Here’s an article from the BBC, talking about how the human species may split in two in several hundred thousand years:
Humanity may split into two sub-species in 100,000 years’ time as predicted by HG Wells, an expert has said.
Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics expects a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass to emerge.
The human race would peak in the year 3000, he said – before a decline due to dependence on technology.
People would become choosier about their sexual partners, causing humanity to divide into sub-species, he added.
The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the “underclass” humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.
What do you think?
I think they’re full of it.
The story I blogged about previously, about a man questioned at an airport for ’speaking a foreign language’, or this new incident, where four North African Muslim men have been fired from their airport security jobs for ..wait for it: “not [having] shown that their behaviour was unlikely to violate airport security”.
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Stories like these don’t really need a comment.
I love AdBusters. Even more so, I love their spoof ads.
Let’s face it, how many men actually look like this:
This is an argument that seems to surface quite frequently – both from people on online forums and blog sites, and also in academic literature and pseudo-academic websites. It popped up again in my comments on my previous blog post. I started replying to it, and realised that it would probably do better as a post of it’s own, even if only due to sheer length.
And so, here it is. The comments from Carson Sasser are in italics. My response follows.
I’m certainly no expert on all this, but I have seen studies that have found direct monetary assistance actually hurts these people. What we need to do is help them get rid of their corrupt governments and install a free-market based economy. Or else we will have to help them again next year and the next and…
That’s a theory that’s popularly thrown around, but it’s very contentious, because you could just as easily argue that the reason Africa’s government officials are corrupt is because Africa is poor – it doesn’t have the infrastructure necessary to allow people to hold their governments accountable.
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: An excerpt from Jeffrey Sachs’ excellent book, ‘The End of Poverty’. He puts it all into perspective:
The first cut at the problem — the simplest but still eye-opening — is to ask how much income would have to be transferred from rich countries to poor countries to lift all of the world’s extreme poor to an income level sufficient to meet basic needs. Martin Ravallion and his colleagues on the World Bank’s poverty team have gathered data to address this question, at least approximately. The World Bank estimates that meeting basic needs requires $1.08 per day per person, measured in 1993 purchasing-power adjusted prices. Using household surveys, the Ravallion team has calculated the numbers of poor people around the world who live below that threshold, and the average incomes of those poor.
According to the Bank’s estimates, 1.1 billion people lived below the $1.08 level as of 2001, with an average income of $0.77 per day, or $281 per year. More important, the poor had a shortfall relative to basic needs of $0.31 per day, or $113 per year. Worldwide, the total income shortfall of the poor in 2001 was therefore $113 per year per person multiplied by 1.1 billion people, or $124 billion.
Apparently, a man was questioned at an airport after someone heard him speaking a ’suspicious’ language on his cell phone.
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Seattle P-I had the story:
A 32-year-old man speaking Tamil and some English about a sporting rivalry was questioned at Sea-Tac Airport and missed his flight Saturday because at least one person thought he was suspicious.
The Port of Seattle dispatched its police officers to investigate the case, which occurred Saturday around noon, said Bob Parker, airport spokesman. The Chicago man was preparing to board an American Airlines flight to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.
The man was speaking Tamil, a language largely used in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore, on his cell phone at the departure gate and on the aircraft. An off-duty airline employee heard the conversation and informed the flight crew.
The man also apparently said something in English about a sporting rivalry at his alma mater.
“It’s a big misunderstanding,” said Parker. “He had a perfectly innocent explanation that all added up.”
Parker said it is incumbent on airport officials to investigate reports of suspicious activity.
“It’s hard to triage over the phone,” he said.
But Parker had no explanation as to why a man speaking Tamil, which is spoken worldwide, would be considered suspicious. The person who contacted airport officials could give an answer to that question, he added.
Parker said the man was cooperative and boarded a later flight to Texas. He told officials that he would not speak in a foreign language on his cell phone at an airport in the future.
Cool. We’ll all be much safer when all international airports start checking all foreign-speaking people. We’ll nip those wannabe terrorists right in the butt.
This is quite a long article, but well worth the read. He made some interesting comments. Food for thought, I think. :)
Check it out.
A few days ago, I wrote about the language of terror. My intent is not to excuse the actions of the terrorists – what they did was wrong, there’s no doubt about that. The problem, however, is the absolute refusal of mainstream media and discussions to explore the reasons why these people felt they had to resort to violence in such a public, large-scale manner. I think it’s absolutely daft to bury our heads in the sand and not look for answers. I would think that after being attacked, one of the first questions people would ask once the dust had settled is why?
The unfortunate thing is that there seems not to be much information out there as to why these people want our attention. It seems like to seriously ask ‘why’ is to somehow mark yourself as a ‘terrorist sympathiser’. As though engaging in discussions and diplomacy with the terrorists is a cop-out to all the people that have died, and an admission that we’re weak, because we’re willing to listen.
Well, excuse me, but that’s bollocks.
If talking to the terrorists will help us stop the needless killing of more civilians, then I’m all for it. If diplomacy and sensitivity is what it takes, then why aren’t we trying?
So this is the question: why? Why did the terrorists attack the US on that day? What is the purpose they are trying to achieve? What do they want from the US, and from all of us?
I’ve been reading an interesting book: Writing The War On Terrorism, by Richard Jackson. He critically analyses various speeches made by Bush and his government to show how they used language to create the assumptions that surround the ‘war on terrorism’. He says it best, I think:
The overall argument is fairly simple: the language of the ‘war on terrorism’ is not simply an objective or neutral reflection of reality; nor is it merely accidental or incidental. Rather, it is a deliberately and meticulously composed set of words, assumptions, metaphors, grammatical forms, myths and forms of knowledge – it is a carefully constructed discourse – that is designed to achieve a number of key political goals: to normalize and legitimize the current counter-terrorist approach; to empower the authorities and shield them from criticism; to discipline domestic society by marginalizing dissent or protest; and to enforce national unity by reifying a narrow concept of national identity.
He argues that constructing the attacks of September 11th, 2001 has been a purposeful and powerful effort in rhetoric, to convince the masses of people that the only way to solve this problem of ‘terrorists in our midst’ is to go out and bomb the places where they live.
Back in 1798, Thomas Malthus published a book called An Essay On The Principle of Population. In this book, he argued that population would outgrow food supply, which would lead to mass famines and deaths on a large scale. He predicted that this would happen in the 19th century.
As we now know, it didn’t happen. This is mainly because Malthus’ theory was a bit too simplistic. He suggested that population and food production rates increase at a steady rate, whereas the reality is far more complex. What we do know, however, is that population numbers have steadily increased. This is due to various factors: an increase in life expectancy, a decrease in infant mortality, advances in health technologies and breakthroughs, relative societal peace etc. At the same time, consumption levels of food and energy have steadily increased, as the world, as a whole, has tended towards development and betterment.
We are now approaching what some people think is a crucial stage in our world’s future. The graphs show this best, though I’ve shown them before:
