tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17650067121786819822024-02-20T17:39:09.992-08:00Clicking UU LifeUU Clickerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02471219340317492071noreply@blogger.comBlogger74125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1765006712178681982.post-79444184341865655712017-08-15T11:40:00.002-07:002017-08-15T11:40:44.686-07:00Unitarian Universalists and the Guidance of Reason<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>When I joined a brick and mortar UU congregation in 1996, I loved the UU emphasis on reason. I was especially inspired by the fifth source: “Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.” <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In 2007, a fly appeared in the ointment of reason. UUWorld published “Eating Ethically,” telling UUs to eat organic food. The article omitted organic farming’s lower yields and the fact that organic food costs more and not all UUs would be able to afford it. Shades of Calvin, who thought you could discern the worthy because they were rich.<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Local food was likewise recommended. Do UUs believe in the interdependent web of existence but not in an interdependent economy? Don’t out of town people have the same inherent worth and dignity as locals? Also, the article dismissed the Green Revolution (advances in plant breeding and agricultural technology) as unsustainable. Shouldn’t UUs celebrate a billion people saved from starvation?<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The article admonished UUs to shorten their food miles, yet the food miles concept is fallacious because the significant variable is not the distance the food travels, but how much fuel is needed per pound of food transported. I calculated that it’s more efficient in terms of pounds of food transported per gallon of gasoline to ship it long distances in big trucks compared to short trips to a local farmer (which the article recommended) to buy a week’s worth of produce for the family.<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The official UU magazine was wrong! What a disillusionment! If they were wrong about food miles what else would they be wrong about? However, we haven’t heard much about food miles for the last five years. Other people besides me must have done the math.<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Historical logic likewise flies out the door. According to Susan Frederick Gray, newly elected Unitarian Universalist Association president: “Global climate disruption is a direct result of the paradigm of dominance that also perpetuates racial, social, and economic inequities,” she writes, “as well as systemic violence of against women, indigenous communities, people of color, and the poor.” The two other UUA presidential candidates submitted similar statements. <br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Their reasoning is specious. The “paradigm of dominance” perpetuating racism, economic and social inequities, enforced by violence, has been around for the last 10,000 years of human history. For instance, the Bible says, “Slaves, obey your masters.” So why has the climate changed only in the last 150 years since the Industrial Revolution with its increased carbon dioxide emissions? Moreover, violence -- against women, indigenous communities, people of color, and the poor -- has been decreasing during the same time the climate has been warming. In the US, the slaves got freedom, women got the vote, and gays got marriage.<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>As Steven Pinker explains in The Better Angels of our Nature 2011, modern communications technology allows people to empathize with each other, thus reducing violence. <br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>When UU leaders make pronouncements, I wish they would follow their own venerable traditions of logic and reason. <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
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UU Clickerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02471219340317492071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1765006712178681982.post-6314820140866783782017-06-16T15:04:00.000-07:002017-06-16T15:04:34.625-07:00The Conservation of Virtue<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right,” said Henry David Thoreau in Resistance to Civil Government 1849. Ever since Thoreau, who refused to pay a tax supporting slavery, people have continued to break laws in the name of a higher good.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In the late fifties, Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus; African American students held sit-ins at white lunch counters. These protesters, whose cause was equal treatment for all, broke contemporary laws, but did not endanger anyone.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Civil Rights movement was followed by the Peace Movement against the Vietnam War. Most of us can agree that peace is better than war, although some felt the dangers of world Communist domination overrode the evils of war. Most of the protesting was peaceful.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> “The nice ways always fail,” sang Malvina Reynolds in1964. But the data shows they don’t. Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan in Why Civil Resistance Works 2012 showed that nonviolent campaigns to be more than twice as effective as violent counterparts in achieving their stated goals. Nevertheless, some antiwar protesters went so far as to bomb facilities supporting the war, killing innocents who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>A statement by mathematician Jordan Ellenberg in How Not to Be Wrong 2015 applies to activists as well as pious people. “We become like those pious people who, over time, accumulate a sense of their own virtuousness so powerful as to believe the bad things they do are virtuous too,” -- what I call the Conservation of Virtue principle. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> A just cause may justify civil disobedience, but does an act of civil disobedience mean the cause is just? For instance, in 2015, Kim Davis defied a Federal court order and refused to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples. Correspondingly, in math speak, the fact that all primes greater than two are odd does not imply all odd numbers are prime.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Al Gore understands the value of making a political cause a moral cause: “The climate crisis also offers us the chance to experience a generational mission; the exhilaration of a compelling moral purpose; a shared and unifying cause . . .” An Inconvenient Truth 2006. Hence, climate activists can presume the conservation of virtue.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In the case of the Valve Turner action in October 2016, climate activists blocked transport of Canadian tar sands oil to US refineries to prevent burning fossil fuels that contributes to climate change. Never mind their action endangered people at the present time. Carl Weimer, executive director at the industry watchdog Pipeline Safety Trust, said "Closing valves on major pipelines can have unexpected consequences endangering people and the environment.” http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-canada-pipelines-idUSKCN12B26O<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Other pipeline operators and safety experts said shutting off valves was extremely dangerous and that activists underestimated the risks. “Pipelines can be heavily pressurized depending on length and altitude variation, and shutting off a valve could cause ruptures that are ‘catastrophic’ for the environment,” said Paul Tullis of Tullis Engineering Consultants. http://business.financialpost.com/news/energy/bolt-cutters-expose-vulnerability-of-north-americas-oil-pipeline-grid<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Valve Turner Leonard Higgins, applying the Conservation of Virtue principle, says his actions were necessitated by the immediate danger that climate change poses to his family, his friends, and every other human on earth. Given the responsibility to protect innocent people from the ravages of climate change, he had no choice but to take illegal action<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>"It's an act of desperation," Higgins says. "I don't think that there's a direct cause and effect that my taking this action will carry the day, but it contributes, just as in other acts of civil resistance in other movements in the past.” Does Higgins see himself taking Rosa Parks’ seat?<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So if I truly believe genetically engineered food endangers human health, biodiversity, and the planet’s ecosystems, should I attack Safeway? Would my Unitarian Univeralist congregation hold a fund raiser for my legal defense as several congregations did for the Valve Turners? I don’t think so.UU Clickerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02471219340317492071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1765006712178681982.post-48045758927371808902017-04-28T14:49:00.003-07:002017-04-28T14:49:53.634-07:00Malthus + Thoreau = Green<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Two streams of thought have contributed to the modern environmental movement and climate activism. Malthus, cited math and science, Thoreau waxed poetic about nature.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Thomas Robert Malthus originated the math and science arm of modern environmentalism when he stated in 1798 that population grows exponentially while resources to feed the population can only grow arithmetically. Therefore, population will inevitably outstrip the food supply. Doom awaits!<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Malthus did not believe in philanthropy. “We are bound to disclaim the right of the poor to support.” In the meantime, to get rid of the fast multiplying poor, “we should encourage settlements in unwholesome situations.” Thus the overpopulation threat was used as an excuse to oppress the poor. The British used Malthusian arguments to justify not giving aid to starving Irish during the 19th century potato famine.