AdamSmith

The Pope said what?!? More stunners from Francis https://www.cnn.com/2015/01/19/living/pope-said-what/index.html

The deal has gone down to backpage.com. http://raleigh.backpage.com/MenSeekMen/ From wherewith one has been hiring from a very successful couple of years!

And I knew her personally. And still miss her, very much.

Interview Paul Ehrlich: 'Collapse of civilisation is a near certainty within decades' By Damian Carrington Cities Overstretched cities Fifty years after the publication of his controversial book The Population Bomb, biologist Paul Ehrlich warns overpopulation and overconsumption are driving us over the edge Cities is supported by About this content Thu 22 Mar 2018 07.30 EDTLast modified on Thu 22 Mar 2018 18.00 EDT The toxification of the planet with synthetic chemicals may be more dangerous to people and wildlife than climate change, says Ehrlich. Photograph: Linh Pham/Getty A shattering collapse of civilisation is a “near certainty” in the next few decades due to humanity’s continuing destruction of the natural world that sustains all life on Earth, according to biologist Prof Paul Ehrlich. In May, it will be 50 years since the eminent biologist published his most famous and controversial book, The Population Bomb. But Ehrlich remains as outspoken as ever. FacebookTwitterPinterest Prof Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo The world’s optimum population is less than two billion people – 5.6 billion fewer than on the planet today, he argues, and there is an increasing toxification of the entire planet by synthetic chemicals that may be more dangerous to people and wildlife than climate change. Ehrlich also says an unprecedented redistribution of wealth is needed to end the over-consumption of resources, but “the rich who now run the global system – that hold the annual ‘world destroyer’ meetings in Davos – are unlikely to let it happen”. The Population Bomb, written with his wife Anne Ehrlich in 1968, predicted “hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death” in the 1970s – a fate that was avoided by the green revolution in intensive agriculture. Many details and timings of events were wrong, Paul Ehrlich acknowledges today, but he says the book was correct overall. “Population growth, along with over-consumption per capita, is driving civilisation over the edge: billions of people are now hungry or micronutrient malnourished, and climate disruption is killing people.” Ehrlich has been at Stanford University since 1959 and is also president of the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere, which works “to reduce the threat of a shattering collapse of civilisation”. “It is a near certainty in the next few decades, and the risk is increasing continually as long as perpetual growth of the human enterprise remains the goal of economic and political systems,” he says. “As I’ve said many times, ‘perpetual growth is the creed of the cancer cell’.” It is the combination of high population and high consumption by the rich that is destroying the natural world, he says. Research published by Ehrlich and colleagues in 2017 concluded that this is driving a sixth mass extinction of biodiversity, upon which civilisation depends for clean air, water and food. FacebookTwitterPinterest High consumption by the rich is destroying the natural world, says Ehrlich. Photograph: Paulo Whitaker/Reuters The solutions are tough, he says. “To start, make modern contraception and back-up abortion available to all and give women full equal rights, pay and opportunities with men. “I hope that would lead to a low enough total fertility rate that the needed shrinkage of population would follow. [But] it will take a very long time to humanely reduce total population to a size that is sustainable.” It will take a very long time to humanely reduce total population to a size that is sustainable He estimates an optimum global population size at roughly 1.5 to two billion, “But the longer humanity pursues business as usual, the smaller the sustainable society is likely to prove to be. We’re continuously harvesting the low-hanging fruit, for example by driving fisheries stocks to extinction.” Ehrlich is also concerned about chemical pollution, which has already reached the most remote corners of the globe. “The evidence we have is that toxics reduce the intelligence of children, and members of the first heavily influenced generation are now adults.” He treats this risk with characteristic dark humour: “The first empirical evidence we are dumbing down Homo sapiens were the Republican debates in the US 2016 presidential elections – and the resultant kakistocracy. On the other hand, toxification may solve the population problem, since sperm counts are plunging.” FacebookTwitterPinterest Plastic pollution found in the most remote places on the planet show nowhere is safe from human impact. Photograph: Conor McDonnell Reflecting five decades after the publication of The Population Bomb (which he wanted to be titled Population, Resources, and Environment), he says: “No scientist would hold exactly the same views after a half century of further experience, but Anne and I are still proud of our book.” It helped start a worldwide debate on the impact of rising population that continues today, he says. The book’s strength, Ehrlich says, is that it was short, direct and basically correct. “Its weaknesses were not enough on overconsumption and equity issues. It needed more on women’s rights, and explicit countering of racism – which I’ve spent much of my career and activism trying to counter. Empty half the Earth of its humans. It's the only way to save the planet Kim Stanley Robinson Read more “Too many rich people in the world is a major threat to the human future, and cultural and genetic diversity are great human resources.” Accusations that the book lent support to racist attitudes to population controlstill hurt today, Ehrlich says. “Having been a co-inventor of the sit-in to desegregate restaurants in Lawrence, Kansas in the 1950s and having published books and articles on the biological ridiculousness of racism, those accusations continue to annoy me.” But, he says: “You can’t let the possibility that ignorant people will interpret your ideas as racist keep you from discussing critical issues honestly.” More of Paul and Anne Ehrlich’s reflections on their book are published in The Population Bomb Revisited. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/mar/22/collapse-civilisation-near-certain-decades-population-bomb-paul-ehrlich

