Vegetables aren't food. Vegetables are what food eats.
Made In America
From Scottish Parts
Destroy All Humans
7:26 am, 4/5/06
Ah, higher education: A noted professor outlines his plan for better living through extermination. Though some of his students say they "worship" him, another student dissents:
...though I agree that conservation biology is of utmost importance to the world, I do not think that preaching that 90 percent of the human population should die of Ebola is the most effective means of encouraging conservation awareness.He received a standing ovation, apparently. Pianka, who says that "disease will control the scourge of humanity" and that "we're looking forward to a huge collapse", is pictured here.
If Pianka's so enthusiastic about extinguishing the "scourge of humanity", he could always start with himself.
Remember, parents, this is why you cut those big tuition checks!
Update: Pianka is a socialist whackjob, as you might expect.
One of Pianka's earliest points was a condemnation of anthropocentrism, or the idea that humankind occupies a privileged position in the Universe. He told a story about how a neighbor asked him what good the lizards are that he studies. He answered, "What good are you?"It's amazing that the academic establishment can be to the left of Al Gore. As Chris D notes at the link, the man is basically one of the terrorists from Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six.
Pianka hammered his point home by exclaiming, "We're no better than bacteria!"
After noting that the audience did not represent the general population, a questioner asked, "What kind of reception have you received as you have presented these ideas to other audiences that are not representative of us?"
Pianka replied, "I speak to the converted!"
Pianka responded to more questions by condemning politicians in general and Al Gore by name, because they do not address the population...
He spoke glowingly of the police state in China that enforces their one-child policy. He said, "Smarter people have fewer kids." He said those who don't have a conscience about the Earth will inherit the Earth, "...because those who care make fewer babies and those that didn't care made more babies." He said we will evolve as uncaring people, and "I think IQs are falling for the same reason, too."
With this, the questioning was over. Immediately almost every scientist, professor and college student present stood to their feet and vigorously applauded the man who had enthusiastically endorsed the elimination of 90 percent of the human population. Some even cheered. Dozens then mobbed the professor at the lectern to extend greetings and ask questions. It was necessary to wait a while before I could get close enough to take some photographs (Fig. 1).
Of course, if Pianka were actually smart, he'd have multiple children to spread his alleged intelligence and sense of social responsibility to the future, not to mention fund social security. Despite the myth of overpopulation being thoroughly debunked over the decades, he and his academic cohort continue to demand funding for the actual unintelligent and lazy to spawn numerous unparented children in subsidized housing.
That said, someone who would use a phrase like "because those who care make fewer babies" can't have fallen from the top branch of the genius tree. His Wikipedia entry suggests an embittered old man, crippled by a childhood bazooka accident, and now includes his creepy response to the controversy, wherein he suggests that it is, in fact, not uncaring people, but rather microbes who will inherit the Earth:
Humans have overpopulated the Earth and in the process have created an ideal nutritional substrate on which bacteria and viruses (microbes) will grow and prosper. We are behaving like bacteria growing on an agar plate, flourishing until natural limits are reached or until another microbe colonizes and takes over, using them as their resource. In addition to our extremely high population density, we are social and mobile, exactly the conditions that favor growth and spread of pathogenic (disease-causing) microbes. I believe it is only a matter of time until microbes once again assert control over our population, since we are unwilling to control it ourselves. This idea has been espoused by ecologists for at least four decades and is nothing new. People just don't want to hear it... I do not bear any ill will toward humanity. However, I am convinced that the world WOULD clearly be much better off without so many of us... We need to make a transition to a sustainable world. If we don't, nature is going to do it for us in ways of her own choosing. By definition, these ways will not be ours and they won't be much fun. Think about that.Being an antisocial peasant, stacking mud in your hemp teepee, doesn't sound like much fun either. Pianka's public backpedalling about how he "doesn't bear humanity ill will" doesn't mesh with his private view that humanity is, in fact, morally equivalent to the microbes themselves, and that we are a "scourge".
One of the key reasons that socialist talking points should be met with extreme suspicion is that most of them, no matter how well-intentioned the hippy college student promoting them may be, were written by people like Pianka, who harbor an open loathing for civilization and the human species, who would love little more than to see us all burn so they can feel that they were right to hate.
