
science kills
nature merely absorbs
consider the lilies of the valley
j
Curtis, you're wrong... Technology advances at an advancing rate. Technology is the ability to achieve more with less. We just need to be focused on which way the ship steers, not trying to destroy the ship because we think the water will run out.
It won't. Your flat-line thinking is the only thing that will doom humanity, because if flat-liners take over the places where freedom is loved, then freedom is doomed.
It is good to have hair-on-fire extremists like yourself just to make us aware of things a bit - but it's not like you're Actually correct in any of your statements about how we're running out of resources that can't be tapped...
The problems are in the transitions - places like Mumbai, where old approaches buck up against new technology, tend to be a beautiful mess... We need to shorten transitions between phases, not prolong them because we're afraid.
It's not the time to turn back the clock - it's the time to jump forward, embrace the future, solve our problems, and move toward the beautiful intelligent flowering of the universe.
Don't look at the cliff and ignore the hang-glider being built over your head, and then shove half the world off of it.
Everybody always thinks they're living in the end-times...Things will progress and change, but the basics will stay the same, for the most part. Though we may live forever.
Folks, you're deliberately ignoring what science has been telling us for the last 100 years.
You'd like to believe that we can invent and tinker our way out of the equation. The equation tells us there's only so much energy, only so much protein, only so much clean air.
It's YOU who are living in the past, the past of the 19th Century's faith in infinite expansion. Even that is, say, a 600 year old bad dream.
The earth is flat!
How do you de-salinate? Do you know how much energy it takes to de-salinate one gallon of sea water? Look it up, kiddies.
Once the oil runs out, will you burn coal again? And when that runs out, what then?
Oh, right, atomic energy!
Fusion! Making energy out of nothing! The alchemists! Gold from lead!
The idea about humanity changing things is one as old as humans have been around. One of the first things we sought to do was to transform the Earth into something that it was not. We seek to tame its rivers, domesticate its animals, harvest its plant life and exploite its natural resources.
This is all withing the parameters that are given to us. What is not okay is when we destroy what we should be cultivating and protecting.
Like any good gardener we should not seek to just have our garden for one season but we should take care of it so that we may be able to use it for many years to come and possibly even allow our children to benefit from what our garden produces.
We should be able to terminate and exterminate those things that are not good for the garden.
(On a side note, Kirby I have a personal favor to ask of you, can you do a favor for me and read what I just wrote about my experince today in class with my guilt ridden liberal professor and let me know what you think or what I should do diffrent? Thanks Kirby)
Uhh...curtis. It doesn't take that much energy. Segway-man invented a water purifier that will purify any water...sewer water, seawater, don't matter...by running on cow dung (and other such materials).
Problem right now is cost effectiveness and distribution.
But entire villages can get clean safe water without tapping into electrical grids just with a smart guy with a couple of hundred-thousand-dollar machines.
Price, of course, will drop substantially once full-scale manufacturing goes into effect etc.
The corporatists who like to keep making profit the old-fashioned way, and the ludditical sky-is-fallingers like yourself conjoin in a weird, unexpected way to battle against the progress that will save lives and improve the universe.
If you do things the old way, it takes lots of energy - if you do things the new way, it takes less and less energy (and you can get more and more energy from less and less).
Y'all types always pull your stats from the old ways, which is just plizzain silly!
You're the ones saying that because it took 7 years to map 1 percent of the human genome, it will take 700 years to complete the project.
But it only took 15.
(I know you're not Actually saying that, literally, but your approach is filled with the same fallaciousness).
Lucky, where did you write this?
Kirby, I wrote in on my blog at at Luck's Rants
remember that CHILDREN'd refrain?
apprapppoe to this stream...
"Eat Shit!"
well maybe we can all (de)volve to that little
bug that will be able to survive and fill their minds and bodies with
all kinds of waste products?
genticists at universities in BetcuhWanna Land, will aceive this miracle in just under
14 billion years
and all funded by The Governmeant Well of ....
GM, LUCKY, jh, and yes, brett: Thanks for sticking up for humanity in the face of Curtis's "apres moi le deluge" BS (in caps 'cause it's as big a pile as elephants leave behind them). Protestants often lament over-population, but I'm sure jh is right in giving us the case for life everlasting.
