AAAAAAHHH brain exploded
Apr. 3rd, 2006 08:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lapsedmodernist1. I am so confused by this
There is always something special about science meetings. The 109th meeting of the Texas Academy of Science at Lamar University in Beaumont on 3-5 March 2006 was especially exciting for me, because a student and his professor presented the results of a DNA study I suggested to them last year. How fulfilling to see the baldcypress ( Taxodium distichum ) leaves we collected last summer and my tree ring photographs transformed into a first class scientific presentation that's nearly ready to submit to a scientific journal (Brian Iken and Dr. Deanna McCullough, "Bald Cypress of the Texas Hill Country: Taxonomically Unique?" 109th Meeting of the Texas Academy of Science Program and Abstracts [ PDF ], Poster P59, p. 84, 2006).
But there was a gravely disturbing side to that otherwise scientifically significant meeting, for I watched in amazement as a few hundred members of the Texas Academy of Science rose to their feet and gave a standing ovation to a speech that enthusiastically advocated the elimination of 90 percent of Earth's population by airborne Ebola. The speech was given by Dr. Eric R. Pianka (Fig. 1), the University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert who the Academy named the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist.
Something curious occurred a minute before Pianka began speaking. An official of the Academy approached a video camera operator at the front of the auditorium and engaged him in animated conversation. The camera operator did not look pleased as he pointed the lens of the big camera to the ceiling and slowly walked away.
This curious incident came to mind a few minutes later when Professor Pianka began his speech by explaining that the general public is not yet ready to hear what he was about to tell us. Because of many years of experience as a writer and editor, Pianka's strange introduction and the TV camera incident raised a red flag in my mind. Suddenly I forgot that I was a member of the Texas Academy of Science and chairman of its Environmental Science Section. Instead, I grabbed a notepad so I could take on the role of science reporter.
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?”
Pianka hammered his point home by exclaiming, “We're no better than bacteria!”
Pianka then began laying out his concerns about how human overpopulation is ruining the Earth. He presented a doomsday scenario in which he claimed that the sharp increase in human population since the beginning of the industrial age is devastating the planet. He warned that quick steps must be taken to restore the planet before it's too late.
Saving the Earth with Ebola
Professor Pianka said the Earth as we know it will not survive without drastic measures. Then, and without presenting any data to justify this number, he asserted that the only feasible solution to saving the Earth is to reduce the population to 10 percent of the present number.
He then showed solutions for reducing the world's population in the form of a slide depicting the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. War and famine would not do, he explained. Instead, disease offered the most efficient and fastest way to kill the billions that must soon die if the population crisis is to be solved.
Pianka then displayed a slide showing rows of human skulls, one of which had red lights flashing from its eye sockets.
AIDS is not an efficient killer, he explained, because it is too slow. His favorite candidate for eliminating 90 percent of the world's population is airborne Ebola ( Ebola Reston ), because it is both highly lethal and it kills in days, instead of years. However, Professor Pianka did not mention that Ebola victims die a slow and torturous death as the virus initiates a cascade of biological calamities inside the victim that eventually liquefy the internal organs.
After praising the Ebola virus for its efficiency at killing, Pianka paused, leaned over the lectern, looked at us and carefully said, “We've got airborne 90 percent mortality in humans. Killing humans. Think about that.”
With his slide of human skulls towering on the screen behind him, Professor Pianka was deadly serious. The audience that had been applauding some of his statements now sat silent.
WTF is this for real? What's the deal with this Citizen Scientist website, do we know?
[Note: if you want to comment about how he is right or how we humans should be wiped off mother earth or anything in that vein, don't bother, NOT INTERESTED]
2. Also U.S. to create a bird flu virus mutation because the Administration has apparently seen V for Vendetta.
[Note: yes, I know that CDC does things like this regularly, but under this administration my first thought is that it is cribbing from pop culture again]
3. And in more V for Verite news
Archive pictures of German prisoners held by the British following the second world war. Photographs: Martin Argles
Photographs of victims of a secret torture programme operated by British authorities during the early days of the cold war are published for the first time today after being concealed for almost 60 years.
Declassified Whitehall papers show that members of the Labour government of the day went to great lengths to hide the ill-treatment, in part, as one minister wrote, to conceal "the fact that we are alleged to have treated internees in a manner reminiscent of the German concentration camps".
4. Does anyone know where I can find a working trailer for Flight 93? The one up on the apple trailers page doesn't seem to work. *frown*
There is always something special about science meetings. The 109th meeting of the Texas Academy of Science at Lamar University in Beaumont on 3-5 March 2006 was especially exciting for me, because a student and his professor presented the results of a DNA study I suggested to them last year. How fulfilling to see the baldcypress ( Taxodium distichum ) leaves we collected last summer and my tree ring photographs transformed into a first class scientific presentation that's nearly ready to submit to a scientific journal (Brian Iken and Dr. Deanna McCullough, "Bald Cypress of the Texas Hill Country: Taxonomically Unique?" 109th Meeting of the Texas Academy of Science Program and Abstracts [ PDF ], Poster P59, p. 84, 2006).
But there was a gravely disturbing side to that otherwise scientifically significant meeting, for I watched in amazement as a few hundred members of the Texas Academy of Science rose to their feet and gave a standing ovation to a speech that enthusiastically advocated the elimination of 90 percent of Earth's population by airborne Ebola. The speech was given by Dr. Eric R. Pianka (Fig. 1), the University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert who the Academy named the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist.
