Thanks to Leta Finch for this article from The New Yorker.  See: http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2011/08/08/110808sh_shouts_simms

God’s Blog

Paul Simms

UPDATE: Pretty pleased with what I’ve come up with in just six days. Going to take tomorrow off. Feel free to check out what I’ve done so far. Suggestions and criticism (constructive, please!) more than welcome. God out.

COMMENTS (24)

Not sure who this is for. Seems like a fix for a problem that didn’t exist. Liked it better when the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep.

Going carbon-based for the life-forms seems a tad obvious, no?

The creeping things that creepeth over the earth are gross.

Not enough action. Needs more conflict. Maybe put in a whole bunch more people, limit the resources, and see if we can get some fights going. Give them different skin colors so they can tell each other apart.

Disagree with the haters out there who have a problem with man having dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, the cattle of the earth, and so on. However, I do think it’s worth considering giving the fowl of the air dominion over the cattle of the earth, because it would be really funny to see, like, a wildebeest or whatever getting bossed around by a baby duck.

The “herb yielding seed” is a hella fresh move. 4:20!

Why are the creatures more or less symmetrical on a vertical axis but completely asymmetrical on a horizontal axis? It’s almost like You had a great idea but You didn’t have the balls to go all the way with it.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2011/08/08/110808sh_shouts_simms

See: http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/idea-suggests-3g-entertainment-to-control-population-rise-in-india/443924/

Idea suggests 3G entertainment to control Population rise in India

Announcement / Corporate July 25, 2011, 15:05 IST

Don’t we all remember the last time a treacherous power-cut, in the middle of our favorite one-day match or TV soap ruined the mood, forcing us to find some other form of entertainment? Lack of entertainment in the lives of ordinary citizens could have often resulted in couples falling prey to unplanned family extensions which has added to the population of the country.

Brand Idea suggests a simple and effective solution to this problem, through seamless and non-stop entertainment with Idea’s 3G services! Idea’s new brand campaign, once again based on a social theme, highlights the country’s challenge of Population inflation and suggests a simple telephony solution.

Idea’s new Television ad shows Brand Ambassador Abhishek Bachchan (NOTE – son of famous Indian actor, Amitabh Bachchan who’s wife Aishwariya Rai-Bachachan is expecting their first child after 4 years of marriage) explaining to a friend that the root cause of over population in our country is the unavailability of entertainment options for people.

He suggests Idea 3G and its many innovative applications such as – Mobile TV, Gaming, Video Calling, Social Networking on Super Fast Internet – that offer non-stop entertainment to help people stay connected and entertained.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/idea-suggests-3g-entertainment-to-control-population-rise-in-india/443924/

Thanks to Joe Bish for this article. See: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/31-4

Published on Wednesday, August 31, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

Rebuttal: Saving Species From Extinction Is No Mere ‘Distraction’

by Amy Harwood

In Besty Hartmann’s post The Great Distraction: ‘Overpopulation’ Is Back (8/30/11), she boldly charges the Center for Biological Diversity of undermining reproductive rights, letting the military and Monsanto off the hook, ignoring global warming, selling out to big advertising companies and distracting people while we subjugate women. Oh, and disrespecting victims of violence, worldwide.

In fact, the Center for Biological Diversity is probably the only environmental group in the country taking on Monsanto, the Pentagon, global warming while also working for environmental justice and reducing the human population to a sustainable level through public education and the promotion of women’s reproductive rights and empowerment. You could hardly ask for clearer proof that overpopulation is not a distraction from other issues.

The Center works on all these issues and believes that most people are equally capable of focusing on several problems at once. In this increasingly conservative time, liberals can’t afford Hartmann’s either/or thinking. We need to work on all fronts and build alliances with other progressive groups, not create false conflicts driving allies away.

Continue Reading »

Thanks to Jack Alpert for this article from The Guardian.  See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/jun/01/china-land-deal-unease-argentina-agribusiness

Global Food Crisis: China Land Deal Causes Unease in Argentina

Felicity Lawrence

1 June 2011

A Chinese agribusiness firm is to buy a large swath of land in Patagonia. Critics fear it will bring heavy agrochemical use and ecological degradation, and strain the region’s water resources

The attraction to the Chinese of access to an area of land in Patagonia larger than Cornwall is obvious. As China’s economy grows and its population becomes more urbanised, diets are changing rapidly. People are eating more industrially produced meat and dairy products, and buying more processed foods.

Soya is the feedstock for this revolution, but demand for it can no longer be met within China. So the Chinese state-owned agribusiness company Beidahuang has joined the global scramble for land and water that has accelerated since food prices spiked in 2008.