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Later, in the 20th century, writers like Paul Ehrlich revived the Malthusian argument. In the same vein as the mid-19th century British authorities, Paul Ehrlich stated that if India didn’t control its population, it “will be one of those we must allow to slip down the drain.”<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>By the late 20th century, not only was civilization going to end under its own weight as per historians like Arnold Toynbee, the environment, essential to our survival, was being destroyed because of too many people. Doom continues as a theme of the environmental movement.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Malthus’ hypothesis was plausible; the math was correct, but what actually happened? World population is now seven times what it was in Malthus’ time, but wealth per person is forty times as high, although it is inequitably distributed. Thanks to Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution, the famines Ehrlich predicted never happened. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Since his predictions didn’t come true, there must have been factors Malthus didn’t account for. First, he left out human ingenuity. By 1844, thinkers like Friedrich Engels, coauthor with Karl Marx of <i>The Communist Manifesto</i>, had already asked, “What is impossible for science?” Ideas feed on each other and thus, like population, grow exponentially.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Hence, too small or too dispersed a population has disadvantages. The sparse aboriginal Tasmanians lost technology compared to what their ancestors had brought from Australia. Once the last tool broke and the last person who knew how to repair it or make a new one died, there were no more such tools. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Malthus didn’t foresee fossil fuels’ gift of energy and the ensuing industrial revolution. Also, neither he nor Ehrlich expected the Demographic Transition. With increased wealth, fewer babies die, hence women have fewer of them. They prefer education and careers over motherhood. In the real world, population growth has been slowing down.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Like Malthus, Henry David Thoreau, author of <i>Walden</i>, contributed to modern environmentalist thought. Unlike Malthus, he didn’t see the world as crowded or overpopulated. “Our horizon is never quite at our elbows.” <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Thoreau saw nature in spiritual terms: “A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air.” Unlike Malthus, Thoreau was not of a mathematical mind, though his pronouncements sound like an advance example of mansplaining. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” How did he know? Did he take a survey? He claimed morning air a panacea for all ills. Where’s the evidence? It didn’t cure his tuberculosis. “We do not ride on the railroad, it rides upon us,” meaning we don’t control technology, but it controls us. What was his reasoning? <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Malthus’ solution to poverty was to get rid of poor people; Thoreau thought they should just want less. “Simplify, simplify,” says Thoreau, hence workers should be content to live in packing boxes. “. . a large box. . . six feet long by three feet wide . . having drilled a few auger holes in it. . “ while he enjoyed his snug cabin and had a mother a mile away who did his laundry and brought him cookies. Voluntary simplicity for me; abject poverty for thee.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Like Malthus, Thoreau rejected philanthropy. “Often the poor man is not so cold and hungry as he is dirty and ragged and gross. I saw it would be a greater charity to bestow on me a flannel shirt than a whole slop-shop on him.”<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>What Thoreau ate was very important to him. He claimed eating meat and more than one meal per day to be self-indulgent. Did he tell that to the Irish during the potato famine occurring during his voluntary Walden sojourn? Is it a surprise he died of tuberculosis (linked to malnutrition) at age 44?<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Thoreau loved nature but he didn’t like much of anything else: not communication, not commerce, nor other people. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>As Steven Pinker explains in <i>The Better Angels of Our Nature</i> 2011, commerce and communication reduce violence because other people become more valuable alive than dead when you can trade your surplus for their surplus to the benefit of both parties. Communication allows people to identify with each other, increasing empathy and reducing violence. Since the Middle Ages, a time of self-sufficient local farmers, homicide rates have fallen a hundredfold.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>From <i>Civil Disobedience</i>: “I heartily accept the motto, ‘That government is best which governs least’,” yet government keeps people from settling their own disputes in a violent fashion.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Thoreau’s dislike of socializing and his strict routines made me wonder if he suffered from Asperger’s syndrome. I found many hits on Google, suggesting others had had the same suspicion. Hence he can be forgiven for his misanthropic views.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>One thing we can take away from <i>Walden</i> is the value of retreats, short term opportunities to examine one’s life. In addition, we learn to appreciate nature. We set aside parklands. In the city, Zen gardens give us the serenity of nature. Thoreau was correct in that spending your life trying to acquire more and more stuff does not bring contentment.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Modern Green climate activists combine ideas from both Malthus and Thoreau. From Malthus derive the use of math and science and the dangers of overpopulation because the fewer the people, the fewer carbon emissions. From Thoreau come asceticism, moralizing food intake, dislike of technology, the love of nature, as well as the penchant for telling other people what they should do.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In the bash-the-poor tradition of Malthus and Thoreau, climate activists favor a carbon tax. Since the poor spend a greater proportion of their income on fuel than the rich, such a tax is more regressive than a sales tax on food. Picture the impact $10 per gallon gasoline would have on the budget of a struggling single mother who drives a gas hog and lives in a poorly insulated trailer miles away from her minimum wage job! <br />
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UU Clickerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02471219340317492071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1765006712178681982.post-91076059666798609072016-12-24T12:59:00.000-08:002016-12-24T12:59:32.676-08:00God rest Unitarian Universalists No rest for Unitarians, the world’s in disarray<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The climate still is changing, race is here to stay<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So work for social justice, with meetings every day.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Loud tidings of passion and zeal, passion and zeal,<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Loud tidings of passion and zeal.<br />
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>With apologies to Christopher Raible<br />
Happy Holidays to all!<br />
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UU Clickerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02471219340317492071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1765006712178681982.post-39785573957620951122016-11-02T10:27:00.001-07:002016-11-02T10:27:25.602-07:00Little Boxes<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Humming along with Malvina Reynolds’ catchy tune “Little Boxes” on my internet radio, for the first time I really listened to the words. “Little Boxes made of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same.” Not only are the boxes identical, but the individuals living in them are identical as well: “Then [off] to the university where they are put in boxes and they come out all the same.” But if you went inside the houses, everybody’s would look different because everybody is different – a unique valuable individual with thoughts and feelings.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I imagine the residents of the little boxes as people who have worked their way up from poverty. Steven Jay Gould’s family is an example. “Papa Joe, [Gould’s grandfather] who possessed extraordinary artistic talents that remained undeveloped and underutilized, lived an ordinary life as a garment worker in New York City. He enjoyed periods of security and endured bouts of poverty; he and my grandmother raised four children, all imbued with the ordinary values that ennoble our species and nation: fairness, kindness, the need to persevere and rise by one's own efforts. In the standard pattern, his generation struggled to solvency; my parents graduated from high school, fought a war, and moved into the middle classes; the third cohort achieved a university education, and some of us have enjoyed professional success.”<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“September 11, 1901" http://hermiene.net/essays-trans/september_11_1901.html <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Shouldn’t those who sing for ordinary people in songs like “This Land is Your Land” congratulate rather than sneer at the ones who make it into the middle class?<br />