Something curious occurred a minute before Pianka began speaking. An official of the Academy approached a video camera operator at the front of the auditorium and engaged him in animated conversation. The camera operator did not look pleased as he pointed the lens of the big camera to the ceiling and slowly walked away.
This curious incident came to mind a few minutes later when Professor Pianka began his speech by explaining that the general public is not yet ready to hear what he was about to tell us. Because of many years of experience as a writer and editor, Pianka's strange introduction and the TV camera incident raised a red flag in my mind. Suddenly I forgot that I was a member of the Texas Academy of Science and chairman of its Environmental Science Section. Instead, I grabbed a notepad so I could take on the role of science reporter.
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?”
Pianka hammered his point home by exclaiming, “We're no better than bacteria!”
Pianka then began laying out his concerns about how human overpopulation is ruining the Earth. He presented a doomsday scenario in which he claimed that the sharp increase in human population since the beginning of the industrial age is devastating the planet. He warned that quick steps must be taken to restore the planet before it's too late.
Saving the Earth with Ebola
Professor Pianka said the Earth as we know it will not survive without drastic measures. Then, and without presenting any data to justify this number, he asserted that the only feasible solution to saving the Earth is to reduce the population to 10 percent of the present number.
He then showed solutions for reducing the world's population in the form of a slide depicting the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. War and famine would not do, he explained. Instead, disease offered the most efficient and fastest way to kill the billions that must soon die if the population crisis is to be solved.
Pianka then displayed a slide showing rows of human skulls, one of which had red lights flashing from its eye sockets.
AIDS is not an efficient killer, he explained, because it is too slow. His favorite candidate for eliminating 90 percent of the world's population is airborne Ebola ( Ebola Reston ), because it is both highly lethal and it kills in days, instead of years. However, Professor Pianka did not mention that Ebola victims die a slow and torturous death as the virus initiates a cascade of biological calamities inside the victim that eventually liquefy the internal organs.
After praising the Ebola virus for its efficiency at killing, Pianka paused, leaned over the lectern, looked at us and carefully said, “We've got airborne 90 percent mortality in humans. Killing humans. Think about that.”
With his slide of human skulls towering on the screen behind him, Professor Pianka was deadly serious. The audience that had been applauding some of his statements now sat silent.
WTF is this for real? What's the deal with this Citizen Scientist website, do we know?
[Note: if you want to comment about how he is right or how we humans should be wiped off mother earth or anything in that vein, don't bother, NOT INTERESTED]
2. Also U.S. to create a bird flu virus mutation because the Administration has apparently seen V for Vendetta.
[Note: yes, I know that CDC does things like this regularly, but under this administration my first thought is that it is cribbing from pop culture again]
3. And in more V for Verite news
Archive pictures of German prisoners held by the British following the second world war. Photographs: Martin Argles
Photographs of victims of a secret torture programme operated by British authorities during the early days of the cold war are published for the first time today after being concealed for almost 60 years.
Declassified Whitehall papers show that members of the Labour government of the day went to great lengths to hide the ill-treatment, in part, as one minister wrote, to conceal "the fact that we are alleged to have treated internees in a manner reminiscent of the German concentration camps".
4. Does anyone know where I can find a working trailer for Flight 93? The one up on the apple trailers page doesn't seem to work. *frown*
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-04-04 12:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-04 12:57 am (UTC)Try...
Date: 2006-04-04 01:52 am (UTC)Or search youtube for "united 93" if they take this one down in the next few minutes
no subject
Date: 2006-04-04 12:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-04 01:00 am (UTC)I took Evolutionary Ecology from Dr. Pianka a few years ago. He'd frequently get sidetracked onto:
1. Cool Australian lizards.
2. His buffalo.
3. How much he disliked his neighbors who kept killing rattlesnakes.
4. How some horrible disease is going to wipe out huge chunks of the population any year now, and how pleased he will be when that happens.
So, yep, sounds like Dr. Pianka to me. The quotes in the article all sound pretty familiar.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-04 01:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-04 12:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-04 12:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-04 01:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-04 12:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-04 01:03 am (UTC)Wikipedia sez Mims is a creationist. So that could be.
oops
Date: 2006-04-04 01:00 am (UTC)Re: oops
Date: 2006-04-04 01:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-04 02:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-04 02:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-04 02:31 am (UTC)Wow. I'm generally pro-virology, but even I think this sounds like a bad idea.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-04 03:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-04 03:25 am (UTC)I can certainly understand the arguments in favor of it. If we were able to understand what a pandemic cross between avian flu (H5N1) and the current ordinary flu (H3N2) would look like, we might be able to prepare for it. And you could argue that, since the ordinary flu is so common, it's only a matter of time before any of these hybrid strains will be produced naturally anyway. But still... Intentionally trying to create pandemic-level diseases is not the usual policy, at least, not the usual unclassified policy.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-04 02:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-04 03:18 am (UTC)If Dr. Pianka has such a great concern with human overpopulation he should start with himself.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-04 06:21 pm (UTC)http://community.livejournal.com/cyberpunk/688058.html?nc=93
no subject
Date: 2006-04-04 08:33 pm (UTC)http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/4/4/73558/61378
Flight 93
Date: 2006-04-05 09:58 pm (UTC)