Let's Kill Off the Human Race

[Speck Tater]

Come on. It'll be fun...

Those of you familiar with Scientific American Magazine will need no introduction to Forrest M. Mims III. A respected scientist, writer, and editor of The Citizen Scientist, you can be sure he is no kook or crackpot. That's why I sat up and took notice when I read 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, 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, the University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert who the Academy named the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist.


The entire article can be found at The Citizen Scientist. (http://sas.org/tcs/weeklyIssues_2006/2006-04-07/feature1p/) There's a saying that if you're not paranoid, you're not paying attention. I'm beginning to believe there might be some truth to that saying. (more at http://speakoutusa.com/)

[JuniperLea]

1. I read this a couple of times to make sure I wasn't being overly paranoid

If anything, I was holding back when I shouldn't.

This is scary as hell. My b/f and I just watched (yet another) Hitler documentary.

Society has learned nothing!

[IselaB]

2. Actually, my understanding is that Mims

is a creationist crackpot with a big chip on his shoulder. Everyone else at that meeting is saying that he has totally mischaracterized what Pianka was saying. Pianka was warning that overpopulation could lead to a natural "adjustment" to the human population by pandemic. He was apparently a little glib about it and said something about how it would be bad for us but maybe not so bad for the biosphere. But that's a long way from what Mims is trying to say. He's almost single-handedly blown this up into a scandal when it was nothing but some dire observations, Malthusian projections and a warning about the dangers of over-population.

[mom cat]

4. Thanks for the clarification.

[enki23]

6. not single-handedly

it's being egged on by, among others, an astronomically disingenuous "intelligent design" asshole dembski (who attempted, at least, to turn him in to DHH for what he said at a public fucking presentation) who has a blindingly obvious grudge against scientists in general, and quite possibly the university of texas in particular. and it's also been picked up and run with by matt fucking drudge.

[megatherium]

7. I just went to Dembski's home page and sure enough, he mentions

contacting Department of Homeland Security about Pianka's speech. He must be irony-impaired.

Dembski is a disturbing case. He hold PhDs in mathematics and in philosophy. He was a Baylor but he was trying to put together an ID institute of some kind, and they made it clear to him they wanted him to go. Now he's at an institution well-described by Louisville, Kentucky locals as "Taliban U." I'm referring to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, with its new undergraduate college, Boyce College, where he is a professor of theology. Southern is infamous for forcing all its liberal and female faculty to leave, back in the early 1990s, when creationist conservatives captured control of the Southern Baptist Convention. The seminary is now run by Al Mohler, who regularly writes creationist/anti-evolution and also anti-gay/anti-gay marriage columns for Christian newspapers.

[katty]

3. read this today..sick...via Ebola?! a horrid death-if he is

advocating this agenda, he can be the first in line to cease taking up space.

[enki23]

5. er... he's a creationist

ie. a kook. a crackpot.

here's a question to ask yourself: given that he says virtually the entire audience gave a standing ovation, do you think it more likely that mr mims misunderstood, or that the majority of the crowd present actually wanted 90% of of the earth's human population to die?

[Just Me]

8. Well, I say that man is a kook/crackpot!

And, well, I have nothing else to say about that.

[slaveplanet]

9. I'm reserving judgement until he releases the tape

Which according to him will be soon, he's working on the direct transcript.

He's stated in interviews that when Pianka was asked about how this would be recieved by the public at large, Pianka replied "I preach only to the converted".

So If these voices in support are the "converted" then it's easy to see why they'd show support.

The tape will clear this up, as MIM's implied that part recieved a standing O.

[longship]

10. Mims is a certifiable kook.

He's one of those Creationists one hears about so often. The guy's a great engineer, possibly even a genius. But as a scientist, he's a loser, as is anybody who believes that crap. One of his more bizarre claims is that Stephen J Gould didn't believe in evolution.

He's a kook.

[Rocknrule]

11. Gosh, when I read the title I thought it was the post of a freep troll

since we all know how much those fuckers LOVE death

[guruoo]

12. Forrest Mims, meet Paul Wolfowitz

Published on Wednesday, September 10, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
The Genetically Modified Bomb
by Thom Hartmann


Imagine a bomb that only kills Caucasians with red hair. Or short people. Or Arabs. Or Chinese.

Now imagine that this new bomb could be set off anywhere in the world, and that within a matter of days, weeks, or months it would kill every person on the planet who fits the bomb's profile, although the rest of us would be left standing. And the bomb could go off silently, without anybody realizing it had been released - or even where it was released - until its victims started dying in mass numbers.

Who would imagine such a thing?

Paul Wolfowitz, for one. William Kristol for another.

<snip>

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0910-15.htm