Gillian my post is called hitting people over the head with a two-by-four to gain their attention.
I worked in Africa for seven years mostly in Malawi, had many long discussions with people in agriculture, more recently my son worked as an Intern in Premier Arap Moi's office in Kenya. The climate, the soil and the water supply are the problems.
All made worse by overpopulation. Not to speak of inefficiency and corruption in all branches of administration.
I did not say anything about provision of BIOLOGICAL sufficiency in the West. We provide luxury & excessive "necessities" to most, look at the rates of obesity, for one. Those unfortunate kids you mention are again the result of a breakdown of social structures, starting with a breakdown of family ties, more marked in the US than in Canada but present everywhere in the West.

In my time in Africa, there were no orphans to be found anywhere. The extended family took care of them all. The head of that was in most tribes, the mother's uncle, her father's brother and his word, with the power of tradition behind it was law. He decided on the "bride price" when she married, he decided who was to look after the "orphans" if both parennts died. The bride price, "buying" a wife ignorant Europeans called it, was an insurance, if the husband mistreated the wife, she would leave him and go back to her family & he lost his cattle or whatever the price had been. If she left him for no good reason, he got the price back. The children went with the mother. The total breakdown of tribal customs as Western "civilisation" was adopted ended much of this, and facillitated the spread of AIDS once that appeared.

And in respect of our so-called civilisation. When Ghandi (Winston Churchill's "naked fakir") was visiting Britain in the 1920's he was asked what he thought of Western Civilisation. His considered reply was that he thought it would be a very good idea.

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Ronald Brak.

I find the idea that the whole world will become industrialised simply childish. Who is going to buy the products & with what? Which industrialised nations will allow competitors to outcompete them? The example of a highly trained, highly motivated, exceptionally able, and hardworking nation like China is not going to work for the whole world. It will work on paper and in the virtual world of the internet, not in practice.
For an example, just think what a people like the Japanese or the Germans would have done with the resources of Russia. And what have the Russians done?

I think you are a confused by what the term industrialized means. A country does not need to outcompete anyone else to become industrialized. A country does not need to be like China and sell the products of light manufacturing to become industrialized. A country does not even need to engage in trade to become industrialized. What is required for a nation to become industrialized is for the people to use technology to improve their productivity. So that people can achieve more in a day's work than they could before. This is happening over the entire world. Your statement that not every country can industrialize when every single one, with the possible exception of some war zones, is industrializing, is strange.

This thread's getting way too political.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

It has come face to face with hard reality and fixed opinions. Time to go back to Fun & Games, either here, or in Academia, or in good old real pork barrel politics.

Your post #61 helped put thing in perspective for me on what you trying to say toejam, for a moment I was not sure what to make of your previous posts.
The big confusion for me was the 21 years sterilisation, my mother gave birth to me when she was in her 30s and I would like to think that I turned out fine.

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This whole internet thing is probably not a passing fad.-Ronald Brak
While speech might be free, consequences cost.-Doodler

In my "Brave New World" (another name for a man-created hell on earth), people would just have to have kids early or never. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. I BIG BROTHER & KORJIK'S ARMY, WE"RE ALL WATCHING YOU>

Be careful with your wording.
Both Germans and Japanese have been very civilized peoples for most of their history. Same is true for Russians.
If you want to make a point about evil dictatorships, name them.

I agree.

I am not talking about dictatorships. I am talking about the innate/tradition reinforced abilities of those two peoples, their energy, organising talents and dedicated hard work, as contrasted with the sloth & incompetence of the Russians.
The evil dictatorships were evil for us, outsiders, for the Germans & Japanese they were a godsend until they started to lose the war.
Peter the Great, as ruthless a ruler as Stalin, tried to civilise his people, if by that we mean Europeinisation (is this a word?), & succeeded, partially. But Stalin dragged them back into his own asiatic absolutism, paranoid & cruel.

I think we better quit this before we all get banned for politicising the thread.
Perhaps transfer it to the pages of Pravda on line:-

http://engforum.pravda.ru/

& stir up the Russian Nazis that hang out there. I've done it in the past & am willing to try again. They're round you in a blink of an eye, just like African killer bees. World Coverage is a good Forum there. Anyone want to come???

You make me very happy.

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If ever I should meet you again, by land or sea,
I will always remember your kindness to me.

Actually after a quick look at the names there (on Pravda, see my post above), all the RussNazis are on the Main Forum.

The World Coverage has BushNazis, ZionNazis, Antisemites, Islamonazis & other such pleasant people.

Careful what you say there. Pravda's server is in Arlington Virginia (!!!), not far from CIA headquarters, & no doubt the CIA is plugged into it 24/7 .

Guess those Ruskies can't produce a good enough server of their own.

Yeah. Just ask the German Jews. Oh, wait . . . .

Your ideas are impractical and not based on real-world situations, despite your experiences in Africa. Despite what you claim, there are orphans. However, they have someone to take them in; this is usually the case in the West, too. It may not be the extended family, but the extended family is not always the best choice for the health and wellbeing of the child. Further, those poor American children are often born into families with close extended family networks. They're still starving.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

As always, Gillian says it best. Your ideas are simply not based in fact, toejam.

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Quaeso quousque humi defixa tua mens erit? Nonne aspicis, quae in templa veneris?

You people are not telling me anything new, you're still reeling from my two-by-four. Did you read my post at #66?

"Reality" and "Fixed Opinions" are mutually exclusive. There's a good reason why politics are banned by the rules here.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Yes, but I'm afraid I found its meaning unclear. Was it meant in jest?

