snake with a hand

[Michael]

Omar, I bought a water machine designed in America and made in Fujian. Sucks the humidity out of the air. 6850 RMB plus a couple of hundred for delivery. Annual filter replacement adds some cost. At least I know my water is safe, if nothing else. I was talking with Yuen Ming about the topics you brought up and we agree it's just about minimizing exposure to toxins at this point. I asked someone to translate a list of food additives/toxins so I could try and educate my students, I'll make a thread for it when she's done, and I do think these toxins and awful eating habits are a major factor in their total inability to improve their English.

That and their teachers are too busy counting the words in sentences to work on comprehension

[bailewen]

Ech...*sigh*...

I only make about 3000/month in Xi'an. 6000+ is kind of out of my range. Your right though in that it's just about minimizing exposure. You can't avoid the stuff altogether. The word counting story was very funny. Just haven't gotten around to writing back yet.

I really do sense a sea change though. Much of the toxicity is brought on themselves. The market supports it. Often the toxic version is not even cheaper to produce, it's just brighter and shinier. If shoppers weren't so obsessive about buying big red shiny apples that are individually wrapped and chose to purchase the uglier but actually better tasting one's, then growers would produce them. It's an obsession with face and with outward appearances that causes mucha fair bit of this stuff.

That's what drives me absolutely nuts sometimes. I would pay more for a better product but often the better product just doesn't exist. When you pay more in China all you get is a fancier box and a big name but it's nearly impossible to pay for quality. IMO, It's market driven. People either bargain fiercely for the absolute lowest price regardless of quality or they spend as much money as possible not for quality but for face. They want to send a gift that the receiver knows is expensive or it's conspicuous consumption and they want to show off how rich they are. I believe that as the desire for actual quality or safety increases in the population, producers will start to offer that stuff. The concept of "value" is, culturally speaking, kind of new. I'm seeing it online where there are more an more Chinese discussions of bang for the buck in cell phones and laptops and so on. Discussions that actually talk about reliability and maintenance costs. People are sharing their stories and talking about how manufacturers do not honor their warranty so don't bother considering the warranty something to consider.

The biggest issue though is food. Everyone's talking about it. If the hottest issue in America right now is health care reform, in China it seems to be food safety. People are starting to get really pissed. I think the poison baby formula last year was a sort of a tipping point. It really opened a can of worms in the public debate.

[Interloper]

Nice try, Michael. That's a frickin' kangaroo, not a horse.
What's a girl got to do to get an update on snake-with-hand, around here?

Back to your discussion of human over-fecundity.

News flash! Snake found with vestigial horse growing out of its mouth. Horse suspected of having "hand" out of view of camera that will be fully revealed during a Chinese autopsy at some future date. Don't hold breath. Following release of picture, netizens fervently debate whether or not over-population of snake-horses will doom planet. Others argue about a one-horse-snake-foal-egg-policy and how it will be enforced. Film at eleven!

[Dmitri]

ps. D, pm if ya'll could use sommething down there.

Thanks man, but we're good. The house is in a mildly hilly area, near the top... so no problems thankfully.
Hey, at least the damn drought is over, right?

[Michael]

Back to your discussion of human over-fecundity.

Here is an example of population control as proposed in a 1977 book by Obama's top science advisor, John P. Holdren.

From the article:
"President Obama’s top science and technology advisor John P. Holdren co-authored a 1977 book in which he advocated the formation of a “planetary regime” that would use a “global police force” to enforce totalitarian measures of population control, including forced abortions, mass sterilization programs conducted via the food and water supply, as well as mandatory bodily implants that would prevent couples from having children."

From Holdren's book:

One way to carry out this disapproval might be to insist that all illegitimate babies be put up for adoption—especially those born to minors, who generally are not capable of caring properly for a child alone. If a single mother really wished to keep her baby, she might be obliged to go through adoption proceedings and demonstrate her ability to support and care for it. Adoption proceedings probably should remain more difficult for single people than for married couples, in recognition of the relative difficulty of raising children alone. It would even be possible to require pregnant single women to marry or have abortions, perhaps as an alternative to placement for adoption, depending on the society.

Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock.

A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men.

The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.

If some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility—just as they can be required to exercise responsibility in their resource-consumption patterns—providing they are not denied equal protection.

Do you want people like Holdren running and managing every aspect of your life, meaning no privacy, no property rights, and no self-determination, all for the purpose of population control?

[Interloper]

I refused to be spayed. Let the men be neutered.

[Michael]

If you're drinking the water, you're already half-way there.

