Pandemic

come off it . . .

PeterCS wrote:

PlanetPakistan wrote:

PeterCS wrote:She was joking, I'm sure.

you don't joke about these things.

I am not going to speak for Debbie - for all sorts of reasons - but she has expressed the view here before (as have zat?, bradman?, and buckaroo) that it is precisely the super-serious and horrendous topics you have to joke about to stay sane. i.e. no disrespect is intended. Or something of that sort.

then i guess you can add the "just joking" part after any nasty thing coming out of the mouth.

tac wrote:

Zat wrote:Was that unironic or onanistic?

it seems only you, zatty, would confuse the two . . .

Or as the Sun might say:

"IRONY WOT IRONY?? IT'S WANKTASTIC!!"

PlanetPakistan wrote:

PeterCS wrote:

PlanetPakistan wrote:

PeterCS wrote:She was joking, I'm sure.

you don't joke about these things.

I am not going to speak for Debbie - for all sorts of reasons - but she has expressed the view here before (as have zat?, bradman?, and buckaroo) that it is precisely the super-serious and horrendous topics you have to joke about to stay sane. i.e. no disrespect is intended. Or something of that sort.

then i guess you can add the "just joking" part after any nasty thing coming out of the mouth.

That's the Frankie Boyle school of thought.

tac wrote:come off it . . .

I wasn't coming on it.

Did someone make ANOTHER joke, which got wildly taken out of context...

It may have been some wanktastic irony.

Zat wrote:It may have been some wanktastic irony.

Wrong thread Zat, try the deepthroat one...

DJ_Smerk wrote:

Zat wrote:It may have been some wanktastic irony.

Wrong thread Zat, try the deepthroat one...

It's really time for me to leave when a Welshman starts giving me suggestions about stuff like that.

Won't someone think of the animals?

I wasn't completely joking. The world's population is rising - births have been outnumbering deaths for some time. In the past we've had The Black Death (14th C) and The Plague (17th C) and world wars (20th C) to keep the population down. My comment probably seemed harsh but it's a fact I'm afraid.

Don't be such a baby: get on the cart.

*cough*

Demelza's right, disease and what-not have always been ways of keeping the population down. The world is at critical mass at the moment, we've just been living in an impervious bubble under the notion that every life is sacred and blah blah. It is, unfortunately, about time nature did something about the human scourge. The six and a half billion folk who are slowly eating away at the planet are unsustainable. If that means a lot of people dying including myself then damn, but that's the way it's meant to be. A circle of life and death. We are, after all, only mortal. We've been lucky to miss out on a massive war or a huge pandemic in the last 60 years or so.

If 3 billion folk were to die and I were one of the survivors then all the more post-apocalyptic fun for me. Stalking down streets with my rifle, poking in ruined houses, dodging uzi fire from renegade chavs who are too high before dispatching them from fifty yards. Looting, forming street gangs, getting shot, killing folk, having government SWAT teams charging around re-establishing their authority. Anarchy and all that shit.

Sounds like a Wilderness Society wet dream.

lardbucket wrote:Don't be such a baby: get on the cart.

chortle!

Demelza wrote:The world's population is rising - births have been outnumbering deaths for some time.

as it has been for 99.9999% of human existence

So ... was Malthus right?


I think Marx, for his sins, got a few things right, including about the cold calculus of necessary, "eternal" decimation in human populations.

"It was, of course, far more convenient [i.e. than investigating particular economic and social relations, examining the conditions of production or non-production of material goods, and considering the self-interested anarchy at the core of "capitalism"] - and much more in conformity with the interests of the ruling classes, whom Malthus adored like a true priest - to explain this “over-population” by the eternal laws of Nature."


If we do hold with Malthus, though, should we perhaps - by extension - call on Dello to use his own "Invisible Hand" and take out a tenth of the threads on this forum - so that the quality of the others may flourish?

