Cruel Population Control

In broadest terms, there are two methods of effectively controlling population levels. One can prevent excess population by producing fewer offspring, or kill them off after they are born.

I find the first option to be much the kinder, particularly with modern medical options. Religiously,  however, many object to the first method, citing such things as religious texts which reinforce the order from their deity for population increases to spread their particular brand of religion throughout the land. Might it not be time to acknowledge that going forth and multiplying has been accomplished?

Historically, there have been  many ways of reducing excess population. Define "excess" any way you want, but keep in mind there is a limit to what the land can support. Food, water, space, waste control - all the things we need to survive are finite. All manners of natural disasters have taken their tolls on population numbers. What nature hasn't culled, man will. We call it war. Or slavery. Even genocide. None of those ways are kind. All involve suffering, both from the people being killed off and those left behind to mourn.

While one can impose the concept of Darwinism, aka survival of the fittest, over the results in terms of who survives, that principle is imperfect at best. Natural disasters do not sort out their victims for the best ones surviving, and humans impose their own will over the results.

So why is this the topic of the day? Measles. It's coming back, and it's our own fault.

I go back far enough to remember when "everybody" caught the measles, both kinds, as well as chicken pox, mumps, and whatever. Populations exposed to millennia of disease eventually developed some level of resistance, at least to the point where not everybody died. Scientists postulate it's not so much that we evolved, but that the microbes did. If they were so successful that they killed off everyone infected, they themselves would die off. Regardless of how you assign cause and effect, immunities developed.

Just, not perfectly.

Measles were such a common part of my childhood that it was a shock to be informed of consequences like deafness or even death. I have the indelibly imprinted memory while reading James Michner's "Hawaii" of finding out how the introduction of what I had brushed off as harmless into heretofore isolated, unexposed populations decimated them almost to extinction. But unless you have been exposed to the actual  history of such diseases, the modern concept of measles is of something nonexistent and harmless. We just haven't witnessed the consequences.

Blame the scientists. Rather, credit the scientists, for they have done a great boon to mankind. But with all the diseases they can prevent or cure with modern medicine, there still is no cure for "stupid". We have somehow  managed to raise a generation of parents who think the cure/prevention is worse than the disease. Fearmongering gets their attention when the demands on their time seemingly do not allow for gleaning genuine facts. Some idiot somewhere whispers "autism" or something else in connection with immunizations and - just to be polite here, I'll characterize it as well-meaning, though that is far from my real feelings on the matter - negligence spreads. Children are left unnecessarily vulnerable to a potential killer. We have forgotten how vicious it is, how fast it spreads, how long the virus remains potent with no one nearby to infect next.

We compound the problem by allowing so-called religious exemptions for immunizations of children before allowing them into public schools to spread their damage. There are children who genuinely can not be immunized due to compromised immune systems, and one family's failure to vaccinate means another's tragedy.

It's not just measles, either. If you want to know what whooping cough can do to a child, go to YouTube and watch and listen to as much of the torture you can stomach. Research life in an iron lung for those who survived polio. Talk to somebody whose childhood chicken pox has now morphed to shingles, now that so many of us are living long enough to experience it. Find somebody with cervical cancer from the HPV virus which we now, finally, can immunize against before sexual activity starts and perhaps realize that immunization is not an assumption of immorality in children. Remind yourself that there was an actual reason doctors worked so long and hard to develop means to prevent all those illnesses.

Yes. all these diseases are contributions to population control. They don't strike as quickly as, say, a volcano, flood, fire or hurricane. No, they are much crueler. Where they don't kill, they linger. They are also, unlike those disasters, mostly avoidable. Since you have a choice, would you really want to inflict them on your children?

Really?

Whimsy

I think I've figured it out.

Beads are often a part of the jewelry I make. These days they tend to be 3mm or 4mm beads, fairly small. They are a variety of metals, stones, crystal, and just lately I've discovered seed beads. Once I learned, since the latter aren't sold in mm sizes, that  15/1 translates to impossibly small to work with, and 6/0 means workable with some work - appropriate that, what? - I have been able to add those to my supply and incorporate them into my design plans.

Colors and combinations are all over the place. Solid opaques (ho hum), transparent single colors, iridescent coated colors with silver cores for brightness, all have one thing in common around here. All of them can hide successfully on the multi-color rug in front of the TV where I do most of my work. I know this because all varieties are successful at slipping out of my fingers or off the surface they are poured out onto before they get picked up.

I have moved furniture, changed lighting so sparkles and shadows emerge differently from the background. I have picked up pieces of lint, blanket fuzz, cellophane, foil bits, crumbs, and whatever else might be scattered over that rug. I have tried to pick up pieces of the pattern of the rug itself. With all that, each night I go to bed secure in the illusion that all spilled beads have been picked back up and put away.

