Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Botnst
But the whole problem may solve itself naturally. Either through massive spring floods overwhelming the flood control system of a Cat 5 hurricane slowly moving up the MS to NOLA and Baton Rouge. That's when we'll enjoy the TV spectacular of 10's of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people dying. Then we'll all wring our hands and wail our laments and blame politicians for not doing something.
|
I have a feeling that all the concerns about over-population will eventually be laid to rest in natural solving as well. To the many millions and perhaps billions who would starve, like the proverbial rabbits on an island w/o predators, it will surely be unpleasant, tragic, etc. but I suspect Mother Nature and God will look on impassively. They've seen it before and are perhaps not likely to suffer fools lightly.
BTW, I wanted to thank you for the post about the mathematics of tile patterning. Interesting stuff, I bookmarked it. I don’t know if you saw one post where I mentioned I was about ¾ of the way to a math degree. BHD had accused me of being a liberal arts major (shudder) and I couldn't let that kind of slander go by uncorrected.
I’m thinking maybe to retire as a high school math teacher. I had a really good one in high school and I’d like to repay the debt. Now if I can just remember the finer points of Newton’s method for deriving the zero roots of a complex polynomial. I wrote a computer program (Pascal) in ’85 which successfully ran that formula and I can barely remember how it goes.
BTW, I heard an interview with Christopher Hitchens about his new book on Jefferson on our local NPR station’s "Forum" talk show, one of the better ones I’ve heard. Audio transcript available at:
http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R506061000
Krasny, the host, looks a bit like a cocky a$$ in the picture on the website but he's solid, IMO. Hitchens is a fascinating fellow. I don’t see eye to eye with him on all matters, but his speaking and thinking are clearly worth paying attention to. You once mentioned him “slaughtering” Chomsky. While I, of course, find that highly implausible
, I would be interested in examining the evidence. Was it a TV debate or written duel?