Last year it was confirmed that the company had signed an agreement, with the government of Patagonia’s Río Negro province, which provides the framework for it to acquire up to 320,000 hectares (790,000 acres) of privately owned farmland, along with irrigation rights and a concession on the San Antonio port.

Details of the deal, alleged to have been kept quiet, have been emerging in recent weeks as Chinese technicians have started work.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/jun/01/china-land-deal-unease-argentina-agribusiness

Hunger in a land of plenty as global elites harvest a banana and biofuel bounty

See http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx

Date: Wednesday, June 01, 2011
Source: The Guardian (UK)
Author: Felicity Lawrence

Domingo Tamupsis works as a harvester on a Guatemalan sugar plantation for a firm that exports bioethanol to fill the fuel tanks of cars in the US. He works 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week, in a country that is a leading producer of food for global markets.

His settlement in the fertile Pacific coastal area is surrounded by industrial farms, but he earns so little his family cannot afford to eat every day. Some days he survives his shift of hard physical labour on nothing but the mangoes that drop from trees by the roadside.

His wife, Marina, is 23 but so slight she might be mistaken for a girl. She has two daughters, Yeimi aged six and Jessica, two. Jessica is the size of the average European one-year-old, her distended stomach a sign of chronic malnutrition. When she smiles, hollow creases form in her cheeks, betraying her semi-permanent state of hunger.

Last year Marina gave birth in the eighth month of pregnancy to a stillborn child. She had been ill and hungry throughout, then felt severe pains one day at breakfast time. When she finally reached the nearest medical help, a hospital 45 minutes away by bus, staff told her the baby was dead. They returned the body to her, but she and Domingo had no cash for the return fare. A doctor gave them the fare, and a friend in town lent money for a coffin. So it was that their third child, Marvin Orlando, a brother for their two little girls, came home to be buried.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx

Thanks to Shyla Nelson for this article. See: http://www.naturalnews.com/033319_food_prices_farmland.html#ixzz1V30GDch8

Why is George Soros selling gold and buying farmland?

Sunday, August 14, 2011
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com

(NaturalNews) Food prices are skyrocketing all across the globe, and there’s no end in sight. The United Nations says food inflation is currently at 30% a year, and the fast-eroding value of the dollar is causing food prices to appear even higher (in contrast to a weakening currency). As the dollar drops in value due to runaway money printing at the Federal Reserve, the cost to import foods from other nations looks to double in just the next two years — and possibly every two years thereafter.

That’s probably why investors around the globe are flocking to farmland as the new growth industry. “Investors are pouring into farmland in the U.S. and parts of Europe, Latin America and Africa as global food prices soar,” reports Bloomberg magazine. “A fund controlled by George Soros, the billionaire hedge-fund manager, owns 23.4 percent of South American farmland venture Adecoagro SA.” Jim Rogers is also quoted in the same story, saying, “I have frequently told people that one of the best investments in the world will be farmland.”

That’s because demand for food is accelerating even as radical climate changes, a loss of fossil water supplies, and the failure of genetically engineered crops is actually reducing food yields around the globe.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.naturalnews.com/033319_food_prices_farmland.html#ixzz1V30GDch8

Thanks to Tim Murray for this short essay.  For more on the work of Chris Clugston, referenced below, see http://www.populationmedia.org/?s=%22Chris+Clugston%22.  For more of Tim Murray’s writings, see http://www.populationmedia.org/?s=%22Tim+Murray%22.

REALITY VS. WISHFUL THINKING

When I first encountered Chris Clugston’s work some three years ago, it came as a lightning bolt. His analysis was unassailable. Finally an analytical tool—”Societal Overextension Analysis”—- that measured overshoot in a way that ecological footprint analysis did not, rendering it almost obsolete.  Now Chris has fleshed SOA out. He has inventoried 89 metals and minerals that are critical to the operation of any industrial economy, and found that 69 of them are scarce and are getting scarcer.  The Green Apostles of False Hope can imagine that substitutes will be found for one or two or even a dozen of them—but not most of them, and any one shortage can bring the industrial edifice down.

Industrialism is unsustainable, whether it is under capitalist or socialist management. If you think the profit motive is the root of all evil, then take a look at the June 1991 edition of National Geographic: “Europe’s Darkest Dawn”.  Lest we forget, the socialist command economy turned Eastern Europe into a smoky toxic waste dump. The challenge for Clugston’s critics is tell us how an industrial economy can function without even a handful of the non-renewables he itemized. Are we going to build factories out of straw? And if they do that, then their next task is to demonstrate that ANY civilization is sustainable, given that agriculture itself is unsustainable. But how we will grasp at straws…..
One thing must be understood. We are not anarcho-primitivists. We do not exult or romanticize pre-industrial cultures.  Chris is not arguing that we should return to a pre-industrial society. Like me, he rather likes our civilized amenities.” I don’t hate industrialism, and I don’t think that it’s inherently evil or the work of the devil or greedy people—my only rub is that it’s physically impossible going forward.” The point is that what “we” want is irrelevant, because Mother Nature could not care less about our wants or needs. There is never going to be a New England style Town Hall meeting or public referendum on the question of whether our species should transit to a hunter gatherer lifestyle or not. We will never be asked by Mother Nature whether we should vote to dismantle industrial civilization. (If we were, I would certainly vote to keep my jacuzzi and microwave oven.)  The fact is, we will not have affordably accessible natural non renewable resources available to enable that preferred lifestyle.

