Skip to main content

Too Many People

For once, I'd love to see an unscripted Presidential debate -- where the topics and questions are not vetted beforehand -- with a substantial focus on the fundamental problem of human existence in the 21st Century: too many damn people on Earth.  One of the nice things about the Affordable Care Act is that it established free birth control to those who previously had the barrier of cost; multiple studies have shown the positive effect of free birth control, from a dramatic reduction of teen pregnancy to a decrease in the number of abortions.  Sure, condom use would offer some of those benefits, but placing power in the hands of women is a good thing.

7BillionAndCounting.org is also advocating condom usage to combat overpopulation.  Some of their numbers on population are stunning -- the global population has doubled since the year of my birth (3.5B in 1970 to over 7B today) and 85M people are added to the planet per year, with the global projections at 9B by 2050 -- but they're not beyond our span of control as a global body.  And if we can get a handle on our exploding population, we can address the other things impacted by such an explosion, such as the loss of biodiversity and the depletion of natural resources.

Do I think it will happen?  Honestly, the pessimist in me doesn't see how it will be possible, especially with the billions in India and China that will strive for the improved quality of life projected to them through the refraction of American popular culture.  But it would be fantastic to be proven wrong on this one.  I don't think it will impact me as much as it will the generations after me, those peoples who will have to carve out a new form of existence.  Good luck to you all.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NBC -- Never Believe Contracts

Whatever side you're falling on in the recent NBC late-night "deck chairs on the Titanic " shuffle, you have to admit it's been good comedy for all parties involved. While Letterman and Craig Ferguson have been sharp (especially Letterman, who has been gleeful in his "I told you so" vitriol), the best bits have come from Leno and O'Brien. Evidence: It's hard to follow all the angles here, but two things are clear: NBC violated Leno's contract (guaranteeing the 10pm slot), and NBC didn't violate O'Brien's contract (which made no time slot guarantees). So it's not hard to see who the loser here will be. O'Brien won't get the show he wants, Leno will step into a hollow echo of his past success, and tens of millions of dollars will be up in the air. Only Jimmy Fallon will continue to gestate his talent relatively unmolested, and his security is merely a function of the low expectations of his time slot. Meanwhile, CBS (a
Post a Comment
Read more

"The Silver Gun" by Robert Palmer (1983)

I mean...Urdu? Seriously, Urdu . On an already eclectic and worldly album -- Pride , from 1983 -- "The Silver Gun" closes a chapter in Robert Palmer's career by singing a song about a horse in a language spoken daily by over 100 million people. The liquid bass line and propulsive electronics set out a bedrock for Palmer to ping phrasings rather out of place in Western music, askew astride even the peripatetic minimalism of the rest of the record. Somehow, in the middle of Michigan's Appalachia, I had this on vinyl a few years before the CD era officially commenced. It was an album of effort -- even the cover, a pointillism-and-bronze work, had Palmer's head barely above the water -- but the stitches didn't show to my pre-adolescent eyes and ears. In a career marked by zigs and zags, Pride and "The Silver Gun" were most certainly Other, and for a kid that felt like he didn't belong much of anywhere, it was nice to have those discrete feeling
Post a Comment
Read more

"I'll Drive You Home"

Upon reflection, I’ve had a fortunate life in the area of work. As a freshly minted teenager, I would visit Evergreen Park Grocery and dream of someday working there like my father did, and at the age of 14, I got $2/hour to live out that dream, such as it was. From there, I yearned to try other occupations, from record stores to teaching, and I’d be chuffed to tell Young Erick that both of those things happened in due course. ( Oh, and Young Erick, one of them got you to meet David Bowie, and one of them got you to own houses and cars, so I’ll let you ponder on which one was better. ) I even got to DJ a bit here and there, and while it never hit the heights of a professional radio gig, it was certainly better than the summer I played preset cassettes on my boom box for a nerd camp dance while my unrequited crush stayed in her room. What I never crossed off my professional life list was acting, either regular or voice, but while I still yearn for that big breakthrough -- seriously, ask
Post a Comment
Read more