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UU Clickerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02471219340317492071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1765006712178681982.post-58412139682210920632016-10-24T10:38:00.002-07:002016-10-24T10:38:51.124-07:00Wheezers, Geezers, and Gimps!<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Unitarian Universalist congregations are becoming ever more oriented toward social justice, a trend that has been accelerating since Justice GA in 2012. This trend is an advantage for the UU movement because being for something unites people more than being against something, such as in the past, traditional religious dogma. Social justice activism grows congregations and growing congregations make ministers look good.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> However, social justice crowds out other concerns. For instance, some in my congregation want to forego remodeling our building in order to fight climate change. This group takes the moral high ground because they claim if energy and resources are focused on the building, the congregation will not have the energy to address the climate emergency. Those in favor of remodeling also take the moral high ground, claiming our current space decreases our ability to live our mission. Meanwhile, there are people in the congregation who are excluded from its programs because they can’t climb stairs or breathe the polluted indoor air. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> As Carolyn Zaikoski points out, you have to be able bodied to be a good activist. http://everydayfeminism.com/2016/09/social-justice-activism-ableist/ Activists have to be able to go to events in inaccessible spaces and to participate in public protests. So why should a congregation expend its limited resources for the disabled if its mission is to be social activists?<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Wheezers, geezers, and gimps! Who needs ‘em?<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
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UU Clickerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02471219340317492071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1765006712178681982.post-10512388911076096952016-07-15T15:26:00.001-07:002016-07-15T15:26:52.840-07:00Humans Extinct by 1900!<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>County Cork, Ireland, 1847, in a time of climate change: Several wet summers in succession have allowed a blight, <i>Phytophthora infestans,</i> to ravage the Irish potato crop. These potatoes, propagated asexually, have low resistance to the blight since they have almost no genetic diversity. Even though Ireland has continued to export meat, grain, and dairy products, the peasants live almost exclusively on potatoes. Now that crop is failing and the peasants are starving.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This is just as the Rev Thomas Malthus predicted forty years ago in 1800. The Irish, ignorant Roman Catholics, multiplied faster than their food supply. As Malthus commented, “The population should be swept from the soil.”<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There could be more far reaching effects. As plague jumped from rats to people, <i>P. infestans</i> could affect other members of the Solanaceae family: eggplants, tomatoes, and tobacco. Not only that, in half a century, it could affect all agricultural crops. We just don’t know what kind of Black Swan event might occur. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>When world agriculture fails, so will humanity. Human extinction is possible by 1900!<br />
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Well, all that could have happened, but how much to worry about something depends on the probability of it happening. An asteroid could fall on my house, my house could burn down, or a tree could fall on it. I get homeowner’s insurance, but not asteroid insurance, since there’s only an asteroid landing big enough to create a crater only every five thousand years or so. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Be reasonable!<br />
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UU Clickerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02471219340317492071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1765006712178681982.post-81489082196398345912016-06-28T16:07:00.000-07:002016-06-28T16:08:35.089-07:00You and Me or Aedes?<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In his 2012 book, <i>Merchants of Despair</i>, Robert Zubrin traces the antihumanism movement, beginning with Malthus, who claimed that population grows exponentially while productivity grows arithmetically; on to eugenics; on to the Nazi Holocaust. These movements advocated getting rid of excess people. Malthus urged, “We should reprobate specific remedies for ravaging diseases and those benevolent but much mistaken men who have thought they were doing a service to mankind by projecting schemes for the total extirpation of particular disorders.” The eugenics movement sterilized the surplus population; the Nazis killed them. Zubrin then explores antihumanism’s modern incarnations, population control and radical environmentalism.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The current incarnation of antihumanism, the school of thought that the balance of nature must be preserved at the expense of human beings, is alive and well. The June 2016 <i>Smithsonian Magazine</i> has an article detailing how genetic engineering techniques could bring the <i>Aedes aegypti</i> mosquito to near or complete extinction. Since more than a million people die every year from diseases such as yellow fever, dengue fever, and Zika virus, transmitted by these bugs, it would seem like a no-brainer to get rid of them. Not so fast say those who value the balance of nature over human flourishing. From the comments to the article: <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Vera Gottlieb says: “As pesky as these critters may be, they are part of the chain of life on this planet. We are all interconnected and we should NOT upset this balance. We have already messed up enough.” Does Gottlieb believe that respect for the interdependent web of life takes priority over respect for human beings?<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>DV says, “Kill all the mosquitoes and we wipe out the bats, frogs, and numerous bird species. If we don’t, Mother Earth will come up with some other way to quell the human infection.” Human INFECTION? Are human beings no better than Zika virus?<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The most outrageous of the commenters, Patturk, says, “Eliminate the diseases and instead contribute to an even greater population explosion of humans, leading to more wars over dwindling resources such as fresh water and more humans killing each other. Hmm, death by mosquito or by war. When will we learn that nature knows best? Why is so much effort put into curing death? Or, more humans living longer, crowding out other species until all that’s left are people, sheep, pigs, and cows. Great idea.” <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Is it a better idea to let millions of human beings die of preventable diseases? Shades of Malthus, the original antihumanist, who likewise recommended not treating diseases.UU Clickerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02471219340317492071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1765006712178681982.post-38630678091273065772016-06-02T06:06:00.001-07:002016-06-02T06:06:35.523-07:00Sexual Dimorphism Denial<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The UUWorld Summer 2016 “Families” page suggests that leaving gender specific pronouns out of our speech will ensure fair treatment for all genders. According to the article, girls and boys would not be limited by their gender in such a culture.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Let’s examine a historical example of this thesis. The Chinese language does not have gender specific pronouns – “he” and “she” translate as “zee.” Nevertheless, for a thousand years in China, girls were subjected to the cruel and crippling practice of foot binding. Deliberate disabling is limiting, to say the least. Foot binding was outlawed for the first time in 1912, but continued in the remote provinces. There are a few surviving elderly women with bound feet, although the last store selling “lotus” shoes closed in 1999. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Due to Western influence, written Chinese began to distinguish pronoun gender in 1917 even as the foot binding custom was decreasing. It seems gender specific pronouns are not linked to gender-based oppression. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Politically correct or not, a few plants and most animals, including humans, come in male and female, a phenomenon called sexual dimorphism, the technical term for gender binary. The female provides quality gametes; the male provides a quantity of gametes. The reshuffling of traits at fertilization helps the organism adapt to changing environments. For instance, bananas, which reproduce asexually, were predicted in 2003 to become extinct in ten years. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17723784-800-going-bananas/<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Animals have sex; people have sex and gender – the feeling of being masculine or feminine. Usually sex and gender coincide, but if they don’t, individuals like Ben (trans boy featured in “Families”) should be treated with kindness and fairness. Nobody should be forced into doing something because “boys don’t” or “girls have to.” <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Many years ago I met a young person whose sex I could not determine. I felt disconcerted at first. How should I relate to this person? Then I realized since I wasn’t dating this person what did it matter? Maybe at some future time when everyone can be bisexual and attraction depends on the personality of their date, physical sex won’t matter except to get sperm and egg together.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Pronouns are irrelevant, but denial of sexual dimorphism by not using “he” or “she” is as unscientific as climate change denial.<br />