Our president, the Big O, is a partisan--I'm sorry to say--of death; he doesn't want the "punishment" of life to be inflicted on, say, his daughters--let alone poorer folks who can't claim the presidency as his own as an affirmative-action hire. At least this puts this greenhorn to the test, for it's the first full-time job (outside the Senate, if you call that "work") he's ever held down. It's a scandal that he should even show his face at Notre Dame--vergogna! Mais, vive la vie!
Eeeeeeeeeeeee--HA!!!
Step right up, folks, this is Dirty Dubya's Almost practically used car em-POR-ee-um!!
Population ain't no prob'm. Right to life! You're darn tootin'!
Shit, we don't need no clean water. Don' need no fish, either. Farm the suckers!
Global warmin' -- not to worry, ain' happ'nin. Take it from me.
People the earth! Go forth and increase! It's in the gospels, fer cryin out loud!
When Jesus and I sat down to hash all this stuff out, I was a little bit dizzy, but I remember the important parts!
No contraception. It ain' God's way!
Democracy is a wonerful dream. With a little help from yer frens' you cun sew up markets tight as a virgin's purse. I know cuz we dunnit.
Heh heh heh, it's about the wahr on tare, folks! Infidels at the gates!
This here nigger's got the eee-lectorate by the balls now, but just you wait'n see! We're plannin a big party, soon's the deficit bloats up big enough and goes poof!
Let me put one thing real straight: Democrats started that Eye-rack war. Warnt me. I just done what come natural-like. Folks made me do it. The smoking gun, aluminum tubes, yellow-cake, all that shit.
I made sure our friends on Wall Street got to squeeze into th' trough before I made my escape.
Poor devil--he'll never dig hisself out'ta this mess.
Wahl, I got to be amblin along.
Tip-eee-tye-yey-YAY!!
i think the showdown at notre dame
this weekend will be a telling moment
in the national argument/discussion
it's the one point where i really struggled with my support for obama
i'm resigned to realizing that the philosophical underpinnings for the respect for life are clouded over with mans' ability to tincker withand manage or presume to manage so much
it must seem like a fateful lapser into religious thought if one has to say that human life is sacred
made in the image and likeness of god
there'sa whole huge weight of modern thought inimical to the more subtle and vigilant principle of human sacrednessand fragility
but
how much degradation can the family of man withstand at the hands of desperate women weilding the thoughtless aimless sharp blades of science and medicine
i shoule hope that obama is at least open to another level of enlightenment
he's doen quite a bvit already to make foreign policy a worthwhile art for america again...it must be an art
well so are the considerations on the value of human life the invaluable inestimable value of every life
i'll pray for obama this weekend
j
great banter curtis the curmudgeon cowboy
for me the arguments about sustainability on earth while having political ramifications
are
out of the political realm as far as philosophy goes
and theology
the "reasoned" arguments derive from empirical science and statistics and the presumption of knowing what the future may bring
the arguments stemming from
a gracious understanding of human nature are more subtle and more considerate of human beings and the whole range of possibilities for human experience
i thinks if the 20th century is any indication man with reason alone is a pretty frightening proposal
the questions
who gets to do the managing
who gets to decide who gets to live and who does not
is china the new model
i believe there are questions which transcend the human sciences and challenge the reductionism of empirical science and we are beholden to some extent to all humanity to face realistically those problems
wendell berry has been stating recently the importance of the artistic temperament to come forth with creative problem solving...for people to be realistic about limits and to work creatively within the truth given to us as workers makers and growers on the planet
i think he's on to something
the science world has taken too much for granted
if we can create alongside and with the creation as it presents itself that at least marks a change from the idea since early enlightenment a al francis bacon "we will conquer nature"
nature works things out with a continual surprise
not fear but the creative hope that life can be better for everyone and we can work with the mystery of the created world to bring that about
man's presumption will mean
coercion and degradation all the way around...if the fear becomes mmore adn more manifest then inevitably it seems to me there will be a rise to tyrrany and someone will seize control someone or some devious powerhungry social organization with the presumption that "we must run things now"
mary midgely offers some surprising insights of critique concerning the presumptions of science and scientific myth...am reading the ethical primate of late
let there be peace on earth
i think most biologists would agree with the "observation" from the genesis story
"be fruitful and multiply"
it is fundamental to the survival of species
darwin would probably agree as well
read an interview recently about DUBYA in dallas he's doing yard work for laura and taking the dog out on walks he's doing the pooper scoop thing and said now he's picking up what people used to throw at him while he was predident which says to me that he doesn't know the difference between constructive criticism and dogshit...some things should never have been...ah well
we survived even that
which may be the only positive thing to say in the wake of it all
j
Johanathan Swift had the solution..
to the hunger "problem"
to the unwanted (boarder) baby problem
what was it?
and Leonard Baskin illustrated it...