[PartridgeRun]

Sorry für ze threaddrift

Okay, Michael, if you're interested in a qualified perspective you can start here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/025200 ... d_i=507846

I have to say that the worlds biomes prolly aren't feeling too happy with nearly 7 billion clever dicks and cunts running around soiling the cradle. Humans are wrecking havoc on the ecology of the worlds ecosystems, we've always done so, and now we're doing it on a scale that simply boggles the mind. I'm all for culling the population and I don't think we should let it all be up to the four horsemen either.
Population control - it's eminently rational.
When you say that China's one-child policy has brought about a lot of suffering...I gotta say, Jesus Christ man, you have no idea how much suffering that country has avoided by implementing a one-child policy.
Go to sciencedirect.com, pay a fee and start doing some real digging on the subject Michael. You're a clever guy, it ain't hard.
Fact of life is: we're clever, but we're too dumb.
It's been observed again and again, and it's been pointed out by the scientists who are doing the observing: when population exceeds carrying capacity it crashes, frequently all the way down to extinction. The professionals Michael, the ones doing the real research, the ones in the know, estimate that we've overshot carrying capacity by a magnitude of an order and a half, that's unprecedented, as is the influence and the damage on the biome(s) that sustains us.

[Michael]

I'm all for culling the population and I don't think we should let it all be up to the four horsemen either.
Population control - it's eminently rational.

I don't mean this as an insult, but simply an extension of your logic: Why don't you begin immediately with yourself in the culling? Lead by example. Perhaps you think not because you are one of the people who needs to stick around and manage the population control operation? Or you are one of the enlightened, who by virtue of the understanding of the problem should be allowed to remain alive? What you are saying means choosing who lives and who dies right now, so if you think this is a purely scientific question, what's your justification for breathing?

When you say that China's one-child policy has brought about a lot of suffering...I gotta say, Jesus Christ man, you have no idea how much suffering that country has avoided by implementing a one-child policy.

Jesus Christ and Mao Tse Dong probably don't have the same viewpoint on population control. Mao's brutal policies led to the starvation of at least 30-40 million people, double that for the total number killed as a result of his policies. Avoiding suffering by starving people to death, or by forcibly sterilizing them is not logical. There was no one accurately forecasting future suffering in Mao's govt and trying to avoid it. There is a recent historical record of population control, and just as with Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, South African Apartheid, and all the 20th century fanatics who implemented the culling you're advocating, suffering, pain, misery, and death were as much of a goal as was the totalitarian control of society via population reduction. Ecology is the cover story, it is not the motive.

[PartridgeRun]

I don't mean this as an insult, but simply an extension of your logic: Why don't you begin immediately with yourself in the culling? Lead by example. Perhaps you think not because you are one of the people who needs to stick around and manage the population control operation? Or you are one of the enlightened, who by virtue of the understanding of the problem should be allowed to remain alive? What you are saying means choosing who lives and who dies right now, so if you think this is a purely scientific question, what's your justification for breathing?

'Cause I'm human, I have a will to live, it's the number one biological imperative. It's what got us here in the first place, and I can assure you that the irony isn't lost on me

Jesus Christ and Mao Tse Dong probably don't have the same viewpoint on population control. Mao's brutal policies led to the starvation of at least 30-40 million people, double that for the total number killed as a result of his policies. Avoiding suffering by starving people to death, or by forcibly sterilizing them is not logical. There was no one accurately forecasting future suffering in Mao's govt and trying to avoid it. There is a recent historical record of population control, and just as with Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, South African Apartheid, and all the 20th century fanatics who implemented the culling you're advocating, suffering, pain, misery, and death were as much of a goal as was the totalitarian control of society via population reduction. Ecology is the cover story, it is not the motive.

Ecology IS the real issue and it is most fundamental in understanding the predicament we're in. There are harsh physical and biological limits on population levels. Until you understand this, we won't be getting anywhere at all with this discussion.
I know you get a dopamine kick out of the particular brand of theorizing which you put on display in the above, but honestly man, would you actually do some research on the subjects before you conjure up these grand conspiracies.
You don't need conspiray-theories - an understanding of human nature will do just fine.

As for China, Mao and the one-child policy. The one-child policy was implemented in 1979 as a response to high population pressure. I dread to think of what would have become of the country if they hadn't implemented that policy. The lotic ecosystems, the soil erosion, the insuffient water-supplies, the lack of clean energy, the predatory use of precious natural resources, ALL of those things would've been exacerbated Michael, with all the suffering THAT entails.
And Mao's policies we're personal plays for power, decidedly not planned ways of culling population. The tragedy that was The Great Leap Forward came about precisely because of irrational, uncoordinated planning: local cadres, in an effort to please the powers that be, exaggerated harvest data, and THAT in turn begot the great famine. The tragedy came about as a direct result of human nature and the social plays for status that we always "work" in - it wasn't some insidious scheme of culling population.