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UU Clickerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02471219340317492071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1765006712178681982.post-64249413959031982552016-04-04T11:15:00.000-07:002016-04-04T11:15:27.989-07:00Ten Books that Modified My ThinkingMembers of my book group listed the ten books that had modified their thinking. Here’s my list:<br />
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<i>Huckleberry Finn</i> by Mark Twain 1884. An outcast understood the contradictions of slavery, showing individual conscience can be more discerning than the prevailing mores.<br />
<i>The Phenomenon of Man </i>by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin 1959. Darwinian evolution is compatible with Catholic theology and symbolism. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Important to me because I was a practicing Catholic when I read it in 1961. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<i>Don’t Shoot the Dog </i>by Karen Pryor 1984. Dogs and other animals can be taught without force or violence. Applies to people, too.<br />
<i>Innumeracy</i> by John Allen Paulos 1988. Innumeracy (lack of facility with numbers and probability) is both widespread and has serious consequences. Do the math and do it right!<br />
<i>Guns, Germs, and Steel</i> by Jared Diamond 1997. Differences in technological advancement among cultures are not because of differences of ability among races. Before I read this book I thought history was factoids about dead people, but history written by scientists reveals interesting patterns.<br />
<i>Non-Zero</i> by Robert Wright 2001. Win-win prevails over zero-sum. IMHO, the Force that drives the Universe and human history.<br />
<i>Authentic Happiness</i> by Martin EP Seligman 2002. Optimists thrive, building on their strengths.<br />
<i>The Rational Optimist</i> by Matt Ridley 2010. Although pessimists are considered wise, they’ve almost always been wrong.<br />
<i>The Better Angels of Our Nature</i> by Steven Pinker 2011. Masses of data demonstrate that humans have become ever less violent over the ten thousand years of our history.<br />
<i>Merchants of Despair</i> by Robert Zubrin 2012. Anti-humanist Malthusians, wrong so far, have hijacked environmentalist movements.<br />
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I see all the titles confirm my bias toward bottom-up evolution leading to peace and prosperity for all. The moral arc is long but it bends towards justice.<br />
<br />UU Clickerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02471219340317492071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1765006712178681982.post-69586432345559661422016-04-01T10:12:00.000-07:002016-04-01T10:12:28.324-07:00Who Has Enough?<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Mother used to tell me, “Finish your vegetables because of all those starving children in China and Africa.” But how were my veggies supposed to get to the Chinese or African children? Like Jeffrey Lockwood in <i>UU World</i> Spring 2016, I’d had enough.<br />
Lockwood says, “[we need to] worry about a species that can’t say enough.” However, he is concerned that, “In a warming world, we’ll run out of [there won’t be enough] ice caps, arable soil, coral reefs, fresh water, coastal cities, livable land, sea walls, and air conditioners.”<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Lockwood says planet and life will be OK because it’s survived high CO2 levels before. However, he says we should stop emitting CO2 so the planet will return to its “original” temperature. Which original? The original of the Ice Ages when most of Europe and North America was covered by glaciers? Or of the Little Ice Age when the Thames froze over? If those originals are too cold, what about the Eocene 55 million years ago when Earth was 10° C warmer?<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It’s true that some of us have more than we need, but that doesn’t mean we all have more than we need. Nearly half of the world’s population — more than 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day. More than 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty — less than $1.25 a day. One quarter of all humans live without electricity — approximately 1.6 billion people. 80% of the world population lives on less than $10 a day.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Mother could have sent the veggie money overseas to buy food for the poor children. Oxfam estimates that it would take $60 billion annually to end extreme global poverty--that's less than one fourth the income of the top 100 richest billionaires. However, redistribution of wealth, generally frowned upon by those who already have it, would be only a partial solution. Also, those that already have barely enough wouldn’t accept the redistribution solution. Would there be enough for everyone to have enough or will everyone be poor after redistribution?<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But what if we can produce enough for everyone to have enough? We’ve done it with food. Despite Malthus’ and Ehrlich’s dire predictions, there’s enough food for everyone on the planet to have an adequate diet. Let’s continue the work of the Green Revolution (including GMOs) that has already saved hundreds of millions of lives. Let’s harness energy from the sun, the wind, the water, the nukes, and yes, fossil fuels to free human beings from backbreaking labor and poverty.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Lockwood claims a better legacy would be a world where we learned to say “enough.”<br />
I disagree. I say there’s not enough until every human being on our planet has enough.<br />
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UU Clickerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02471219340317492071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1765006712178681982.post-86212684378530304542016-01-16T09:28:00.002-08:002016-01-26T09:59:06.462-08:00The Great Katamarchism (Jaywalking) Crisis<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Looking back, it seems incredible that our whole society was taken in by The Great Jaywalking Crisis of the early 21st century. Although jaywalking had always been illegal, psychologists realized that the behavior was a symptom of a deeper pathology since almost all sexual predators, sociopaths, and terrorists had a history of jaywalking. The aberrant behavior of jaywalking was labeled katamarching. So now not only was jaywalking wrong, it was the sick behavior of katamarchism.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Those who claimed katamarchism was nothing but ordinary jaywalking were labeled deniers. Since 97% of psychologists believed in the insidious dangers of katamarching, the science was settled.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>As katamarchism became more evident, the media leapt into the fray. The internet displayed graphs showing the growth of katamarchism. Math experts pointed out exponential growth increases forever and ever faster. Our cities were about to be inundated with katamarchers. When scientists applied the random walk theory to katamarchism, they showed that the streets would be so filled with katamarchers that straight walkers would no longer be able to cross the streets. Pedestrian traffic would be a Brownian motion tangle. As Paul Ehrlich said in <i>The Population Bomb</i>, “The streets seemed alive with people . . . People, people, people, people.” <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Activists jumped on the katamarchism bandwagon, yet the matter soon divided along liberal versus conservative lines. Conservatives who favored social order supported the campaign against katamarchism; while liberals who supported fairness and equality for all called the campaign a vendetta against individual liberty. There were marches, demonstrations, and protests for and against katamarchism. When jaywalking mothers were seen leading their children across streets, the anti-katamarchists cried, “They recruit, save our children!” Slogans multiplied. “This is the last year we have to stop katamarchism.” “Katamarchism threatens the American family,” “Katamarchism is a human right.”<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Those with katamarching tendencies learned to exercise their proclivities in the dark. However, when a katamarcher was caught, he was held by the police until he named others of his ilk. It turned out there were more katamarchers than anyone expected. These deviants were infiltrating American institutions. They had to be ferreted out and removed. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>An obscure Congressman from an obscure state used the campaign against katamarchism to further his political career. His committee forced people to answer questions such as, “Are you now or have you ever been a jaywalker?” If they lied, they were liable for prosecution for perjury; if they told the truth, they were liable for prosecution for katamarchism. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Lives were ruined. Katamarchers lost their jobs, became poverty stricken. They congregated in homeless camps where they didn’t use electricity, own much, drive cars, or heat their dwellings. They used little water because they didn’t flush toilets or wash their clothes or bodies often. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Radical environmentalists understood that the homeless live lightly on the earth. These elites joined the conservatives in the campaign to rid the world of katamarchers, thus forcing more people into poverty, thereby saving the planet for their own grandchildren. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Eventually, people crossed streets as the situation required, which led to a workable balance of freedom and order. Fears of katamarchism faded away as did the fears of Y2K, nuclear winter, eugenic degradation, and New York’s and London’s streets being buried in horse manure.<br />