I got a copy of it:
A Modest Proposal
or
we could just fry up dogs and rats and various bugs 9 roaches) like 88 % of the world does to survive!
just imagine what human waste is going into our food supply via them cheap-labor pickers?
and
how many girl babies dropped into them rice paddies?
meanwhile lets fucking watch Farrah Fawcet die!
oh, wake up,
children!
war will get rid of a lot of the "surplus" peoples who "suck our blood"
aids and other diseases will "help"..
poison food supplies will help,
poison medications
and horse-shit doctors and gov't agencies and various "religious" entities will eradicate useless "non-believers".
so
the ruling male dominated higher-archy will continue to rape, murder, plunder, and satisfy their Manly wants....
meanwhile I'll drive a Cadillac El Dorado!
just another horse-shit Chevy!
Ed,
Are you serious?
The ruling male hierarchy gave us roads and bridges and cities and computers and agriculture.
And we're throwing it all down the shitter. Nice.
just watch THE FUTURE OF FOOD
it's available via HULU
http://www.hulu.com/watch/67878/the-future-of-food?c=News-and-Information/Documentary-and-Biography
Mr. Baker: For your hilarious "apres moi le deluge" scenarios, I thank you for sharing and have an appropriate day. . . . And still, keep 'em coming, for each one seems to surpass the hyperbolic richness of the former, like one nail in the coffin drives the former only just hammered in . . . :
Your faux-invectives remind me of the story of E M Cioran (pseudonym) after he set up in Paris, after his honorable service (along with the great scholar of comparative religion, Mircea Eliade) in the Roumanian Iron Guard in the 1930s, and after he had been a keen student of Buddhism for some time. He writes:
"We all have some maia or other that keeps us from embracing "the supreme happiness." I ponder the case of my friend Charles, for whom drinking in a cafe is the sole reason to exist. One day, when I was excellently vaunting Buddhism to him, he replied: 'Well, yes, nirvana . . . all right. . . . But not without a cafe!'"
Sir, may I, a fellow fancier of barley and vine, recommend several sites that seem to accommodate what seems to be a mutual affection shared by us? First,
there is the pithy and terse "BumWine.com" for the talented apprentice, to be succeeded by the more refined and developed treatments of the affliction--er--affection, in the incomparable "Modern Drunkard Magazine.com" I've more if that piques your interest. We both know, it seems, that most of the world's manifold problems, and of "invidia" in particular (as a
15th c. pope well knew), can easily be cured by a salutary dose of "in-vin-ia." Cheers, mon vieux, and, . . . bottoms up!
Sorry for the typos (it comes with the territory, n'est-ce pas?)
"mania" for "maia," etc.
Always remember the operative words, Mr. Baker: "Bottoms up!"
Curtis: Just noticed your last revelatory post, and (NOW I KNOW where you're coming from!), along with The Rgt. Honourable Mr. Ed Baker, let me welcome you (sobs convulsively) as a true brother and fellow devotee of liquid oblivion . . . Sorry I can't elaborate longer, but Mass is in twenty minutes, and there's word all about the brotherhood that they've got a new 18% communion wine this week . . . (and I'll not fail later to describe for your delecatation the scene me 'n Emmy cut at the debut of the Al Gore global warming flick here in Ann Arbor a few years ago!). At any rate, welcome to the sacred brotherhood of barley and vine . . . Bottoms up!
speaking of "bottoms up":
http://edbaker.maikosoft.com/batch_5/mvc-029s.jpg
which this image done in a phith of sane-ness re:quires
and two Pointles points:
-old Chinese saying I think from Loud Sue
"a little wine makes wise-men of us all"
and do two a genetic accident she was here
- and, OH! I forget the other point.... forgetting things becoming a problem..
it must be due to the formaldahide that Monsanto puts into all them genetically enginered barley, hops and loco-weed that they have patented
which is the way they control ownership of (almost) the entire world-wide food supply...
who owns the seed owns the food
especially corn soya, tomato, rice, and potatoe crops...
things just about in everything!
as for the "typos" this is due to stroke I had in 2003
THE VERY YEAR
July, 15, 2003 that I ate my very first morsel of "Full Moon"
cheers,
Oh, by the way... I am damn serious about all of this
I think I'll tell China how to run their economy
and how to treat them pesky Tibetan
but, however, I fear that I will have to take one of them gov't sponsoured group tours
maybe even go to a mud=puddle in a little town near Hong Kong to see how the swine are flewing..
