Carl Djerassi, the 85-year-old Austrian who helped invent the Pill, says his creation has led to a "demographic catastrophe." Now he tells us! Dr. Djerassi says Austrians are committing national suicide.
He's right. Take a look at this animation. By current projections, come 2050 -- that's a little more than one generation from now -- about 20 percent of Austrians will be under the age of 25. Thirty-four percent will be over 65. It's a dying nation. The coroner will rule suicide.
Same kind of animated charts for Germany, France, Italy, and Spain (which looks like a mushroom cloud, appropriately enough) -- all show similar results.
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Sigaliris wonderfully illustrated my comment about "arrogant relatives, friends, church members, etc., etc.". This is the burden that we with large families carry: patronization, and condescension.
"...how lovely for him,..wife is a happy woman (were she to speak for herself, which oddly never seems to happen here...probably putting the kids to bed...after 9 children...chronically sleep-deprived, nutritionally deficient, overweight, and lacking in cardiovascular fitness...Fred's wife is probably one of the lucky ones who has muscles..resilience....discomforts like stress incontinence, etc..."
Many arguments, and retorts can be throne about on the subject of birth control. This issue is right up there with: when to baptize, head-coverings (God forbid) Calvinism vs. Arminianism, Homeschooling, which way to cross yourself, wine or grape juice, "and the spirit", speaking in tongues... Wow. There's just so many wonderful subject that really eat people up.
I find it interesting that many evangelical-ish Christians get really defensive about birth control--almost like they feel guilty about it.
I also find it interesting that the inventor of the birth control pill has observed that maybe it wasn't the great idea that he thought.
Fred
non-practicing agnostic
Below is an excerpt from an excerpt which may help answer your questions:
The Mind as an Economic Resource (Excerpt from an article by Brian Carnell in 1997)
Julian Simon's bet with Paul Ehrlich on resources during the 1980s - In 1980, economist Julian Simon and population critic Paul Ehrlich decided to put their money where their predictions were. Ehrlich had been predicting massive shortages in various natural resources for decades, while Simon advanced the “heretical” notion that natural resources were "infinite". Simon bet Ehrlich $10,000 that the inflation-adjusted price for any five natural resources Ehrlich cared to choose would decline from 1980 to 1990. Ehrlich agreed and chose copper, chrome, nickel, tin and tungsten. By 1990, all five were below their price level in 1980, and Ehrlich lost the bet. Simon offered to make the same bet for $20,000 with Ehrlich for the 1990s but Ehrlich declined. So far no environmentalist has taken up the challenge.
Are resources infinite? - Economist Julian Simon's claim that all natural resources are "infinite" provoked a lot of discussion and debate, often by people on both sides who missed the fundamental insight Simon had about resource availability. Simon's point is not that at any given moment there are an infinite number of gold or copper atoms in the Earth. Clearly the mass of the Earth is finite, and current cosmological theories claim the mass of the universe is finite as well. Instead resources are infinite in the sense that human beings will never run out of them for whatever purpose human beings decide to use them for. This directly contradicts the conventional environmental wisdom, which claims that the more of a resource removed from the Earth, the more scarce that resource becomes.
Art Munarriz
Why should anyone be interested in what Emerson thinks about anything?
Oh, he is merely the synthesizer of many of the different sources of American liberalism. You may not like the competition, but it endures.
His Divinity School Address predicts where Christianity is destined to go theologically when the process of Entzauberung of Modernity reaches and undoes orthodox Christology. You know, the exact thing people like you are paid to obstruct and deny in the American public square.
Has he built any hospitals, orphanages, proposed the framework that made possible modern science, and created orders of priests and nuns that preserved and protected the intellectual heritage of Western civilization?
Boston, Massachusetts, would be his version of Monte Cassino. :-) Still the liberal intellectual and scientific meetinghouse of the country. As well as concentration point of a lot of the socially significant science and successful social reform movements.
As for Emerson's following per se, every time a New Englander gets wide-eyed at the latest absurdity from Rome or wild occultism emanating from south of the Mason-Dixon line, Emerson is vindicated.
In other words, you have as much a chance of producing a Benedict from an Emerson as you do getting Mozart out of the Sex Pistols.
Emerson measured himself against more recent inspirational founders, people whose movements could contribute to and remain creative powers in what we now call Modernity. Since you probably can't guess this, Swedenborg and George Fox are the kind of people he considers his hero class in "The Conservative".
Not much remains of the Swedenborgians, but activist Quakers are still a subtle, resilient, and unshakeable moral force within American liberalism.
Interestingly, the Sex Pistols stole riffs from ABBA, ABBA derived their melodies from Scandinavian and German folk music, and Mozart did likewise.... Btw, in your Baylor photo you do look somewhat like John Lydon. :-)
nah i donno..
thats wack ass true stufff.
weird..
uhhh..\yes..
no shure.
why huh??
confused?
juss dpnt do it
iM SEXy
you WANT ME
i KNoW
THATS RiGHT
i CHARGE
REAL BiG
if yoUR CHEEP
DoNT BoTHER
iM oN Top
yoUR NoT
yoUR DoWN
iM up
ALL DAY
ALL NiGHT
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