Re: Today's Headlines from NYTimes.com Wednesday, July 4, 2001

From: Miriam English (miriam@werple.net.au)
Date: Thu Jul 12 2001 - 20:25:08 MDT


At 08:30 AM 12/07/2001 -0500, Tiberius Gracchus wrote:
>...I have long been a student of zoology and espcially animal behavior,
>and everywhere I see evidence of the strong victimizing the weak. In
>fact, that in large part IS how the strong remain strong. We do not
>seem to take this natural axiom much into account here in the USA, or
>perhaps we have forgetten it. We should scrap the Constitution as it
>is presently written and rewrite it to take into account the natural
>axiom that in essence holds that those that have will automatically
>attempt to exploit and victimize and hold back those that do not.

Ooooh... I do hope you said this with your tongue heavily in your cheek.

Ants, bees, termites, and wasps clearly became so successful by victimising
their weaker sisters within the nest... not! Birds and mammals survive so
well because they don't protect their families... not! Even centipedes
care for their eggs, cleaning them till birth.

The USA doesn't have the highest standard of living in the western world
because of the way the rich feed off the poor there. The Swedes, with their
universal safety net for their citizens, have for a long time had the
highest standard of living in the world (it may be slipping a bit now as I
believe they recently got a right wing govt). Reagan, with his heavily
pro-market-economy stance gave USA the distinction of the highest infant
mortality rate in the developed world. [Maybe this is a good time to don my
asbestos suit.]

Nature, red in tooth and claw is a 19th century concept. It is only half of
the picture. Altruism is the other half.

The really cool thing about humans is this incredible brain we possess. We
don't know where the next brilliant mind will come from. The little kid
whose mother is barely scraping by on welfare may be the one who solves the
problem of non-destructively scanning the human brain for uploading.

Cheers,

         - Miriam

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Q. What is the similarity between an elephant and a grape?
A. They are both purple... except for the elephant.
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http://werple.net.au/~miriam
http://members.optushome.com.au/miriame
Virtual Reality Association http://www.vr.org.au



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