Continue Reading »

Thanks to Charles Hall for this article.  See  http://questioneverything.typepad.com/

August 13, 2011

George Mobus (for background on him, see http://faculty.washington.edu/gmobus/)

What is Going On?

Unless you’ve had your head in the sand you cannot help but be wondering what is going on. Or, if you are like me you may think you understand exactly what the problems are, and more importantly what is the root cause. The last two weeks have been wild WRT the global economy and social unrest. And with the kickoff of the political season for the Republicans, the entertainment value of all of this has skyrocketed.

I’ve had three or four blog topics in various stages of write up that I have been wanting to get finished and posted. But every day some new extreme event has distracted me. It has been hard enough to keep on task with my book writing with what has been going on in the world. It has been essentially impossible to give any mind time to these blog topics (more on education, judgment, and, of course, biophysical economics principles).

Most of the recent events have actually not surprised me much. They are all in one way or another tied to economics and I have been long suggesting that the net energy decline we are in will cause economic activity to contract with all sorts of consequences. So seeing some of those consequences come to pass is not what bothers me. I think what tends to cause me the greatest distress is the fact that the people who are in front of the cameras and microphones, the ones who purport to be the pundits and experts on politics and economics, have still not got a clue and don’t seem inclined to find one. They are all still trying to gen up stories about what is happening based on their conventional wisdom and so completely miss the root problem. They will probably never really understand what is happening because most of them probably never took a college-level physics course in their lives.

To read the full article, please click here: http://questioneverything.typepad.com/question_everything/2011/08/what-is-going-on.html

From the New York Times.  See http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/business/economy/marriage-and-the-law-of-supply-and-demand.html

Supply, Demand and Marriage

Date: Sunday, August 07, 2011
Source: The New York Times
Author: ROBERT H. FRANK

IN some cultures, romance isn’t nearly as important as cash when it comes to choosing a marriage partner. And even when money plays no explicit role in selecting a mate, courtship customs are governed by the venerable economic model of supply and demand.

Under the dowry system in India, for example, parents of older brides would typically pay more to prospective grooms. Men with better jobs would receive larger payments, too.

In short, there really is a marriage market in many countries around the world, and economic principles apply to it. In markets with a preponderance of women seeking partners, the terms of trade shift in favor of men. If more men are seeking partners, the reverse is true. Two cases in point are the baby-boom generation in the United States and the current youth cohort in China.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/business/economy/marriage-and-the-law-of-supply-and-demand.html?_r=1

Thanks to Jenny Goldie for this NPR interview.  To listen to the broadcast, visit http://www.npr.org/2011/08/12/139579616/feeding-a-hotter-more-crowded-planet.  Below is a transcript of the opening of the program.  For the full transcript, visit https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B5F-idWfw7TeYWNjYzIxYjEtMzhjYi00NjM3LThmMGYtNGUzN2U4MzA5Mjg3&hl=en_US

Feeding A Hotter, More Crowded Planet

August 12, 2011

Nearly a billion people worldwide don’t have reliable access to food, according to United Nations estimates, and some experts worry climate change will drive that number even higher. Ira Flatow and guests discuss the future of food security, and how farmers may need to adapt in coming generations.

Copyright © 2011 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

IRA FLATOW, host: You’re listening to SCIENCE FRIDAY, I’m Ira Flatow. The American Southwest is beginning to resemble the Dust Bowl of the Depression. Cotton crops have crumbled. It hasn’t rained much in over a year.

The situation is even worse in East Africa. Droughts there have devastated harvests, and according to the U.N., over 11 million people there are at risk of starvation. I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures on the nightly news and online.

Is this sort of thing going to become the norm? Because climate models predict that extreme weather events, like droughts and floods, will become more common in the future, threatening farmers’ ability to produce reliable harvests.

And not only will growing the food become more difficult, but the farmers will need to produce more of it because by the year 2050, there will be another two billion people on the planet, meaning we’ll have over nine billion mouths to feed.

To read the full story, please click here: http://www.npr.org/2011/08/12/139579616/feeding-a-hotter-more-crowded-planet