<br />UU Clickerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02471219340317492071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1765006712178681982.post-57499755709829697752016-01-02T09:09:00.000-08:002016-01-02T09:09:08.889-08:00Recovering Unitarian Universalist<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>At my congregation, I used to hear, “I’m a recovering Catholic,” spoken with an air of smug condescension, now that the speaker had seen the light of Unitarian Universalism. Since UUs are called to honor the wisdom in all religions, why would any religion be something to recover from? Nonetheless, I’m recovering from the current local version of Unitarian Universalism. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>My mind stands with David Kipp who writes to the UU World Winter 2015, “. . . a person who dares challenge any central tenets of political liberalism, which masquerades as social justice, is openly scorned, mocked, and made unwelcome by UU congregations.” <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Some social justice issues prioritize the planet over the people living on it. Elite UUs driving Priuses to the Co-op can rail against fossil fuels, GMOs, and non-local, non-organic food. My values lie with people who need low-cost fuel and food.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>My journey away from UU green liberalism began when I did the food miles math and discovered long distance semis use less gasoline per pound of food transported than a family Prius going to a local farm because the semis carry so much more freight per trip. Details in 12/5/15 blog entry: “A Fine Line.” If they lied about food miles, what else are they lying about?<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>With the focus outside the congregation, rather than within it, individuals don’t matter much. Turnover is high. “[People] find comfort and stimulation while here, then move onto something else,” according to the congregation’s newsletter. Although the writer was describing, not prescribing, there’s a structural reason why congregations are quick to drop people from the rolls; they are taxed for each voting member. Congregants are only as good as their last pledge. http://dawncooley.com/2015/05/28/people-are-not-hot-potatoes/ <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>My heart stands with Teresa Soto who blogs, “I’m going to be angry when people are indifferent to barriers keeping me and people like me out of buildings where they are indifferent to our participation.”<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> UU World Winter 2015.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The air is so polluted inside my home congregation’s building that I cannot enter it without suffering a debilitating cough caused by chemical sensitivity that I acquired due to inadequate safety measures while ameliorating a Superfund site. No other buildings in town give me trouble. A gas mask will protect me from the bad air, but not the gauntlet of stares and rude remarks. http://www.uua.org/accessibility/chemical/26972.shtml.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>When I offered to help purchase a ventilation system, I was told Board Policy prohibited special contributions. I appealed to the appropriate committees. The Building Committee was bonding with each other; the Environmental Committee was saving Earth from carbon dioxide; the Accessibility Committee met once.<br />
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The irony of a Green Sanctuary in a sick building! The double irony of an organization that professes to be accessible to all but isn’t! The triple irony of an organization that focuses on saving the environment being inaccessible to a person who was injured while improving said environment!UU Clickerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02471219340317492071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1765006712178681982.post-58101157189998732022015-12-05T10:13:00.001-08:002015-12-05T10:13:24.417-08:00A Fine Line<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“There is a fine line between numerator and denominator,” says Math Addict’s post on Facebook and my new sweatshirt from SunFrog. “Only a fraction of you will understand this.” An in-joke for math nerds who know that the numerator on top is divided by the denominator on the bottom to define a fraction. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Not only is there a fine line dividing numerator from denominator, there is a line dividing numerator thinking from denominator thinking. Numerator thinking oversimplifies because it leaves out proportionality and probability that denominator thinking accounts for. In other words, sometimes you can’t just add, subtract, or multiply the given numbers to figure out what’s going on, you have to divide.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>People who say, “I don’t want to travel abroad, what with all those terrorists,” lack denominator thinking with its understanding of probability. For instance, your chance of being killed by a gun in our own country is more than a thousand times greater than being killed by an overseas terrorist.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
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From CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/02/us/oregon-shooting-terrorism-gun-violence/ <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Using numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we found that from 2001 to 2013, 406,496 people died by firearms on U.S. soil. (2013 is the most recent year CDC data for deaths by firearms is available.) This data covered all manners of death, including homicide, accident and suicide.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>According to the U.S. State Department, the number of U.S. citizens killed overseas as a result of incidents of terrorism from 2001 to 2013 was 350.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In addition, we compiled all terrorism incidents inside the U.S. and found that between 2001 and 2013, there were 3,030 people killed in domestic acts of terrorism. This brings the total to 3,380.<br />
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Another example of numerator thinking is the warning that chocolate is toxic to dogs! Yes, but how toxic depends on how much the dog eats, how strong is the chocolate is, and how big the dog is. http://www.petmd.com/dog/chocolate-toxicity As has been known for 500 years, the dose makes the poison. Ingesting minuscule amounts of a substance is unlikely to be harmful.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Proponents of a cause can use oversimplified numerator thinking to persuade you of claims that are plausible but not true. For instance here’s how to “prove” just as many vaccinated people get sick as unvaccinated people do. Let’s say 900 people are vaccinated for a disease and 100 are not vaccinated. The disease affects 90% of those exposed so 90 unvaccinated people get sick. If the vaccine is 90% effective, 90 vaccinated people still get sick. Therefore, since both 90 vaccinated and 90 unvaccinated people get sick, vaccination doesn’t work! This anti-vaccination argument conveniently leaves out the 810 people out of the 900 vaccinated who stayed well.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>My favorite example of bogus numerator thinking is the food miles fallacy. Fifty miles is less than 1600 miles so it should save fuel to eat food harvested within a 50 mile radius than from 1600 miles away, says the numerator thinker. However, a Prius that gets 50 miles to the gallon, drives a 50 mile round trip to a local farm, and carries 50 pounds of food uses three times as much gasoline per pound of food transported (the critical statistic) as a semi that gets four miles to the gallon, drives 1600 miles, but carries 60,000 pounds of food. You have to use denominator thinking and divide by the weight of food carried, in order not to be fooled by this claim that’s plausible but not true. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> UU Clickerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02471219340317492071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1765006712178681982.post-63271788369935307842015-12-01T10:54:00.000-08:002015-12-01T10:54:04.344-08:00Border Collie Shopping<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It’s catalog season – time to shop like a Border Collie! Border collies and other herding breeds were bred to complete only part of the hunting sequence. They stalk and herd, but they don’t pounce and kill like wolves and coyotes do. Herding dogs use their seeker circuit, the part of the brain that urges to explore. Activating the seeker circuit, according to neuroscientist Jaak Pansepp, is reinforcing (feels good) to the animal and helps an animal survive by finding what it needs.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>When I browse the catalogs, happily selecting gadgets, outfits, and tchotchkes, I activate my own seeker circuit. Even so, I don’t order anything. If I actually purchased these items I’d have to pay for them, get them home, take care of them, store them, and get rid of them at the end of their useful life. To avoid such hassles, I stop at the enjoyment phase of the sequence. I call it Border Collie shopping.<br />
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UU Clickerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02471219340317492071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1765006712178681982.post-35304791514354725902015-10-13T10:47:00.000-07:002015-10-13T10:47:10.803-07:00Who Else is in the Doubt Industry?<div>
