Tim McNamara wrote:
> In article <[email protected]>,
> bill <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Tim McNamara wrote:
>>> In article <[email protected]>,
>>> "george conklin" <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>>>> Small farms would condemn about 75% of the current world's
>>>>>> population to death. That is not a solution except for death.
>>>>> I don't know if the 75% is correct but the basic idea is sound.
>>> No, it's not. Where do you think 75% (actually more) of the
>>> world's population gets its food now? From small farms. Large
>>> scale agribusiness farming is the purview of economically developed
>>> countries which feeds a fraction of the world's population
>>> regularly, and which does provide emergency capacity when food
>>> production fails in ecologically difficult areas due to drought,
>>> flooding, fires, etc. In the latter case, large scale farming does
>>> save lives. However, 75% of the world's population is not all
>>> going to suffer such catastrophes at once.
>> 75% of the world's population is surplus anyway. I just read where
>> the United States is going to top 300 million around October 15.
>> Compared to the country (this one) I grew up in that is about 150
>> million too many. We are paving over everything, quite literally. I
>> went to visit the houses I grew up in, back in Illinois and all the
>> corn fields I grew up playing in are now built over with housing or
>> "Condo-fields". If we keep replacing corn with people we are going to
>> be in deeper **** than we are now. Rolling the global population to
>> about 1 billion (max) and keeping it there with some no growth
>> thinking is about the only way the human race will be here in another
>> 200 years. I think we are setting ourselves up far a mass plague or
>> starvation that is going to thin out the population. We just plain
>> doesn't need so many people.
>
> I suspect that there are points of agreement that we could find, but
> there are also points of disagreement. For example, your claim that 75%
> of the population is "surplus." Of course, that gives you a 4:1 chance
> of being one of the surplus ones. ;-) I agree that there is
> overpopulation not only in America but around the world as well. I
> cannot bring myself to call anyone "surplus," however. They have every
> bit as much right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as I
> have.
My actual solution was to ship food to them that had fertility
impairment hormones in it or mandate a vasectomy or tube tie in order to
qualify if people already had 2 or more children. Nobody gets hurt, but
nobody gets to have 10 kids they can't feed, either.
>
> In terms of whether we need so many people, the answer is "yes." A free
> market capitalist system is dependent upon a continually enlarging
> market (e.g. more customers) for long term sustainability. Of course,
> ecologically the population is not infinitely expandable, which is
> something I think you are getting at in your post.
That is actually stupid politico thinking since all that growth is not
only making city life a clogged mess but also paving over everything a
building can't be put up on. I lived far enough out in the Chicago
suburbs in the early 50's that I thought it would remain corn fields
forever. I went back in 1993 and found the farm was now a condo farm.
That's progress??? Chicago is unique in that they have the Metra rail
which has double decker commuter trains going up to 100 miles in a big
wagon wheel pattern around the city. There is also weekly if not daily
news of yet another car trying to run the rail gate and getting everyone
inside killed.
>
>>> Sedentary lifestyles are unhealthy. That's not exactly news. It
>>> is the same phenomenon as seen in the U.S. of course, which has
>>> developed over 75-100 years. The effects are dramatically
>>> noticeable among relatively isolated groups that get rapidly
>>> introduced to technology and "modern" foods.
>> This reminds me of an anecdote that I read once somewhere. You see
>> really, really fat people, and you see really, really old people but
>> you never see really fat and old people. I saw Rose Kennedy on
>> television last night at 104 and she was skinny. You just don't make
>> it much past 70-75 by being a sedentary porker.
>
> I work with the elderly. I go to two nursing homes a day, five days a
> week, and have done so for 16 years. The current elderly are pretty
> much pioneers- no generation has lived as long on average as they are
> living. Few of the centenarians I have met are particularly happy about
> it. They have often outlived their siblings, friends and most of their
> children. Their physical abilities are often limited, and of course
> nursing home life presents a number of problems (as well as a number of
> opportunities).
Somewhere I will never be found. I would walk in front of a train before
that happened.
I do see some elderly folks (>90 and even 100 years
> old) who are overweight, but on average I would say that the very old
> have tended to not be overweight.
That is probably recent overweight as that condition does not lead to
100 years. Maybe they are ready to leave this world.
In terms of aging, into and past the
> 8th decade there is a tendency to lose significant muscle mass and
> subcutaneous fat, which is part of why the very old tend to be skinny.