Chris D at 05:34 PM, 4/6/06
I want to point out that the account of his speech I linked to, from Forrest Mims who was present at the speech, from what I read hasn't really been substantiated by others who atteneded it, based on what I read (though, more importantly, apparently nobody who attended has come out denying it either).
My own question is, what if his dire predictions never come to pass? Certainly there's plenty of examples where large portions of the scientific and academic communities have been dead wrong. Old science texts are loaded with body, facial, and cranial measurements comparing different races and what it says about them, and I believe this was going on well after the scientific method had been established as the basis for research. Which goes to show that, smart as they are, these people are pretty susceptible to trends in the political environment they live in. And considering it tends to be white, Western scientists, and those within the sphere of influence of white, Western philosophies, who put out these environmentalist, scaremongering theories, at least as far as I know, rather than, say, Asian scientists, I would say plays into the notion that this is a political trend more than hard science. Of course, here I'm just speculating and have no authority on the subject. But anyway, if we were to carry out his idea, and his theories were just as wrong as, say, scientific theories that light particles flowed through the ether, or previous predictions laid out about overpopulation crises and global cooling crises, then a mass extermination of 90% of the world's population would have taken place for no damn reason, and those who inherited the Earth (and I assume that they're plotting things out so that it's their ideological ilk who survives, or else the world's just gonna end up back where it is, and otherwise I'd imagine the standing ovation would be confined to 10% of the audience) would be the very perpetrators of the world's worst mass slaughter, all living happily with a moral justification for their beliefs. And the future evolution of our species would evolve forth strictly from within that twisted moral philosophy.
It amazes me the way the academics of today can condemn the academics of centuries past for their own often cruel dogmatisms (for example, many scientists used the old studies I mentioned above to justify things like slavery, imperialism, forced assimilation of primitive cultures, and genocide, and probably saw all of those actions, in the context of the political atmosphere at the time, as being just as important as the current generation sees this overpopulation problem as being), and yet not apparently be able to conceive of a future where academics are condemning them for their misguided mass slaughter.
I want to point out that the account of his speech I linked to, from Forrest Mims who was present at the speech, from what I read hasn't really been substantiated by others who atteneded it, based on what I read (though, more importantly, apparently nobody who attended has come out denying it either).
My own question is, what if his dire predictions never come to pass? Certainly there's plenty of examples where large portions of the scientific and academic communities have been dead wrong. Old science texts are loaded with body, facial, and cranial measurements comparing different races and what it says about them, and I believe this was going on well after the scientific method had been established as the basis for research. Which goes to show that, smart as they are, these people are pretty susceptible to trends in the political environment they live in. And considering it tends to be white, Western scientists, and those within the sphere of influence of white, Western philosophies, who put out these environmentalist, scaremongering theories, at least as far as I know, rather than, say, Asian scientists, I would say plays into the notion that this is a political trend more than hard science. Of course, here I'm just speculating and have no authority on the subject. But anyway, if we were to carry out his idea, and his theories were just as wrong as, say, scientific theories that light particles flowed through the ether, or previous predictions laid out about overpopulation crises and global cooling crises, then a mass extermination of 90% of the world's population would have taken place for no damn reason, and those who inherited the Earth (and I assume that they're plotting things out so that it's their ideological ilk who survives, or else the world's just gonna end up back where it is, and otherwise I'd imagine the standing ovation would be confined to 10% of the audience) would be the very perpetrators of the world's worst mass slaughter, all living happily with a moral justification for their beliefs. And the future evolution of our species would evolve forth strictly from within that twisted moral philosophy.
It amazes me the way the academics of today can condemn the academics of centuries past for their own often cruel dogmatisms (for example, many scientists used the old studies I mentioned above to justify things like slavery, imperialism, forced assimilation of primitive cultures, and genocide, and probably saw all of those actions, in the context of the political atmosphere at the time, as being just as important as the current generation sees this overpopulation problem as being), and yet not apparently be able to conceive of a future where academics are condemning them for their misguided mass slaughter.
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