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>According to the film, <i>The Merchants of Doubt</i> are pundits-for-hire who say what their corporate masters wish. These shill scientists cast doubt on genuine scientists who say the corporations’ products are dangerous. The film cites the tobacco industry, the flame retardant industry, and the fossil fuel industry’s climate change deniers. By now, mainstream science has established that tobacco smoking is a major risk factor for lung cancer and that human emissions of carbon dioxide are a major factor in the current warming. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I inferred from the film that corporations hired the scientists in the Doubt Industry to substantiate the conclusions already arrived at by the corporations. However, in at least two cases the scientists arrived at their conclusions first. Dr W C Hueper published his findings before the tobacco industry hired him. The same thing is true of eminent statistician Ronald A Fisher (1890-1962) who believed the statistical evidence damning smoking wasn’t strong. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Fisher postulated there may have been a third factor linking cancer and smoking, the way ice cream eating and drowning are linked to each other, because they share a common cause – summer. Or the data could even indicate that lung cancer causes smoking because an inflammation that would lead to cancer would make a person want to smoke, says Jordan Ellenberg in <i>How not to be Wrong</i>. Fisher, as a eugenicist, believed that genes were a strong factor. Turns out he was right; there are genes that increase susceptibility to lung cancer and genes that protect against the disease. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>A pattern emerges. Corporations deny the danger of their products, hire scientists to establish doubt about these products, but genuine hero scientists refute the corporate line. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Two new issues have emerged: genetically modified foods and the vaccination-autism link. If we stick to the same pattern, the 89% of scientists who say GMOs are safe, would be part of the Doubt Industry for Monsanto and Syngenta, notwithstanding the two thousand global studies confirming the safety of GM foods. Moreover, a couple of million children die every year because anti-GMO activists fight golden rice that could save them from blindness and death.</div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Of course, as the Precautionary Principle claims, nothing can be proved absolutely safe for all people and all species under every conceivable circumstance into the indefinite future. But if we lived by the Precautionary Principle, we wouldn’t drive cars, use antibiotics, or eat anything. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Big Pharma pushes vaccinations and denies they cause autism. So are anti-vaccination activists hero scientists against Big Pharma’s Doubt Industry? I don’t think so; anti-vaxxers advance disease and death. </div>
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UU Clickerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02471219340317492071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1765006712178681982.post-79254760762636204032015-10-04T09:49:00.002-07:002015-10-04T09:49:31.674-07:00Who's in the Doubt Industry?<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Dr. Wilhelm C. Hueper, Chief of Environmental Cancer at the National Cancer Institute from 1938-64, believed cigarette smoking was not all that dangerous. Writing in 1955, he claimed, “The data . . . unmistakenly suggest that cigarette smoking is not a major factor in the causation of lung cancer.”<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Dr. Hueper allowed the tobacco companies to use his work for their own ends. According to Oreskes and Conway in <i>Merchants of Doubt</i>: “When the Tobacco Industry Research Committee learned about [Hueper’s talk questioning the tobacco-cancer link], they contacted Hueper who agreed to allow them to promote his work.” It looks as though Hueper had joined the evil Doubt Industry. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Digging deeper into Hueper’s past we find that he was one of the first scientists to discover the links between pollution, occupational chemicals like asbestos and cancer. Rachel Carson in her acknowledgments to <i>Silent Spring</i>, the book that launched the modern environmental movement in 1962 says, “I could not have completed the book without the generous help of these specialists: [including] . . . W. C. Hueper MD of the National Cancer Institute . . .” Now it looks as though Hueper was on the side of the angels. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The discrepancy between Hueper’s support of tobacco and his struggle against the chemical industry is resolved when we learn that Hueper believed that pesticides and occupationally used chemicals, rather than tobacco, were causing the 20th century increase in lung cancer.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Sometimes people and issues are more complex than they appear at first glance.<br />
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UU Clickerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02471219340317492071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1765006712178681982.post-26831657191590150182015-09-21T10:34:00.002-07:002015-09-21T10:34:51.861-07:00Being Human Means Overcoming Nature’s Limitations<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Scott Gerard Prinster, in his Fall 2015 <i>UU World</i> article “Better Than Human,” discusses the ancient Greek Icarus myth, which asserts that humans deserve punishment for trying to become like gods by overcoming nature’s limitations. To me, the Icarus myth is just that, a myth, and not one to live by.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In the case of eugenics, the officials who ran the sterilization programs believed they could eliminate hereditary lack of fitness in people to preserve the race. Since “shiftlessness” was believed to be hereditary, the eugenicists disproportionally targeted the poor and minorities. Sadly, contemporary Unitarians bought into eugenics with a vengeance. (The UU principle of the inherent worth and dignity of every person wasn’t adopted until many years later.) Unitarian Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr approved the state sterilization programs in Buck v Bell, saying, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Once the Nazis appropriated eugenics and implemented the Holocaust, eugenics “science” got a bad name.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Of course eugenics wasn’t really science because it would have taken several hundred years into the future to gather enough data to test the hypothesis. However, there was a real life experiment happening at the time. Australia had been settled by convicts and prostitutes, prime material for eugenic sterilization. By 1900, this riffraff had formed a parliamentary democracy, the Commonwealth of Australia, still thriving. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>By the way, a better example than eugenics of earlier lack of scientific ethics is the Tuskegee experiment (1932-72) in which scientists watched the untreated progression of syphilis in African-American men. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Kalle Lasn, who believes we have too much stuff, says technical developments serve only the interests of corporations and the article says medical advances benefit only the rich. Both are correct at the time the advances first come out. For instance, when Benjamin Franklin invented bifocals in the late 18th century, contemporary slaves and servants could not have afforded them. But as Robert Bryce points out in <i>Smaller, Faster, Lighter, Denser, Cheaper</i>, everything gets smaller, faster, better, and cheaper, for instance televisions, calculators, and computers. Eventually, nearly everyone has access. In 2015, reading glasses can be purchased for a few minutes work at minimum wage.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Although I agree that it takes too long for technological advances to trickle down to the masses. collective technological progress is what separates humans from other species. We transform nature for our common good. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The article quotes Bill McKibben who says, “Down the path of [technological progress] lies the death of . . . human meaning.” Would McKibben want to keep developmental disabilities like Down syndrome from being prevented or cured in order that the affected families might live more meaningful human lives? McKibben may be an environmental activist, but I don’t think he is any more of an ethicist than the Rev Thomas Malthus who, in order to prevent overpopulation, denounced “specific remedies for ravaging diseases.”<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
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UU Clickerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02471219340317492071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1765006712178681982.post-61975099068540138502015-08-31T11:29:00.001-07:002015-08-31T11:29:11.034-07:00I Don't Get Vaccinated in the iWorld!<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>As I drive up to the intersection, a sensor trips the light green and I sail through. Perfect! I’ve entered the iWorld where I always go to the head of the line, noisy neighbors move away, and roads I want to drive on are never being repaired.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In the iWorld, everybody but me gets vaccinated. I benefit from herd immunity because everyone else is vaccinated, yet I don’t risk any side effects from the procedure. It’s only fair. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> Wait a minute! What everyone reasoned like that? What about the seven billion other people in the world who are just as worthy as I am? As Steven Pinker puts it, “I can’t act as if my interests are special just because I’m me and you’re not.”*<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We can all win, just not all at the same time. By waiting our turn we can all go through intersections. By getting vaccinated we contribute to herd immunity and as a bonus, we’re protected from preventable diseases. <br />