Augustus wrote:Demelza's right, disease and what-not have always been ways of keeping the population down. The world is at critical mass at the moment, we've just been living in an impervious bubble under the notion that every life is sacred and blah blah. It is, unfortunately, about time nature did something about the human scourge. The six and a half billion folk who are slowly eating away at the planet are unsustainable. If that means a lot of people dying including myself then damn, but that's the way it's meant to be. A circle of life and death. We are, after all, only mortal. We've been lucky to miss out on a massive war or a huge pandemic in the last 60 years or so.

If 3 billion folk were to die and I were one of the survivors then all the more post-apocalyptic fun for me. Stalking down streets with my rifle, poking in ruined houses, dodging uzi fire from renegade chavs who are too high before dispatching them from fifty yards. Looting, forming street gangs, getting shot, killing folk, having government SWAT teams charging around re-establishing their authority. Anarchy and all that shit.

Living in the no-man's land between Mansfield and Sutton will have prepared you well if it comes to that.

An unfair advantage some might call it.

PeterCS wrote:So ... was Malthus right?

wasnt he proved wrong a few decades back?

world population will stabilise in a few decades, human birth rates have been falling dramatically everywhere

And Marx's point - partisan, it's true - is that the supposed "limit" on production of food and other necessaries of life is a fiction. (That the earth does contain and allow enough resources, if properly used, to feed the numbers of children that parents are likely to want to have.)

Big_Bad_Bob wrote:

Augustus wrote:Demelza's right, disease and what-not have always been ways of keeping the population down. The world is at critical mass at the moment, we've just been living in an impervious bubble under the notion that every life is sacred and blah blah. It is, unfortunately, about time nature did something about the human scourge. The six and a half billion folk who are slowly eating away at the planet are unsustainable. If that means a lot of people dying including myself then damn, but that's the way it's meant to be. A circle of life and death. We are, after all, only mortal. We've been lucky to miss out on a massive war or a huge pandemic in the last 60 years or so.

If 3 billion folk were to die and I were one of the survivors then all the more post-apocalyptic fun for me. Stalking down streets with my rifle, poking in ruined houses, dodging uzi fire from renegade chavs who are too high before dispatching them from fifty yards. Looting, forming street gangs, getting shot, killing folk, having government SWAT teams charging around re-establishing their authority. Anarchy and all that shit.

Living in the no-man's land between Mansfield and Sutton will have prepared you well if it comes to that.

An unfair advantage some might call it.

Nah. Perfect description of Danny's homeland, that is. The badlands of Wellingbro especially.

Big_Bad_Bob wrote:

Augustus wrote:Demelza's right, disease and what-not have always been ways of keeping the population down. The world is at critical mass at the moment, we've just been living in an impervious bubble under the notion that every life is sacred and blah blah. It is, unfortunately, about time nature did something about the human scourge. The six and a half billion folk who are slowly eating away at the planet are unsustainable. If that means a lot of people dying including myself then damn, but that's the way it's meant to be. A circle of life and death. We are, after all, only mortal. We've been lucky to miss out on a massive war or a huge pandemic in the last 60 years or so.

If 3 billion folk were to die and I were one of the survivors then all the more post-apocalyptic fun for me. Stalking down streets with my rifle, poking in ruined houses, dodging uzi fire from renegade chavs who are too high before dispatching them from fifty yards. Looting, forming street gangs, getting shot, killing folk, having government SWAT teams charging around re-establishing their authority. Anarchy and all that shit.

Living in the no-man's land between Mansfield and Sutton will have prepared you well if it comes to that.

An unfair advantage some might call it.

Oh, I'm doubly prepared what with my army upbringing, my years in sea cadets and army cadets and now my spell in the apocalyptic deserts outside of Mansfield. I'll take to killing most of the folk around here very easily indeed. Then I'll be on my way down to West Bridgford to find me a nice pad.

We'll be waiting . . .

Talking about population, I thought this map was good. It's based on the country's population. See the bulging India and the very flat Australia?