OH we can noh longer "pick" on China we gotz to call The Hong Kong Flu (now) The Asian Flu..
etc
Mr. Ba(s)ker: We're all ready now, and off to noon Mass--can't stay long (Gratias Deo, our parish is only 10 min. away!). Thanks again for your scholarly lucubrations on world probs--yeah, whatever, fist a few brews in my name, sir, and . . .ne'er forgit--Bottoms up!
Oh, Jacques is talking about the media-hyped hopped-up bussed-in-from-other-states protestors going to protest the leader of our country talking about how to be successful in life...but what does Bammmmmer know! He ain't ever done nothin'! Just cause I say he han't.
I disagree with him politically, therefore he shouldn't be allowed near me! Or to talk about nothin' at my uni-versity. God damn him, and God Bless Me! ...
As societies transfer to 1st world, their population levels off and/or drops. Thus, if you want to keep world population down, you need to push Forward technologically, not backwards, and not all government-controlly-over-population-like either. Sall.
in other words, as technology advances, the rate at which population increases will decrease, and our ability to get more from less will continue to increase exponentially, 'specially once that there nano-tech makes all such things akin to info-tech, and therefore that doublin' effect will double and double and double agin'.
The two things stopping us are Curtis Faville and Republicans.
brett: Yeah, whatever. You should have joined us at out favourite Latin Mass today, if for nothing else, the 18% "solution." Now, I've got to go--publisher's deadline, you know (at least, mon vieux, like Kirby, we've gGOT a publisher!). Hey, join the brotherhood with Ed n' Curts n' me n' Emmy! Sorry it's only bottom-shelf scotch during our last-minute editing rush--wonder what you'd look like with cheap gin runnin' outta your mouth--kinda like Martha, y'know--that and endless reps of the Blasters' "Boom Town!" Then, on to Rachmaninoff's "Isle of the Dead" . . . Bottom's up!
golly gee kirby
everyone's drinking
and getting drunk over here
i'd like to join in
but i can't drink anymore
a glass of wine
once in awhile is all
everyone wants to be drunk
on god
on love on wine
rimbaud?
mellarme'?
can't remember
j
Just came back from the bar. Wanted to see the Rockets win, or at least put up a fight.
Alas, no dice.
Had just a beer, though wasn't hydrated enough. Feeling better now after my liter o' Gatorade.
Good stuff, though I'd be happier if they made it with sugar, instead of high fructose corn syrup. I blame Iowa.
Went brewery hopping in Fort Fun last night - tasted lots of good tasties, though only hit up three of the many smaller brewhouses in that brewlovin' town.
Colorado's the beeriest state in the union! Beer! Mountains! Yay!
Had a dance party in the dirt-road parking lot when we got back, under billionstars...
Heard that the Students out-Yes-We-Can'd the protestors' narrow-minded-stick-up-assness. Tee hee.
I wonder, if there's such an uproar over giving someone who's pro-choice an honorary diploma...
Shouldn't there be an uproar over every student who gets a Real diploma and is pro-choice? Shouldn't they have some sort of loyalty oath requirement? "I do solemnly swear that I declare myself pro-life and vote Republican and believe in the perfection of the word of the Pope on doctrinal matters and I don't have pre-marital sex and if I do I go condomless."
I think you should start a groundswell of support, Jacques, to make sure that all those who go to Catholic universities agree totally with strict Catholic beliefs. Protest away!
JH -- I am a teetotaler, for the record. But I have been drunk on poetry, liturgy, sunshine, and cucumber salad.
Right now I am drunk on this negative numbers business.
They are profoundly strange, but when you get into the imaginary numbers such as the square root of negative one, wow, where are we, exactly, again?
Monks should be able to drink. It's part of being a monk, I should think.
Luther drank beer -- but back then the water wasn't safe without alcohol in it to kill all the bugs.
When were boxes of cereal invented? My dad ate GrapeNuts every day of his life.
I love how you can cut canals in Grapenuts.
We used to play with that as kids. That, and lakes o butter in the mashed potatoes.
Potatoes derive from the Andes (Incan). One could argue that that was the real gold brought back by the Spanish.
You can't eat gold.
Now there are some 500 varieties of potato worldwide.
I have probably only eaten about 20 different kinds. You could probably get the more exotic kinds through seed companies. Maybe Amazon.com sells seeds.
Let's try the more unusual kinds, and see if we can get a crop going in case the economy completely collapses this summer.
some of the finest beers ales in europe are brewed by monks most notably in belgium
the cistercians drained areas of huge swampland in france and planted vines
dom benedictine liqueur
has a marked degree of appreciation
B & B is half of that
the legend is told here of the recipe for Minnesota 13
a corn liqour produced by a well meaning monk who looked with pity upon the dangererous distilling methods of the local farmers...his recipe became famous for bootleggers
a whole generation of monk/scientists became overly fond of the stuff and the last of them an astronomer died jsut a few years ago
moderation if not fullblown stoicism and rigid asceticism are the new waves or the old waves learned anew
most benedictines maintain a healthy appreciation of the good things
we don't see much excess these days
chartreuse is a concoction the recipe of which is known only to one carthusian monk (maybe 2 if one dies)
fruit and grain fruit and grain
j
Brett:
Sadly, it is a matter not solely of abortion, but of infanticide.
Oh emmskies - don't get all melo-dramatic, and don't believe everything (or, actually, anything, like Obama being unAmerican) that Alan Keyes tells you - There's a difference between infanticide and letting a dying, no-chance-of-living aborted fetus die.
But remember. Your position is that abortion IS infanticide. Therefore, for you, there should be no moral difference, and any pro-choicer at all would receive the same reaction, eh?
abortion is the technique
infanticide is the agenda
obama got an earful
you can be sure of that
even if he didn't bother to listen much
there is some sadness in the
giving over of thought on
catholic campuses to
the sophistry of the world
if notre dame can run the vagina monologues
why certainly they can withstand some indignant catholics protesting state sponsored murder
we've yet to weigh the health costs
of freewheeling abortion
the psychosis
the delusions of femininity
the warped and skewed social agendas parading around as freedom
freedom to murder
freedom to render human life lifeless
freedom to assert a completely distorted mentality of indivualism
i think notre dame is alright in
granting the president some cred
in the catholic world
i would hope that he'd return the honor
by listening to the holy father
and weighing seriously the
clear and well articulated principles of human value discerned by the church as those granted by god
the church taught these things in the beginning
she cannot teach any other way
and it does no one any good to satirize these teachings
based on misunderstanding
benedict XVI spoke boldly and compassionately in palestine
to both sides...who else can do that?
and he upholds the all-important value of human sacredness
a value lost on most everyone else
do yourself a favor brett
read humanae vitae
and perhaps some of
john paul II's teaching on the theology of the body
you wouldn't appear so flippant and foolish
it takes some effort but when people try to understand
they eventually get it
and it makes a lot of difference
i like obama
i like his style
i still maintain
that the minds of women
must change
they who allow for the atrocity in question
cannot face the truth and they
cannot live in truth
and that is the tragedy of the day
nazis with calipers and vaccuum hoses smiling don't worry dear
everything will be alright
now spread
j
individualism
yeah
that's the madness
jh: On doctine, jh, I kiss your feet, for you've the right Catholic stuff, like that of Emmy, my lovely wife (plump as she is--thank you, brett, even if, well, her dad, the Judge, is just a tad bit younger than yours truly!). It's like Goethe, or the art critic, John Ruskin (think his Irish Rose, and go figure!), or . . . well, the character in that eminent author, Kirby Olson, in his "Temping"--you know, who married his student (what's good for English profs in Finland, is, well, sauce for the gander--or something like that! . . .). Em's so good with me mum, she's, well, good for nothing 'cept . . ., but, well, me, I guess. She just received her last check for her last ghost-written book yesterday--so, we indulged ourselves in a bottle of Drambuie--to mix with our "house" scotch--to form that cunning potation called . . . a, mmm--"Rusty Nail"--even me Mum had one of those. . . . it's very Catholic, you know--the family that drinks together, etc. . . . We've yet another funeral to attend to in a couple of days--between my 23-yr. old wife and my 85-yr old mum sometimes I'm at loss for what to do . . . . Suggestions?