*Pinker: <i>The Better Angels of Our Nature</i> p 182<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> UU Clickerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02471219340317492071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1765006712178681982.post-68605339332378530432015-08-11T10:43:00.003-07:002015-08-11T10:43:51.558-07:00Bigfoot is a GMO!<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Bigfoot is a legendary giant humanoid living in the forest of the Pacific Northwest. There’s no reliable evidence such as skeletal remains that Bigfoot actually exists, only sightings and footprints that could be faked. Hence Bigfoot is probably a myth, but there’s no way to prove that something doesn’t exist. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I can’t prove Bigfoot doesn’t exist nor anyone can prove GMOs are safe for every individual under every conceivable circumstance. Twenty years of uneventful GMO use should be sufficient evidence of their safety, but apparently not for some people. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Maybe Bigfoot is a GMO himself? Genetic modification with gorilla and Neanderthal genes would explain his great size and strength.<br />
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UU Clickerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02471219340317492071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1765006712178681982.post-87796969693246178722015-08-03T11:09:00.000-07:002015-08-03T11:09:21.921-07:00Class matters in Off Course by Michelle Huneven<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>UU World Summer 2015 says, “[Michelle Huneven] writes real literature about characters who believe that spirituality matters.” Hoping to meet characters who exemplified UU spirituality, I borrowed Off Course from the library and found spirituality barely mentioned. Instead, I found Cress Hartley the most amoral protagonist I’ve spent time with since mobster Tony Soprano, who was at least aware that he had moral failings. Not only does Cress justify her affair with another woman’s husband, “Her sympathies were definitely with the mistress [in Fatal Attraction] who was up against the bland and blameless wife,” she’s lazy, she lies, she judges, she steals, and she’s a snob. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>However, maybe Off Course was never meant to be about spirituality or morality at all. On my second reading I saw the book in another light, namely, that the book can be interpreted as an allegory about class. Cress, a graduate student, is slated to be an heiress. In the mountain community where she is supposed to be writing her dissertation, she interacts with working people: waitresses, cleaners, as well as the married carpenter she has an affair with. She faults his past participles, “Have you wrote much lately?” and sneers at his wife’s taste in decor. “As if [Cress would] sit on the cheap ugly couch with the ever-flowing mill wheel!” Later, Cress’ perceptive best friend Tillie asks her, “Don’t you think its high time you ended your little love affair with the working class?” By the end of the novel, our heroine gets back on course by marrying an internist turned hospital director and dedicating herself to environmentalism. <br />
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UU Clickerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02471219340317492071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1765006712178681982.post-73654223642512388412015-07-10T09:38:00.000-07:002015-07-10T09:38:00.400-07:00Let's Trust the Dawning Future<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The line, “trusts the dawning future more,” from “As Tranquil Streams” (#145 in SLT), was written in 1933 during the bad times of the Depression and Dust Bowl. But the sentiment sounds out of place in Unitarian Universalist circles today. Who can trust a future fraught with the dangers of climate change, frankenfoods, and pandemic superbugs? Pessimism, especially eco-pessimism, has become fashionable, nay politically correct, in liberal and Unitarian Universalist circles.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The trend began just after World War II, with books like Our Plundered Planet by Fairfield Osborn and Road to Survival by William Vogt, published in 1948, Spaceship Earth by Barbara Ward in 1966, and The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich in 1968, and Limits to Growth by the Club of Rome in 1972. These books all contended that too many people are using up too few resources. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Unitarian Universalists bought into the Malthusian mind set implicit in these works. At the 1970 General Assembly, they cited two hundred UNESCO scientists from fifty different countries who in 1968 had come to the conclusion “that within a period of approximately twenty years the life process on earth will be seriously threatened if not in fact dead, unless major changes are made immediately.” As we noticed, life was still flourishing in 1988.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The 1970 UUs were “convinced that man’s survival as a species is imperiled by his mushrooming technology and his excessive breeding rate.” They claimed “many distinguished ecologists believe that environmental problems are not ultimately solvable by mere [sic] science and technology.” <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The 1970 UUs didn’t understand that technology and ecological carrying capacity are inversely related. For instance, the Green Revolution saved a billion people who would have starved without its technology. According to Vogt. “It is obvious that fifty years hence the world cannot support three billion people.” Maybe the world couldn’t have supported three billion people with 1948 technology, but with better technology it supported seven billion people sixty years later with a smaller fraction of them in poverty than in 1948. Life expectancy has increased; infant mortality and family size have decreased. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Instead, the UUs claim, to solve environmental problems: “A new religious emphasis is needed which includes a deep reverence for the diversity of life and understands people’s dependence on the planet’s life system. Such an awareness would lead to a new life style which is balanced ecologically.” How this would play out is unspecified. On a practical level, UUs were supposed to bear no more than two children, as well as campaign for more environmental legislation and support the UUSC in its population control efforts.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Small Is Beautiful by Fritz Schumacher in 1971 advocated small local economies to address environmental problems. Forty-five years later UUs believe the economy should be local based rather than world based even though we have an historical example of local based economies. These local economies were called the Dark Ages for good reasons: famine, illiteracy, violence, and religious wars. Belief in the food mile fallacy (buying local saves fuel) is rampant in UU circles despite the math that shows big trucks can transport more pounds of food per gallon of fuel than the family car traveling to a family farm. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Books predicting imminent catastrophe continued to be published by such authors as Al Gore, Bill McKibben, James Hansen, Vandana Shiva, and David Korten. These doomsayers have been so persuasive that a cottage industry to cure environmental despair has emerged, for example Joanna Macy’s Active Hope groups. However, in these groups the participants are not confused with the facts of decreased poverty and infant mortality, increased wealth and life expectancy since 1970.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>History shows Unitarian Universalists could have trusted the dawning future in 1933 and in 1970. I believe the future can still be trusted in 2015.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
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<br />UU Clickerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02471219340317492071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1765006712178681982.post-37313751868190756732015-07-09T09:38:00.000-07:002015-07-09T09:38:07.545-07:00The Flynn Effect Defeats Eugenics<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Why was the eugenics movement never revived after the Nazi Holocaust? The goal to create better and smarter people was arguably laudable. What if something happened that made people smarter without selective breeding?<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Something did. In the mid 80s, psychologist James Flynn discovered that since 1900, everywhere intelligence tests have been given, scores have risen by three IQ points every ten years. IQ tests measure short term memory, spatial recognition, mathematical ability, and abstract reasoning.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The eponymous Flynn effect has created smarter people much faster than selective breeding ever could. Possible explanations for the Flynn effect include better nutrition, smaller families, heterosis, more stimulating environments, and the ability to use logic to work in a hypothetical situation. The last is the most significant change. In Flynn’s words: “We are the first of our species to live in a world dominated by categories, hypotheticals, non-verbal symbols, and visual images that paint alternative realities. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“There has been a transition from using the mind to manipulate the concrete world for advantage toward logical analysis of symbols increasingly abstracted from the appearance of the concrete world and even the literal appearance of the symbols themselves. This is what I call supplementing ‘utilitarian spectacles’ with ‘scientific spectacles’—which does not imply that the average person knows much science.” http://www.amazon.com/reader/1107609178?_encoding=UTF8&page=22<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>An example of thinking using “utilitarian spectacles” comes from Unitarian Universalist minister David Breeden in a description of a visit to his nearly illiterate parents. Fresh from his first year at college, he tried to explain Spinoza’s argument that we create our image of God depending on who we are. For instance, triangles would create a triangle god, ants would create an ant god. This idea made no sense to his pre-modern parents. “How could a triangle think; why would an ant think about God?” http://www.patheos.com/blogs/uucollective/2013/05/softballing-with-spinoza/<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Flynn comments on the mind set of people like Breeden’s parents, “Note how the pre-modern mind refuses to abandon the concrete world and refuses to use logic to analyze a hypothetical situation. Today, we automatically classify things rather emphasize their differences, take the hypothetical seriously, and use logic to analyze both the hypothetical and abstract symbols.”<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Breeden believes the ability to think in the abstract is a gift and a privilege. However, the Flynn effect shows that with education that focuses on abstract reasoning, such as that required to solve mathematical story problems, rather than memorizing, almost everyone can learn to employ logical analysis of symbols. Breeden’s education was a gift and a privilege, but his parents, raised in rural isolation, never had educational opportunities. <br />
