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Only two cartoon fans here? Go check out the new poll!

I voted even though I never heard of two of them

Now it's favorite pairing. Check it out!

Stewie and Brian! For sure!

I added a new poll, Superpowers!

I haven't voted yet, so be the first.

Provided you could turn it off and on I'd chose invisibility. Constant invisibility would soon get you killed I think

A new poll for you to answer. I'm really curious how this will turn out!

That last alternative, isn't that more or less the same as the second?

Very funny!

Yes that is funny because the last choice is the closest answer to *purgatory* which is supposed to be moreorless an abridged version of hell:

*" www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/purgatory "*

*Purgatory* is basicly where Protestants and Catholics parted company, that is, basically over Protestants believing that *faith alone* is sufficient to get into Heaven where Catholics believe that *faith and good works* are necessary.

Catholics believe that you practically have to be a Saint to get into Heaven and that all others having at least died in a state of grace go to *Purgatory* for possibly 500 or more or less years of cleansing ...
we may be in *Purgatory* now for all that we know;
Yet Catholics don't believe in reincarnation.

Anyway, I'm sure not going to Heaven;
So the last answer seemed acceptable to me ...
hopefully after I die, my spirit may find awareness in some distant descendant or is that reincarnation?

rex

New poll for the new year! It is about a population maximum.

How many do you consider to be supported at "first world standards" currently? It will take a good deal of calculation to find the number the way I conceive it(population of first world nations minus the number of citizens in those countries below the poverty level plus a percentage of the ruling/elite class in third world countries). Do you have any ideas?

I guess I meant people living with decent living standards, enough food, shelter, clothing and amenities such as refrigeration and lighting. Access to life-saving medicine. Particularly, people living in a world that isn't being poisoned and depleted faster than it can refresh itself. One using sustainable energy sources.

Otherwise, what do we really have? Just a deteriorating mess as far as I can see, and I place the blame largely on uncontrolled population growth (due to modern medicines and food production techniques as well as antiquated notions of the need for large families to keep the species alive).

Here it calls for more of a more of a gut analysis than a rigorus study.

By the way, I'd like to hear how anyone can look at the state of the world today and say "more than 7 billion" with a straight face, since the world is manifestly not all at 1st world standards and the environment is teetering on collapse on so many fronts.

Last Edited : Monday, 31 December 2012 - 20:52

The world today is run by a handfull of billionaires by whom shortages are loved to the extent that they deliberately create them;

While major resources of earth remain virtuely untapped including food sources like crocodiles and giant pythons for examples;

And huge areas like the Sahara and Gobi deserts remain unterraformed ...
Arizona is an example of our ability to turn deserts into productive and liveable lands;

And yes, I do believe that when we finally get rid of our obstacles to progress, earth will support far more than another 7 billion people unless we're fried first by an outburst from our sun or blasted to smitherines by a wayward asteroid or comet or by one of our super-duper volcanoes.

rex

Last Edited : Tuesday, 1 January 2013 - 22:58

Untapped food sources like crocodiles and giant pythons?????????

Hahahahahahahahahaha! Classic TR.

Now, does anybody have anything intelligent to add?

There is no lack of food. There is more than enough to go around. The truth is though that the capitalistic system is denying food to those who can't pay. That is the problem.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_security

Give Mog a barbecued young croc and I suspect he'll clean the bones and eat the tail and all.

rex

This argument always goes this way, people insisting that the earth can support unlimited amounts of humans. The thing is, the ecosystem is strained past the breaking point on so many levels that there being enough food for everyone (although I dispute it) isn't the only issue for our survival. We have fished out the seas, desertified large swaths of the planet, used up unrenewable resources as if they are limitless and polluted and irradiated the rest. Water resources are at their limits with no real answers in sight for getting clean water to billions of people who currently don't have it.

Just barely surviving isn't really living and that is what we are heading toward, in much of the world we are already there. I'd prefer less people living much better than more people living even worse.

Yes, an unfair political and economic system only exacerbate these problems but I think there are real issues about the ecosystem that are not possible to gloss over as just politics and fixable by a political fix. It will take a lot more than a different mindset to fix these problems, it will take sacrifice and uncomfortable decisions about liberty. It will take repeated disasters to wake people up since that is all we really respond to.

As my English grandad said "Cheer up, you'll soon be dead!"

Happy New Year.

There is also as good as endless free from polution and greenhouse gases in solar energy. Again the capitalistic system hold back the use and development of it. We need another system.