To their generation, exercise just wasn't in the picture unless it was
needed to actually do something. Lift weights? Up and down? Why? My
older sister is 71 and practically refuses to watch television because
she was a nurse for over 45 years and only quit at 67 after hurting her
back trying to roll over a 300 pound patient. She was doing in home care
rather than the rat race of hospitals and after that she figured that if
they want to be that fat, they can damn well roll themselves over. Most
of her patients were younger than her, which got her to thinking, what
next? Now she is hiking the Grand Canyon and southern Utah and says the
exercise has made her feel better than ever. Getting older, but nowhere
close to just hanging it up.
> If you look at their family photos, they tended to be of average build
> in middle age.
Jack Lalanne is still going strong 'literally' at 94 and still works out
at least two hours a morning, so it can be done. Wheelchairs just don't
get it.
>
> On the other hand, I haven't seen all that many ultra skinny people live
> long lives. Being underweight doesn't seem to be of benefit either.
My sister told me the healthiest people in her age group were not fat
but neither were they fanatically skinny, just normal.
>
> Overweight is like any other risk factor. Some people win the lottery
> and don't have problems, others get the whammy. I know people who have
> smoked for 80 years and are hale and hearty.
Very few of them I bet.
I know people who have
> smoked for 10 years and have had lung cancer.
I lost 2 friends who were die hard smokers in the last 2 years, both in
their early 50's. My dad made it to 83 smoking Camel non filters.
Flip a coin.
We can give odds for
> populations but not for individuals. At least, not yet. As the
> relationships between the environment and one's genetics becomes better
> known, we may eventually be able to identify individual risks.
>
>>>>> The point is that biologically humans are quite able to eat and
>>>>> flourish when their diet is linked in a postive way with life
>>>>> style.
>> Only until we fish the oceans out of healthy fish and pave over just
>> a bit too much farmland.
>
> The former is fairly close to having happened already. Fish stocks have
> declined dramatically, and commonly eaten fish now were considered "weed
> fish" just 10 to 20 years ago.
>
> My grandfather was a farmer. The family farm in Michigan has been in
> the family since 1878. My grandfather used to get really irked by good
> farmland being turned into suburbs. I've inherited some of that
> attitude. I grew up in a suburb of Chicago, where suburban sprawl is
> quite remarkable. Where New York City went vertical, Chicago went
> horizontal. I live in St. Paul MN now, where suburban sprawl continues
> apace. An oversight body, the Metropolitan Council, was created to try
> to manage this problem but is of course a little more than a political
> football.
At least you know what I mean about sprawl paving over my childhood haunts.
>
>>>>> If one wants to be sedentary then perhaps the solution is massive
>>>>> caloric deprivation.
>>> I'd say that's the wrong phrasing. It's simply that intake needs
>>> to be balance with expenditure. If I sit at a desk all day long in
>>> air conditioned comfort, I only need 1800 k-calories per day to
>>> keep my body weight constant. If I eat lunch at Burger King, I
>>> would be close to meeting that caloric need in a single meal. When
>>> I ride my bike 375 miles/600 km in a weekend, I need a few more
>>> k-calories (13,000 or so just for riding, plus basal metabolism
>>> k-calories).
>> That is an extreme example. Maybe 1/100,000 people put out that much
>> energy for the weekend. If you sit at a desk all day you should only
>> need about 1,500 calories a day unless you are over 6 feet tall and
>> have more mass to support. Maybe 1,200 for the average woman. I have
>> to envy you that you can take the entire weekend for riding and not
>> have to worry about wife/kids/house/car or whatever. I am married
>> with all of the above and it is only rarely that I can sneak out for
>> a 12-14 hour marathon ride/hike on a weekend. There is always
>> something to be done at home, since it is my home and not just a
>> rented bachelor pad.
>
> Oh, yes, my example was quite extreme. I only do it once a year as part
> of the local brevet series (200, 300, 400 and 600 km rides, see
> www.rusa.org). I was hoping to illustrate by exaggeration. I am 6'4"
> tall, also, so I tend to think in slightly larger numbers regarding
> food.