Agree wholly. A perspective, presented in the film, from 20+ years ago in our cultural history. Kids today are totally connected to themselves.

Yes, it is possible to live well on almost nothing per day. And also not hard at all to get the means we need to have a 'nice' life. Whatever that means for oneself, and whatever our background. My parents were born in the Depression, and thus taught me (without conscious instruction) how to live on nothing, and then also how to go make some money to pay for whatever you might want.

"The sleep of a laborer is sweet, whether he eats little or much, but the abundance of a rich man permits him no sleep.”–Ecclesiastes 5:12. Beautiful article.

Try The Left Hand of Darkness. https://www.shmoop.com/left-hand-of-darkness/title.html

Fascinating. The Book List: What was in Oscar Wilde's prison library? The writer was allowed to keep books in his cell and was also permitted to leave his light on as late as he wanted to read them Getty Collected Works of Matthew ArnoldCity of God by St AugustineThe Confessions of St AugustineVarious Works by Charles BaudelaireThe Pilgrim’s Progress by John BunyanThe Prioress’s Tale by Geoffrey ChaucerThe Divine Comedy by Dante AlighieriLa Vita Nuova by Dante AlighieriCollected Works of John DrydenTrois Contes by Gustave FlaubertLa Tentation de St Antoin by Gustave FlaubertIllumination by Harold FredericThe Passes of the Pyrenees by Charles L FreestonFaust by Johann Wolfgang von GoetheBrittany by Baring GouldCollected Works of HafizThe Well-Beloved by Thomas HardyThe Longer Poems of John KeatsEpic and Romance: Essays on Medieval Literature by William Paton KerThe Courtship of Morrice Buckler: A Romance by AEW MasonAn Essay on Comedy by George Meredith Prison paradiso: Oscar Wilde seemed to be particular keen on Dante (Getty) The History of the Jews by Henry Hart MilmanHistory of Latin Christianity by Henry Hart MilmanHistory of Rome by Theodor MommsenJuvenile Offenders by William Douglas MorrisonA History of Ancient Greek Literature by Gilbert MurrayApologia Pro Vita Sua by John Henry NewmanTwo Essays on Miracles by John Henry NewmanIdea of a University by John Henry NewmanEssays on Grace by John Henry NewmanProvincial Letters by Blaise PascalPensées by Blaise Pascal The solitary reader: Wordsworth’s collected works also make the list (Getty) The Renaissance by Walter PaterGaston de Latour by Walter PaterMiscellaneous Studies by Walter PaterEgyptian Decorative Art (paperback) by WM Flinders PetrieLetters and Memoir by Dante Gabriel RossettiQuo Vadis by Henryk SienkiewiczThe Student’s Chaucer by Walter William SkeatCollected Works of Edmund SpenserTreasure Island by Robert Lewis StevensonCollected Works of August StrindbergThe Study of Dante by JA SymonsRichard Wagner’s letters to August RoeckelCollected Works of William Wordsworth In 1895 Oscar Wilde was sentenced to two years of hard labour for gross indecency and was shuttled between Newgate, Pentonville and Wandsworth prisons before finally reaching Reading. Initially, his access to books was extremely limited but eventually he was allowed to build up a small library, examples of which were put on display at HM Prison Reading in 2016 and are listed above. During prisoners’ first three months behind bars they were only allowed to read a prayer book, a hymn book and the Bible, but after special pleading by Liberal MP Richard Haldane, the authorities relented (Wilde gave the governor at Reading a special signed copy of The Importance Of Being Earnest as a thank you present for allowing more books in). Wilde was not only allowed to keep books in his cell, he was also permitted to leave his light on as late as he wanted to read them. The playwright thanked the governor of Reading Gaol with a signed copy of his most famous play (Getty) The first titles he asked for in June 1895 were The Confessions of St Augustine, various volumes of works by Baudelaire and Cardinal Newman, and one of the key books in his life, The Renaissance by Walter Pater. This was a leading text in the aesthetic movement and instilled in Wilde the drive to turn his life into a work of art. “The Library here contains no example of Thackeray’s or Dickens’s novels,” he wrote in one of his requests for new books. “I feel sure that a complete set of their works would be as great a boon to many amongst the other prisoners as it certainly would be to myself.” Wilde was declared bankrupt and his personal library at home was split up and auctioned. Only around 50 are available in public collections and around 3,000 have never been tracked down. A reconstructed version is available on the Library Thing site (www.librarything.com) and explored in huge detail in Thomas Wright’s book Built of Books: How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde, which also reveals Wilde’s tendency to tear off and eat the top corner of each page as he read it. ‘A Book of Book Lists’ by Alex Johnson, £7.99, British Library Publishing Find a list of the books US forces found on Osama bin Laden’s shelf here https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/oscar-wilde-prison-library-a-book-of-book-lists-reading-gaol-a8265866.html