[Michael]

You claim science as your guide without acknowledging that science has nothing to say about morality and what is right or wrong. You can not scientifically justify your existence and persistent polluting of the earth with your filthy CO2, nor can you explain why someone with the power to do so should not eliminate this problem of your continued respiration as you advocate the death of millions and billions of people. And you do it all from your apparently dopamine-free high horse of claimed scientific eminence. Nobody has all the answers, scientific or otherwise, so when you advocate culling you're on the most slippery slope of them all.

And to throw out the conspiracy theory attack on me? Be specific. Those kinds of generalizations are pretty rude and reveal your arrogance.

As for China, Mao and the one-child policy. The one-child policy was implemented in 1979 as a response to high population pressure.

Check your facts. It was around long before that, more like 60-61, but became more fully implemented after population control experts like Rockefeller, Kissinger, and George Bush, Sr. came to China. I have at least one friend whose tubes were tied without her consent in 1974 in rural Guangdong.

[PartridgeRun]

You claim science as your guide without acknowledging that science has nothing to say about morality and what is right or wrong. You can not scientifically justify your existence and persistent polluting of the earth with your filthy CO2, nor can you explain why someone with the power to do so should not eliminate this problem of your continued respiration as you advocate the death of millions and billions of people. And you do it all from your apparently dopamine-free high horse of claimed scientific eminence. Nobody has all the answers, scientific or otherwise, so when you advocate culling you're on the most slippery slope of them all.

The Universe, Earth, the Biosphere...Man, it all just is, Michael, it just is. There is no morality and no amount of anthropomorphizing will make Nature inherently moral or immoral. It just is. I in my everyday life I try to make an effort to bow only to reality....and that's it. You talk about morals. I say if you wan't to talk about morals, then any act that constitutes a blatant disregard for the basis that sustains us, I.E. the biosphere, is an immoral act. The one thing that makes moral thinking possible in the first place, and which therefore, always necessarily must take precedence when acting deliberately - that is "morally".
And we do have a pretty good, though not final (of course) picture of what makes human tick, and it's predominantly got to do with our animal nature Michael. You could start by actually making an effort in research by buying this book: http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Evolutio ... 50&sr=8-12, which is expensive, but worth the price (good, solid information generally is).

Also, I have ways of getting my own dopamine-highs Michael, I can assure you of that, precisely because I too, am just a naked ape, nothing more.

Lastly, I've got my facts perfectly straight. You might want to check your sources again Michael.

[PartridgeRun]

To think that human systems can actually be decoupled from the physical reality that we take sustenance from and are defined through, THAT''S the goddamn primordial slippery slope right there my friend.

[Michael]

I don't want to put words in your mouth, but what I'm hearing is that humans are just animals, naked apes, etc. and there is no such thing as morality. I disagree with both points and it does show a huge difference in perspective between us. I have asked you a question you haven't responded to, and I did so in order to show the existence of morality, perhaps you'd address that. If the existence of a person is just a scientific question, what's to stop someone with the power to do so from killing anyone they choose if they believe it to be ecologically or scientifically justified? How is this different from the allegedly scientifically valid eugenics justification used by Hitler, et al, for their pursuit of racial purity and the ideal society?

To think that human systems can actually be decoupled from the physical reality that we take sustenance from and are defined through, THAT''S the goddamn primordial slippery slope right there my friend.

I mostly agree with this, so is that a strawman or something you've sincerely taken from my posts? Where I disagree is that we're not fully defined by "physical reality". That's half of the equation, it's the most obvious part, but not everything. There is the physical and the spiritual, the yin and the yang. There is research and knowledge focusing on both that is widely available.

You've got this very arrogant and belittling tone to your writing. What's up with that?

[PartridgeRun]

I don't want to put words in your mouth, but what I'm hearing is that humans are just animals, naked apes, etc. and there is no such thing as morality.

As cultures change and time goes by, morality too changes, so that what is moral at one place and one time in history, may not be moral at another. There is no transcendent arbiter of what is moral and what is not. Morality is entirely a pragmatic function - each individual creates morality from thin air so as to better live with himself. And that too is entirely relative: a citizen in Nazi-Germany may have found it morally defensible to follow the herd, because if he didn't, it would harm him and his nearest relatives. Morality is something the human animal creates so as to (after)-rationalize his/her actions, BUT Nature itself is inherently amoral. It doesn't care either way Michael. So when we, Homo Procreatus ad Infinitum, precipitate the sixth great mass extinction event in the planets history, Nature doesn't care either.
And neither, it seems, do you, content as you are with wallowing in denial in the face of cold, hard facts. If you sense a belittling tone to my writing, it's because I grow tired of people who can't be bothered to do some real research on this matter. A matter which the knowledge of and rational acting on is crucial for how the next fifty years pan out.