jh: On doctine, jh, I kiss your feet, for you've the right Catholic stuff, like that of Emmy, my lovely wife (plump as she is--thank you, brett, even if, well, her dad, the Judge, is just a tad bit younger than yours truly!). It's like Goethe, or the art critic, John Ruskin (think his Irish Rose, and go figure!), or . . . well, the character in that eminent author, Kirby Olson, in his "Temping"--you know, who married his student (what's good for English profs in Finland, is, well, sauce for the gander--or something like that! . . .). Em's so good with me mum, she's, well, good for nothing 'cept . . ., but, well, me, I guess. She just received her last check for her last ghost-written book yesterday--so, we indulged ourselves in a bottle of Drambuie--to mix with our "house" scotch--to form that cunning potation called . . . a, mmm--"Rusty Nail"--even me Mum had one of those. . . . it's very Catholic, you know--the family that drinks together, etc. . . . We've yet another funeral to attend to in a couple of days--between my 23-yr. old wife and my 85-yr old mum sometimes I'm at loss for what to do . . . . Suggestions?
I don't have pre-marital sex and if I do I go condomless.
Wrong wrong and wrong.
That's like saying "if I murder someone then I'll only use poison."
Pre-marital sex is wrong. Doing it with or without a condom doesn't even begin to matter.
Now,
we can talk all day long about why condoms are stupid. Insane breakage rate, sex with one is like bulimia, they don't protect against STDs very well (IBR + many can be spread through contact not fluids, etc etc). These are good starters. Chemical contraception is worse -- makes women crazy, can make them infertile, masks symptoms of disease without treating the disease, reduces cancer rates for one type while raising it for another (deadlier) kind, hormones get flushed out in pee and go straight into the ecosystem, gives people a false sense of security and license, etc.
On to the wrongness of abortion.
If you're pro-abortion, Brett, I am also going to say you are pro-torture.
This is because the situations are identical but in micro & macro form.
You have a helpless though possibly threatening cipher versus an all-powerful entity.
Perhaps the fetus will ruin the mother's chance at being a movie star. Perhaps the prisoner (for who can torture one who is not a prisoner?) really knows where the bombs are planted.
Or they don't. You know.
Anyway, without regard to the importance/value/life of the cipher (that's fetus/prisoner), the all-powerful entity decides to take violent action -- and then justifies this action through fortune-telling (this is what could have happened) and "feelings" (we were worried/terrified/etc).
So you should be glad Obama is moving all the Gitmo prisoners to Bagram where the torture can continue while at the same time making sure that if his daughters get pregnant in their teens that they will be able to scrape out the life that God has given them.
Of course, a thinking man would ask -- why are we at war
and
-- why do you think your young daughter will have sex by the time she gets to high school?
jh: Belgian beers are outstanding--my Belgian folks live just outside of Bruges (Brugge), and when I was last there we out share drank 12-point Trappists at the very 500 yr-old table where Kaiser Karl (Emperor Charles V) ate and drank (das waren noch Zeiten!).
You probably know the old story 'bout Charles V being such a cunning linguist, for it's said that he spoke (in order) French to his ministers, Spanish to his wife, Italian to his mistress, Latin to his confessor, and German . . . to his horse!
brett: Sad, brett, how you trivialize those protesting the Obama visit at Notre Dame. Obama should have been disinvited long ago--I suppose the dozens upon dozens of bishops also protesting his presence on campus are just "stick-in-the-muds" to you--doubtless you know nothing of the pastoral teaching obligation bishops have to the faithful--let alone him receiving a honorary degree--for what?--For NOTHING, as Nietzshe had it--BY ANACREON! He's an absolute ZERO as a "scholar," for he's published NOTHING, NADA, ZIP in his "field" of constitutional law, though somehow this stammering buffoon cum "community" agitator with the sordid array of crook, communist, and racist ties held a part-time lectureship at Chicago--when everyone else allowed to teach at Chicago Law had to publish just to get in ("affirmative-action" gov't quotas, I can't help but think). So he's got a couple of narcissistic biographies about his experiences as a crackhead and communist fellow-traveller chugging whiskey with the odious child-molester, Frank Marshall Davis (et alors?). This pampered good-for-nothing and partisan of infanticide is the biggest political joke played on American voters since Jimmy "Iran's-pissed-me-of-so-much-I-could-spit" Carter! What a hoot!