Now here we go! James Comey to reveal new information on Trump and respond to 'lies' about FBI in nationwide book tour https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/james-comey-book-tour-trump-fbi-former-director-lies-russia-mueller-investigation-a8259916.html

Sob. Heartbreaking photo shows the last male Northern White Rhino being comforted before he died https://www.indy100.com/article/photo-last-male-white-northern-white-rhino-comforted-ranger-sudan-kenya-8266526?utm_source=indy&utm_medium=top5&utm_campaign=i100

Just like hemorrhoids!

Personally I like cold short cocks. The more opportunity to warm them up (orally of cuss) and then enjoy growth!

When Bobby Decided to Run https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/17/bobby-kennedy-election-1968-217648

PPS In seriousness, we just don't know how to do it yet. Root causes of aging, telomeres etc, are not remotely understood. But I think serious progress is just about near. Like the physics breakthroughs of the 1910s-1950s. We shall see.

'...We had to survive in the desert for seventeen days on nothing but food and water.' W.C. Fields Sorry to be inattentive here.

...But the Florida sojourns provided Stevens with more than occasions for feckless behavior. The natural elements and the weather set him to wide-awake dreaming on his biggest theme: the capacity of fiction to encompass, and to master, experiences of reality. The enchantment of the voluptuous setting peaks in the fifty-six lines of “The Idea of Order at Key West,” which begins, “She sang beyond the genius of the sea.” The speaker and a shadowy companion observe a girl or a woman singing by an ocean that is “Like a body wholly body, fluttering / Its empty sleeves.” The singer’s song, “uttered word by word,” overlays and opposes “the dark voice of the sea,” in a duet that becomes a contest crowned with triumph: At last, the poet names his companion, Ramon Fernandez, by addressing him. (Though Stevens denied it, he surely had in mind a French critic of that name, the son of a Mexican diplomat, whose rationalist bias made him a perfect foil for the poem’s endorsement of intuition.) He says: And, finally: Those “sounds”—sea depths answered by human ones—resonate like organ chords in a cathedral of the imagination.

...Williams’s vernacular free verse and Stevens’s sumptuous blank verse long remained magnetic poles of American poetic form. They more or less merged in the work of Marianne Moore, whom both men esteemed.

A vital subtext that shows forth in these remarks by Bloom is how extraordinarily receptive, and sensitive, and responsive, he always has been to the felt emotions and thoughts of his students, in the very small (never more than 15) seminar classes of undergraduates he teaches. He always responds to one's individual thought(s) in a very personal, individual way. He knows what you are thinking, and responds -- intellectually, and commensurately spiritually -- with what you got right, what you may have wrong, and how to advance your own, uniquely identified, relation to literature. I think maybe the most humane person I have ever known. /End of homily