Ummm,
Yeah, I need to take that into consideration. I have a friend who is
6'8" tall and typically burns 4,000 to 5,000 calories a day without
gaining weight. He also does not have a strictly desk job. I worked with
him on a contract basis for about 3 months in a factory and even as an
electrician he does a lot of mechanical work and chasing emergencies
around the plant. Cubicles kill, real jobs don't.
However, during times when I am not getting much exercise- and my
> work, while not done at a desk, is still within what I would call
> "sedentary"- I have to be very careful about what I eat to prevent
> weight gain. Calorie dense foods must be avoided.
>
>>>>> Anyway, poor life style choices far outweigh mass farming as a
>>>>> cause of human misery.
>>> That's true to an extent, but there are both individual choices and
>>> social factors to be considered. Social engineering in the U.S.
>>> has predisposed us to eat high calorie, high fat, low fiber diets
>>> with predictable health consequences.
>> I would add here that poor lifestyle also includes having 4 or more
>> kids and then wondering what happened to your life because you always
>> have to be doing something to support the kids. The diets are still
>> of our own choosing, like whether mom wants to cook or just gives the
>> kids money to go to McJunk. Sit down restaurants have the same
>> problem since they are cooking to be listed on the 5 star gourmet
>> listings if they can and healthy food rarely makes the gourmet list.
>
> And restaurants tend to serve a *lot* of food on the plate- about 50%
> more than is reasonable.
Yeah,
You notice how "Super size me" has disappeared from the McDonalds'
commercials?
>
>>>> Except that the poor lifestyle we are supposed to live today is
>>>> correlated with much longer life expectancy. When the study which
>>>> showed that you had to be about 50 lbs overweight before life was
>>>> shorter was published, the establishemnt went nuts.
>>> 50 pounds overweight is not unusual in America. I've been there
>>> myself, now I'm only 5 pounds overweight after resuming bicycling
>>> and changing my diet pretty dramatically. The study you cite was
>>> not definitive.
>> 50 pounds overweight is pretty definitive to me since that is where I
>> am right now due to too many things other than biking I had to take
>> care of this year. Also a friend who ambushed me over the weekends
>> and his idea of lunch was a Chinese all you can eat buffet. Chinese
>> is good, sort of and I ate about 2 plates of Broccoli and a plate
>> full or steamed fish and shrimp but still managed to gain weight with
>> that as the only meal of the day. I think the Wok oil on the stir fry
>> Broccoli got me.
>
> The amount of oil used to stir fry one dish is dramatic- not
> infrequently nearly a cup of oil. When I stir fry at home it's a
> tablespoon of oil in the wok!
I am too lazy to stir, so I steam things, a lot. The fat just melts down
into the water.
>
> <snip>
>
>>> vegetable products, have hit the news in the past 10 years. There
>>> are also issues of longer term food safety- contamination with
>>> pesticides and synthetic chemicals, prion diseases, and possibly
>>> safety issues with genetically modified organisms (the latter not
>>> having yet been demonstrated "in the wild" as it were. With any
>>> luck it never will be).
>> Genetically modified foods are and have been a fact of life for
>> hundreds of years through selective breeding and grafting of orchard
>> trees. Don't fool yourself that just because a scientist did it in a
>> lab it is any different, cause it ain't what grows in the wild.
>
> There is a difference between selective breeding and hybridization, and
> sticking fish genes in a tomato.
Still, people should not worry about growing strange body parts or
anything. Why should it be immoral or "Against God's wishs" if an
improvement is found in a DNA lab?
>
>>> Heart disease and diabetes are more prevalent than at any time in
>>> human history. That is in part due to food not being safe,
>>> although this is not food safety as it is normally thought of. In
>>> this case it is the overavailability of poor food choices.
>> Heart disease is due to people becoming more and more spoiled through
>> technology, plain and simple, with McJunk food coming in a close
>> second.
>
> Well, there is some evidence that strenuous exercise can overcome the
> effects of diet. The Inuit example cited earlier in the thread being
> one such situation. When Will Steger and crew went to the North Pole a
> decade or so back, they were studied medically. Their diet was hugely
> laden in saturated fats- the equivalent of eating a stick of butter per
> person a day, IIRC. But their blood lipids profiles didn't change due
> to the exercise and extremity of the environment. In the temperate
> zones living the sedentary lifestyle that most Americans live, that type
> if diet is going to be disastrous for most people.
Our way of "Nicing them into extinction" so they won't complain about
our drilling for oil up there?
Bill Baka