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Sunday, May 18, 2003
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Joseph George Caldwell, Ph.D. writes: Those of you who have read Can America Survive? and my other writings on the subject of the present and future state of the world know that I have always believed, and stated that I believed, that the solution to the crisis facing the world today (environmental destruction and mass species extinction caused by human overpopulation) will be spiritual in nature. In my early writings, I used the term “religious” more than “spiritual,” and I did not distinguish very much between religion and spirituality. Today, I do distinguish to a greater degree between the two terms, and I am more careful to use the more appropriate term, depending on the context. I started writing Can America Survive? in 1993 or 1994, when I was working in Malawi, and I finished it, after long delays and two complete rewrites, in 1998. In 2000, my wife and I were vacationing in South Africa – Cape Town, the wine country, and the Garden Route. Near the end of our vacation, we rented a cottage near Cape Town and then a friend’s cottage on the Indian Ocean in the village of Plettenberg Bay. It was there, in those two cottages, that I wrote up a theology relating to overpopulation and planetary management which I called the Church of Nature. (05/18/03) | |
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Carlo M. Cipolla writes: The first basic law of human stupidity asserts without ambiguity that: Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation. At first, the statement sounds trivial, vague and horribly ungenerous. Closer scrutiny will however reveal its realistic veracity. No matter how high are one’s estimates of human stupidity, one is repeatedly and recurrently startled by the fact that: a) people whom one had once judged rational and intelligent turn out to be unashamedly stupid. b) day after day, with unceasing monotony, one is harassed in one’s activities by stupid individuals who appear suddenly and unexpectedly in the most inconvenient places and at the most improbable moments. The First Basic Law prevents me from attributing a specific numerical value to the fraction of stupid people within the total population: any numerical estimate would turn out to be an underestimate. Thus in the following pages I will denote the fraction of stupid people within a population by the symbol sigma. (05/18/03) | |
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CNN Technology -- Want to ride a Segway Human Transporter, the new self-balancing electric scooter that went on sale in March, but can't bring yourself to shell out $5,000? Then you can rent one, if you go to Spokane, Washington state's second-largest city, and meet with Larry Lambeth, who started renting the scooter to the public last Saturday. "The response has been incredible," said Lambeth, a long-time entrepreneur who bought 10 Segway Human Transporters with a partner and started his company, Fun Transport, which aims to rent them out to people looking for easy, cheap transportation. (05/18/03) | |
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CNN World -- Pakistan has released a group of 20 Indian prisoners in the latest move aimed at improving relations between the nuclear-armed neighbors. The prisoners were repatriated Sunday at the border crossing of Wagah where they were being welcomed by family members in an emotional homecoming broadcast live on most Indian television networks. The release is being seen as a small but highly significant step for India-Pakistan relations, signaling a new mood to improve ties between the long-standing foes. (05/18/03) | |
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New York Times: Environment -- Wildlife officials are visiting the Calaveras County Fair and Frog Jumping Jubilee this weekend to make sure that the celebrated leapers do not spread disease and are not released into ponds where they can push out native frogs. "I bet you Mark Twain is laughing his tail off," said Warren King, manager of the fair, which ends on Sunday. "He created all this just from a little short story, his first published work. Now look at all this controversy and environmental concerns. I hope he's proud of the way we're handling this." The inspections at the contest are meant to protect amphibians in the Sierra Nevada, which have lost habitat and been harmed by pesticides. (05/18/03) | |
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New York Times: Environment -- Bush administration officials are exasperated with Europe's belief in the precautionary principle, a better-safe-than-sorry approach to regulating everything from corn flakes to chemical plants. As outlined in a treaty of the European Union, governments should regulate industries when they pose risks to public health and the environment — even before all the data about the threat has been collected. In keeping with this precautionary approach, Europe has prohibited bioengineered crops and American beef treated with growth hormones, and is now crafting legislation that will require chemical companies to spend billions of dollars on safety tests of their products. But what looks like a question of safety to the Europeans often seems more like protectionism to the United States. The Bush administration believes the precautionary principle is an unjustified constraint on business and does not even recognize the existence of the doctrine. "We consider it to be a mythical concept, perhaps like a unicorn," said John D. Graham, the administrator at the Office of Management and Budget in charge of vetting new regulations, in a recent speech to European Union regulators. The United States was once a leader in precautionary legislation. The Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, both enacted in the 1970's with bipartisan support, explicitly allow regulators to act in the face of uncertain findings. But in the Reagan era, precautionary regulation was seen as an enemy of the free market. It was not just a Republican aversion. Though the Clinton administration was far more active in adopting health and environmental regulations, it battled Europe over the bans on genetically engineered foods and hormone-treated beef. But the Bush administration has actively challenged the very premise on which the European actions are based. (05/18/03) | |
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New York Times: Environment -- A federal district judge in Newark ordered Honeywell International to clean up a 34-acre site along Jersey City's waterfront that was created more than 100 years ago as a dumping ground for chromium, a byproduct of manufacturing that has been found to cause cancer. The cleanup, which would involve digging up about a million tons of contaminated waste and replacing it with clean soil, could cost the Morris Township-based company more than $400 million, experts testified. The company will also have to remove the contaminants from the Hackensack River near the dump. In the decision, Judge Dennis M. Cavanaugh of Federal District Court said that chromium at the dump, which closed years ago but became the site of a drive-in movie and a furniture store in the densely populated neighborhoods of south Jersey City, presented "a substantial risk of imminent damage to public health and safety and imminent and severe damage to the environment." (05/18/03) | |
7:28:28 AM 
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© TrustMark
2003
Timothy Wilken.
Last update:
6/3/2003; 5:44:54 AM.
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