Nearly every morning, I return to my chair, and at some point my movements reveal the location of yet another bead (or more) that I can swear wasn't there last night. Surely even if I hadn't seen it I would have stepped on it while traveling barefoot on my many treks to the kitchen, bathroom, garbage can, or bedroom. Or just chasing those beads I can locate.

But no.

I've given that recurring puzzle some thought. One explanation suggests itself.

Cockroaches.

I know a certain number of them inhabit the house. We never see them during the 9 months we live here. However, every fall when we return, one will be upside down on the floor somewhere. Experience shows me this does not guarantee it will be dead, though prolonged inversion does produce death. Once flipped back, any remaining bit of life allows it to scurry away unless one had first covered it with a tissue and given it a hearty scrunch. Followed of course by a flush.

We also return to a certain amount of roach trails, aka dried shit squirts, along window ledges and other locations somewhat less palatable. Since they get washed away, and never reappear until the following fall, we could almost delude ourselves that our presence inspires them to flee outside until we leave again. I just don't believe it. Lack of evidence is not evidence.

Now we may have some proof they haven't gone. Having seen the requisite one per year, I can attest that they are large enough down here to be responsible for solving the bead mystery. I will forever imagine that once the lights go off, out they come for a rollicking game of bead soccer or some such entertainment. They emerge with whatever beads got overlooked, but returning humans give so little warning that beads are dropped in their scurry to hide.

I just haven't figured out what they use for their goals yet.

"Run, You Clever Boy, And Remember"

Thank you, BBCA. Most sincerely, thanks.

For those of you who have been long term fans of the series, I don't have to reference the title quote. A series of individual episodes ended with it, before tying it all up with a big bow and sending the show off in a new direction. Or, ahem, dimension.

I was a hit and miss fan of sorts over the years. Too many episodes missed, too many needing the continuity of previous and future episodes to string them together into a whole which made sense. But I was given a great gift over the holidays. It all makes sense now, and makes me care to keep watching, rather than just sometimes when it's convenient and/or I'm otherwise bored.

The gift? a "Doctor Who" marathon, stretching from X-mas eve to New Years day. While they weren't presented in exact order, by the time they all appeared in my DVR program list they were sorted into sequence. I'm guessing there were about 80 of them, not an exact count because I started watching those presented first, then deleting while the others accumulated. However, they were watched in such a close time frame that the pieces connected. Stuff started to make sense. With even the most hazy hindsight from years of maybe-watching, I knew when a chance comment was really important, a brief encounter turned into a regular character for a season or more.

That's no mean feat.

While not all episodes were included in the marathon, they always included the beginning and ending of each main character as well as several episodes to fill out their personalities and relationships. If a species was going to reappear some years later, their introduction was also filled in so we knew why they were friends or not.

If you've missed me lately, that's where I've been, glued to the set and tying it into a whole. In this case, the whole is way much bigger than the sum of its parts, for each part is much bigger for taking meaning from the whole.  (Yeah, I can see you scratching your head there.)

I still have this season's episodes to review. I did watch them all when presented, but now have the background to color in around the edges. I don't expect to waste my time in review. I'm also so close to the end now that I'm starting take time to prune the freeze kill from the back yard branches, design new jewelry, organize a few more things in the house, take pictures, and work it all in around Steve's medical appointments. And no, he still hasn't seen the right Doc to properly treat his back pain, though we do have an actual name for it finally: spinal stenosis.

But even when the TV is off, I haven't left the show. I seem to be dreaming new plots for Dr. Who. Maybe that's the real way the TARDIS travels.

If (Blank), Then Only Criminals....

You've heard the stupid rationale. "If you pass laws banning (some kinds of) guns, then only criminals will own guns. It's said with the full confidence that the speaker has just made a meaningful point, and thus nobody will ever even think of banning whatever kind of guns are under discussion. It almost seems to make sense.

Let's apply that same logic to other undesired acts:
If you pass laws against graffiti, only criminals will paint graffiti.
If you pass laws against stealing, only criminals will steal.
If you pass laws against speeding or driving drunk, only criminals will speed or drive drunk.
If you pass laws against murder, only criminals will murder.

If you pass laws, you change nothing except turning lawful folks into criminals. Right? Isn't that the so-called logic? And if we follow that thread to the conclusion that those who spew that idiocy wish us to, we shouldn't make any of those other things illegal either. The law itself does more harm than good.

My brain hurts.

I hope yours does too. Because my heart hurts.

And I can only hope yours does too.