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UU Clickerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02471219340317492071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1765006712178681982.post-40976871490995624152015-06-18T15:02:00.000-07:002015-06-18T15:02:04.393-07:00Experiments in Eugenics<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Eugenics, the belief that physically, mentally, and morally fit people improve the human stock by having children who inherit their superiority, was rampant in the US from about 1890 to 1940. It followed that the unfit should not reproduce to avoid the degeneration of humanity. State laws were enacted to prevent them from doing so; more than 60,000 (mostly poor and disabled) people were sterilized in the United States from 1907 to 1963. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Since eugenics is plausible and sounds scientific, all the best people believed in the new science of eugenics, including the Unitarians of that era, such as David Starr Jordan, William Howard Taft, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.* According to the Rev John H Nichols,** “[Eugenicists] were “our kind of people . . . smart people with the best intentions . . . [Sterilizations were] done in the name of economy, efficiency, and concern for the quality of all life.”<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But was eugenics science? Scientific statements by definition are falsifiable. An experiment to test the eugenics hypothesis would call for a group of people, in which the more fit were prevented from reproducing and the less fit were allowed to reproduce. Then if eugenics were true, the subsequent physical and mental deterioration of the group would be observed. If on the other hand, civilization and technology continued to develop, there would be a flaw in the eugenics hypothesis.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Such an experiment had already been done. During the Middle Ages, the best and the brightest joined monasteries that required vows of celibacy, so the monastics reproduced at a lower rate than the general population. What happened? Did the Dark Ages get darker? Were there no innovations such as field rotation and the horse collar? By the end of the 19th century was all of Europe barbarian again? Why were the contemporary elite not illiterate peasants like their ancestors?<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Not only was there the Middle Ages experiment, a second experiment was nearing completion in 1901 when the Commonwealth of Australia was formed. From the late 18th century to the middle of the 19th century, convicts, the dregs of England, had been transported to Australia. These worst representatives of society were allowed to reproduce freely with little admixture of “good” blood. In a century and a half, their descendants developed a parliamentary democracy that has been sustained up to this day.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The educated elite Unitarians who promulgated eugenics could not help but be aware of these historical experiments, although their class interests would have prevented them from seeing the unsound reasoning behind eugenics science. In effect, eugenics was an attempt to pare down the numbers of the disabled, poor, and immigrants, a policy that preserves resources for the elite. Not until the Nazi Holocaust, likewise based on eugenics, gave the science a bad name, did the elite cut their ties with it. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“So, what have we learned?” asks Rev Nichols. “Even the best intentioned, best educated people can have their judgment clouded by assumptions that remain hidden to them – assumptions of race, class, religion or ethnicity. These hidden views affect all of the information we take in and all that we dismiss.”<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> According to Rev Nichols, the conviction that every human being is a sacred child of God will save us from abuses in the name of science. “Absent some sense of the sacred in humanity, the powerful – no matter how nice they are – will always be tempted to use their power to ‘improve’ or control our lives.” <br />
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* “Scientific Salvation” in Elite by Mark Harris pp 77ff<br />
** “Creating Perfect People” sermon by Rev John H Nichols, given at the First Unitarian Church of Providence RI on 2-10-08 and at First Parish in Wayland MA on 11-13-12.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
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UU Clickerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02471219340317492071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1765006712178681982.post-70044673332677579082015-05-29T10:06:00.001-07:002015-05-29T10:06:58.005-07:00The Green Ages<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Thousands of years ago, people lived by hunting animals and gathering edible plants. A few easy-to-catch animals became extinct, but no matter, people lived in balance with Earth. Over time, they figured out how to grow the vegetables and grains they needed. These domestic crops crowded out wild ecosystems; thus people lived less in harmony with Earth. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Cities developed, empires grew and shrank. The Roman Empire collapsed, possibly under its own weight. Its excesses, such as indoor plumbing, disappeared. What I call the Green Ages ensued in Europe. It was a time of organic farming, local economies, and local government. People used renewable energy technologies of wind, water, and muscle power. Everyone believed Earth was the center of the Universe. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Earth kept the numbers of people at carrying capacity by periodic plagues and famines. Lack of transportation prevented food from being moved from places of plenty to places of want. The organic farms had to be large enough to grow fodder for the draft animals; local economies made money and banking unnecessary; and the local governments made sure all knew their place in the rigid social hierarchy. Constant raids by one local economy on another likewise kept human numbers down. It was a violent time with homicides up to a hundred times more frequent than at present in western Europe. Almost everyone was an illiterate peasant, living a short life in abject poverty. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus showed Earth revolved around the sun. It took another century for this idea to become widely accepted, but Earth lost its place as the center of the Universe.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In the 18th century, people discovered coal could be used to fuel the new steam engines which allowed twenty pounds of coal to do as much work as a hundred horses could do in an hour. (Two hundred fifty years later Prophet Al Gore* predicted Earth would fry and drown because of fossil fuel use.) By the beginning of the 19th century, more technology had grown the number of humans to about a billion. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> Prophet Malthus** warned that populations rise geometrically, but agricultural capacity rises arithmetically. People didn’t listen. Instead, they thought of new ways to increase agricultural capacity, such as how to fix nitrogen from the air for fertilizer. After the ravages of two World Wars in the 20th century, prosperity and population grew. Prophet Ehrlich*** reiterated Malthus’ warning, predicting famines everywhere in the 70s and 80s. People still didn’t listen.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>By 2012 there were seven billion people on Earth. Part of the increase was due to the doubling of life expectancy since 1900. Better public health, medical care, and agricultural technology allowed many more people to live out their natural life span. The rate of population growth slowed as educated women pursued careers instead of motherhood.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>By 2015, instead of almost everybody being abjectly poor, more than half the people in the world were healthier, richer, and longer lived beyond the imagination of the illiterate peasants who practiced Earth-centered living in the Green Ages.<br />
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* An Inconvenient Truth, 2006</div>
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** Essay on Population, 1798</div>
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*** The Population Bomb, 1968</div>
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UU Clickerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02471219340317492071noreply@blogger.com0