Given that almost 3/4 of all illegal immigrants enter the USA via airports, it would seem that what you need over there is to build a ceiling. My suggestion would be a dome, then the bubble would become reality, in a sense.
Mixed feelings is what I have about the paper. Oh, he has a point, don’t get me wrong, but advancing a political agenda in the name of science is a bit disingenuous. However, he did make it clear where he was coming from, so he gets points from me for making his assumptions clear(er than most similar writers). I thought it was cute that he was Australian (or at least writing from down-under). I know I pick on America a lot, but what lies deeper than that is the English-language and a lot of those “typically American issues” (like this whole identity-politics debate) is much more English-language based than most people recognize or would like to admit.
Well, at the expense of repeating myself, again: words like “cruel” and “hostile” are value-judgments and can only come from humans. Nature may be “harsh”, though I find even that characterization a bit overstated, but at bottom, it is just is the way it is. We humans are part of that Nature, to be sure, and putting an infant in the field is cruel. We know what happens to our young when we leave them unattended or if we decide to no longer help them. It’s not Nature being cruel, it is we who are so, because we know better and decide against acting accordingly. It’s, to my mind at least, a human thing.
And one of the things that it seems to me that we have real difficulties coming to terms with is the fact that we are human.
Personally, I don’t know exactly what “progress”, so I can’t say. Since you say we haven’t, I’d be very interested in knowing what you consider progress to be so that we have some criteria against which to judge whether we have or not. There are many things – good things, in my mind – that we humans have accomplished (like in the areas of hygiene and medicine, just as examples chosen at random), but like anything else in the universe, as Yogurt points out in “Spaceballs”, there’s an upside and a downside. And you’ll have to explain “reverse Darwinism” to me … I don’t think that most of what is passed of as Darwinism is an accurate portrayal of what the poor man wanted to say, and he’s been terribly abused for purposes other than he may have ever imagined. Of course, if you’re right, you’ll be up for a Nobel: there’s a whole side of Darwinism that no one’s seen yet. And I’ll sign the petition that you get it.
Mr. Rogers was from Pittsburgh. I grew up near there. I can assure you, however, that I didn’t grow up in his neighborhood. I grew up on a top-soiled-over strip mine in a little community that wouldn’t have existed at all without coal and radon. By the time I got there it was considered a suburb of the sprawling 20,000-soul metropolis a mile up the road. But the whole area was just coal and steel.
When I showed up it was more or less expected that you’d find the toughest kid around and more or less call call him out. He would decide whether he just kicked you ass our deigned to take you as you were. Odds were, however, if it was the latter, you’d be required to show your mettle at a future date, most likely with someone outside the community. It was a kind of initiation, if you will, but without any of the higher, inspiring results such acts should bring. Of course, once accepted into the group – your back was always covered. We “surburbanites” were not necessarily welcome in the in-group of the little big-city up the road where we had to go to high school.
And, no, 20m or 138m … show me one problem than money solved. I think Mr. Rogers had a chance, but we didn’t take it.
Ms Pelosi is the rule, not the exception. America is represented by millionaires though the vast majority of their constituents will never be anywhere close. The demographics of representation (including the Senate) reinforces the notion that at heart the US is a plutocracy. She’s just another one.
And that’s good for you, and I’m glad you did. I sincerely hope it’s not what does you in.
But, to come back to Darwin, your thoughts about him, and our online conversation: nothing in any of that truly addresses the consciousness side of things. I know, I know, our intrepid cognitive-psychological explorers are just another brain-scan away from cracking that nut, but I’m guessing they’ll get there just about the time AI goes from ignorance to intelligence. To my mind, the purely material view is just too limited. To my mind, we have the consciousness we have as humans today because nature/evolution/… thought it had survival value. The biology and the chemistry and the physics (as currently put forward) doesn’t get you there. I think there’s more in play than many are willing to admit, whereby not everyone who has a broader view has something reasonable or worth-listening-to to say.
And just for the record, don’t you find it illuminating that the man who first said he’d be proud to shutdown the government and who then did and put the onus on the “other guys” because we absolutely, positively needed that wall, just said (about an hour-and-a-half ago, as I heard it) that he – they – never intended to build a wall all the way along the border anyway? For wanting to be the non-politician-in-chief, that certainly sounds to me like he’s playing (or is trying to play) that game as poorly and all the rest of them.
So, just why should I take him any more seriously than any of the rest of them?