"we all drank" (typo)
say hey, Jacques:
tell us how you Really feel...
on the previous side we had liars & greeders
on the now side we got
hope and more liars...
what's a boddhi to do?
Belgium Beer is now too expensive for me to buy
saving my money to pay for a new
American Car that I will be forced to buy...
saving my other money to pay the taxes on it!
hey! I really don't need a car! with all the money I will save
I will be able to have beer-by-the-keg delivered!
gee jacques
go easy pal
rome knows diplomacy
obama took come cues from
hesburgh and doug cmiec
i'm at least convinced that
treading the middle way
the narrow way
is the way to bring people around
even while sticking to our guns
so to speak
the righteous left on the issue
of women and abortion just may
come around
but we can't be shaming
we agree that it is abhorrent
but the matter will be resolved
in healthy conversation
or not at all
i was impressed to see the woman
who was the original plaintiff in roe v wade was present in south bend ( can't remember her name ) she's come over to the catholic way
and renounces the whole effort to have and abortion in fact she never had one
i'd go fishing with brett any day
next time i'm in colorado
i may just look him up
and head west to a little known stream
if there's one left in colorado
i think obama handled himself superbly
rome has always found a way to
let the left and the right
work things out
i'm more upset these days with
former archbishop weakland
what a disappointment
he's a bright guy
but seems to now embody adn have to spew
all over the press
the true nature of the
intrinsic disorder
he's jumping out of the closet
and onto a big sheet of fly paper
poor bastard
somebody said recently that
bush dubbya is thinking of becoming a catholic
here comes everybody
j
GM: RE: going condomless. I was faceting.
RE: abortion. The prisoner in Gitmo is fully human. The fetus is not.
Agree or disagree, this is the stance of the Bible and of pro-choicers.
There are entirely differently principles and cruxes of disagreement at play in torture and in abortion. Don't pretend otherwise.
RE: Jacques, your 'Obama's done nothing' refrain has grown tiresome and redundant. Jealous that he's done so much more than you, yet is more than a decade younger? He's held up mighty well so far, especially considering the maelstrom of shit Bush left him with.
And Jacques: When I trivialized the protestors, I do hope you were hearing echoes of your own sentiments replayed to you. I have a good memory...this is just the sort of thing you said about lefty protestors.
Pretty much any time I'm being even somewhat offensive, Jacques, I'm mimicking your tone, though attacking a different 'target.' (not the witless affirmative action worthless joke of a president, or the stoned out ninnies with their blahblahblah)...
I hold up mirrors to you all the time and still you see some birkenstocked dingleberry, grinning back at you upsidedownly.
I also love all the 'a thinking man would...' (necessarily believe what I believe) or the 'you need to learn...' (and you will necessarily believe what I believe) sentiments going on recently.
It's funny. It's like y'all really believe that the only thing standing in the way of other people agreeing with you is ignorance.
tee hee.
I still think that, if you are to protest someone who is pro-choice receiving a fake diploma, you need to protest every student who is pro-choice and receives a real one.
THAT is being intellectually consistent.
G.M. could you cite the chapter and verse in which it is said in the Bible that God has always known us?
Also, please don't wish death on any of my commenters. I don't have that many of them.
Technically, I just wished he would fall off a mountain. Preferably Mt. High Horse. I'm sure he is in good enough shape to bounce back.
Anyway, it's Jeremiah 1:5:
http://bible.cc/jeremiah/1-5.htm.
Perhaps this refers only to Jeremiah, but there are references (on that page as well) that talk about God knowing us and appointing us before and in the womb.
brett: Thank you for sharing and have an appropriate day! That my two books (or Kirby's) don't sell like the Big O's on supermarket shelves next to the tabloids, is, well, rather a badge of ditinction, nicht wahr?
I also think it rich that you've vaunted your youth tout court, as if somehow your feeble arguments gain credence from the simple accident of your having been born after me (how charmingly and naively American of you!).
Then there's the sexual taunts you've been tossing (you tosser) my way for a couple of years now (yes, Em is a full 35 yrs my junior--'member when you said I was jes' an oldster jealously "guarding his cave"--care to parse that metaphor for us, brett?)--I actually relish your insults--'cause I've some slight reason to disbelieve them--we right-wingers ain't jus' poke chops!, y'know. . . .
distinction, rather. Sorry.
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