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Quaeso quousque humi defixa tua mens erit? Nonne aspicis, quae in templa veneris?

I've found that it's never a good idea to tell people how they are reacting to something you've said or done unless you've got evidence that it is the case.

Yes, please.

No, thanks.

I try.


Okay, who turned the Gee Whiz thought party into Twelve Angry Men?
I put this here in order to learn something, and I did. It doesn't need to be boosted off the off topic babbling. It needs to be moderated.

As to the number, it was an offhand remark by David Drake who paraphrased Drakes voyages into some science fiction works. I wasn't planning on taking it too seriously.

Sometimes the cow does have to be spherical in order to get the correct answers.

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In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

Science fiction was never meant to be an educational tool. - Editor Amazing Tales

Yes, indeed.
All I want to say is that with all that virtual money, I'd spend more on birth control than on bandaid charity. Nets for Africa a very good idea, but not enough to solve the real problem. --- i.e. overpopulation,---- there & elswhere.

I don't have to. My home town was 50% Jewish in population, not ONE survived the war. This was in Poland.

But if you think that the Germans then, THAT generation of Germans thought that the Jews were GERMANS, you're very wrong. They were considered German subjects, but a completely foreign PEOPLE. Not much has changed there or in the rest of Europe, I'm afraid.

And those Germans did not WANT to know what was happening, they did not CARE to know.

So it was a nightmare for the outsiders, but glory for those Germans, as long as they were winning.

I'm quite aware of that (I have Gypsy ancestry; I have cousins who were killed in forests somewhere), but the thing is, those Jews thought of themselves as German in most cases, in most cases before they thought of themselves as Jews. Certainly they were German citizens (given that there was no more monarchy, I wouldn't say "subjects"), and that makes their opinions valid in my book. The fact is, there is no dictator who is completely supported by the people. In fact, Japan is an even better example. Hirohito didn't particularly want the war; he was driven into it by his generals, who in theory thought he was God.

I do agree that birth control is very important; here in Washington state, there's a governmental program that provides free birth control--and sterilization for those interested--for low-income people. Even before I got health benefits, I had birth control. And I agree that limiting births will also help with those already born, though I think a lot of the suggestions provided will do that as well. (Getting rid of some of the African dictators who care more about their lifestyle than their people's lives would be a nice start, too.) However, mandatory sterilization at age 21, or after one child, is not the answer, is not even close--is not even very good satire.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

One nit to pick, Gillian: Under Hitler, Jews were indeed given the legal status of subjects rather than citizens. In all other respects, I agree with you, though.

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Quaeso quousque humi defixa tua mens erit? Nonne aspicis, quae in templa veneris?

Before that, under the Weimar Republic, they were citizens. What's more, I kind of don't care what legal status they had. "Subjects" are under a king. While Hitler was assuredly a dictator, he wasn't a king and didn't call himself one. I'm not disputing what their legal status said; I'm sure you're right. I'm arguing this on a purely semantic level.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Oh, I agree with your point - their opinions were valid. Like I said, just nitpicking: I'm pretty sure that you can be a subject without there being a monarch.

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Quaeso quousque humi defixa tua mens erit? Nonne aspicis, quae in templa veneris?

I think you are oversimplifying again, toejam.
It always gives me the creeps when somebody blames an entire people or generation,
or claims that they all thought or acted the same way.
That's just nonsense, humans are not robots and history is much more complex than that.

Suggestion: let's stop hijacking this thread,
why don't you open a new thread in the off-topic section.

toejam, if it is any consolation I knew where you were coming from in your original posting. I feel certain that similar thoughts of world domination ran through many people's minds, they just suppressed them and moved on, while you expressed them. I never for a minute took you seriously and saw it more as an off-the-cuff reply... but an honest one that expressed a thought that did enter your mind.

If I were you, I wouldn't bother to continue trying to defend your points since you weren't writing a scientific paper on how to dominate the world the toejam way and I think you're being called out as if you did.

And by the way... if you want to borrow my evil robot hoard equipped with directed energy weapons we can work out the details of how to split up the world later.

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The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.

Arthur C. Clarke

The Brain Science Podcast

Hi Clint, I don't think we've spoken yet. Howdy.

Truth to tell, I am sooooo guilty of hijacking threads, usually as an attempt to relay an anecdote, that if I were to offer up the least little protest I'd have to smoke a turd in Pergatory for being a hypocrite.

Thank you just the same though.

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In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

Science fiction was never meant to be an educational tool. - Editor Amazing Tales

Hi BigDon, pleasure to meet you
Actually, I was biting my tongue not to get into that debate any further

Commenting on something from the original post

"Other than my respect for Drake as a man-of-arms increased dramatically when I heard he once fought off two Spainards armed with halberds and a swordsman, by himself. Killed one and put the other two to flight. Now that's an acid test of one's martial prowess. You how difficult it is to defend yourself from a long stick with a hook on it? Much less two in concert?"


I was involved in a martial art for many years that fought with European style weapons. One man against three (if the one man has room to maneuver) is not that one-sided. If the one man can circle the three will interfere with one another. Pole arms like the halberd are good for formation use and fending off cavalry but they are not good in a dueling situation, they are cumbersome.

Having said that, I'd agree he did well, the other major part of the puzzle was his level of training vs the training/experience level of the three Spainards. Our experience in the club was that a good experienced fighter could take on three lesser trained men and win most of the contests.


The effect of Drake's treasure; since he got most of it from the Spainish you can see the effect on the Spainish economy of having all that gold and silver coming into the nation - basically its economy got worse with most of the money flowing into bankers hands and to outside countries - to include the Netherlands, France and England - plus others.