We read on bbcnews that:
"Humanity may split into two sub-species in 100,000 years' time as predicted by HG Wells, an expert has said. Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics expects a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass to emerge (...) People would become choosier about their sexual partners, causing humanity to divide into sub-species."
It is always nice to have one's ideas confirmed by theorists. Even if 100,000 is a much too generous timespan, and a Hollywood world view has blinded the man's science. A much faster-acting splitting mechanism than sexual choosiness could be HIV/AIDS.
It won't be long (in evolutionary time) before some HIV carrier populations become resistant to AIDS. They will be able to interbreed quite happily among themselves, but any attraction non-carrier populations may feel for them will always be fatal.
The privilege of being HIV negative will over time accrue to those with access to better education and information, and the means to afford blood tests for their propective partners. These could well converge with the class that Professor Curry describes as "tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the 'underclass' humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures."
The emergent overclass may appear to have all the advantages, the best schools and hospitals, choice of mates, and the power to oblige HIV positives to be tattooed at birth with dodgy equipment; but as the pariah caste becomes stronger and more resistant to HIV's pathogenicity, it will have gained one significant genetic advantage over the HIV negative Uebermensch.
But perhaps by then the overclass boffins will have figured out a way to farm underclass blood to produce a vaccine against their heinous effluences. That way bored baronets can revert to sharing a needle with the butler and poking the parlourmaid without fear of the consequences.
Sounds like heads I win, tails you lose.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Is the Koran actionable?
Muslims in the UK and other countries trying to have incitement to hatred on grounds of religious belief banned could be shooting themselves in the foot. Drafters of such a law will have to tread pretty carefully if they want to avoid having the Koran itself withdrawn from shelves.
Muslims are known to revere the text and are categorically opposed to the idea of changing one iota - or hamza - despite the book's evident need of a good editor or ghost writer to sort out its rambling, incoherent style, its ranting tone and penchant for self-serving anachronisms such as the claim that Abraham was a muslim. And that's before we even look at the legal aspects.
One group who might consider itself poorly treated if the book is allowed to continue to be available in public libraries is the growing majority of atheists which the Koran calls unbelievers. To find out if the text actually incites hatred of this group, nothing simpler than to type in the word "unbeliever" into the searchbox of the searchable online Koran.
What the search reveals is that although Allah is going to do unspeakably horrid things to unbelievers, the believers themselves are simply enjoined not to number unbelievers among their friends. So the question boils down to does sending to Coventry count as an act of hatred, or do you have to be more beastly?
An alternative way to resolve the conundrum would be to substitute the word "muslims" for "unbelievers" into the results of the search, and ask muslim lawyers if they consider the resulting sentences actionable. If so then they must be equally actionable in their original form.
They might then contend that incitement to hatred on grounds of belief does not include incitement on the grounds of unbelief . Do unbelievers not believe anything, or can it be claimed they actively believe there is no God? The simple solution to protect everyone's rights would be to insert the words "or unbelief" after belief, so that the wording reads "incitement to hatred on grounds of religious belief or unbelief".
While I feel that the book could incite impressionable minds to a paranoid world view and should therefore not be given to children, the incitement to actual hatred is not explicit enough to merit outright banning, and anyone who hates people as a result of reading it is the sort of crackpot who probably hates people without the need for literary justification.
As I said, in framing such a bill careful attention will need to be paid to the choice of words, the more so as it is too late to ask the book's author to measure his.
Muslims are known to revere the text and are categorically opposed to the idea of changing one iota - or hamza - despite the book's evident need of a good editor or ghost writer to sort out its rambling, incoherent style, its ranting tone and penchant for self-serving anachronisms such as the claim that Abraham was a muslim. And that's before we even look at the legal aspects.
One group who might consider itself poorly treated if the book is allowed to continue to be available in public libraries is the growing majority of atheists which the Koran calls unbelievers. To find out if the text actually incites hatred of this group, nothing simpler than to type in the word "unbeliever" into the searchbox of the searchable online Koran.
What the search reveals is that although Allah is going to do unspeakably horrid things to unbelievers, the believers themselves are simply enjoined not to number unbelievers among their friends. So the question boils down to does sending to Coventry count as an act of hatred, or do you have to be more beastly?
An alternative way to resolve the conundrum would be to substitute the word "muslims" for "unbelievers" into the results of the search, and ask muslim lawyers if they consider the resulting sentences actionable. If so then they must be equally actionable in their original form.
They might then contend that incitement to hatred on grounds of belief does not include incitement on the grounds of unbelief . Do unbelievers not believe anything, or can it be claimed they actively believe there is no God? The simple solution to protect everyone's rights would be to insert the words "or unbelief" after belief, so that the wording reads "incitement to hatred on grounds of religious belief or unbelief".
While I feel that the book could incite impressionable minds to a paranoid world view and should therefore not be given to children, the incitement to actual hatred is not explicit enough to merit outright banning, and anyone who hates people as a result of reading it is the sort of crackpot who probably hates people without the need for literary justification.
As I said, in framing such a bill careful attention will need to be paid to the choice of words, the more so as it is too late to ask the book's author to measure his.
Monday, October 8, 2007
An ark for the Big One
One day a huge earthquake is going to make a lot of people wish they had built themselves geodesic domes.
Well of course it won't, because domes have not been on most people's radar for a while. But traditional rectangular houses have two main weak points: the right-angle joins, which fail in wooden structures; and the parallel walls, which respond in unison to directional shocks. That pretty much takes care of the whole house.
One thing which makes city planners shy away from domes is the problem of packing them together in high density districts. What do you do with the "wasted" space between adjoining circles? Also, how can you build high rise?
I have often wondered why we can't build in hexagons like bees. A bee must navigate using six cardinal points rather than our four. So our problem could be simply one of vocabulary. Were the honeycomb principle to be extended to houses or hotels with many rooms, those bodily directions - left, right, back and front - would be inadequate for giving directions to the restroom. It seems we are limited to the amount of limbs we have. If only it were second nature to think North, Earth, East, South, West and Worth - with East and West sliding down to 4 and 8 o'clock and Earth and Worth moving in at 2 and 10 - we might have less earthquake victims and more interesting brains. But to be as brainy as the bee we would need an extra pair of arms.
There is an ancient disused Koranic school out there in the Colorado desert - or is it New Mexico? - built on a honeycomb plan. When I wrote to Time's editorial board about this after the last Los Angeles quake, they buried the story.
I therefore mention it here for the benefit of Time readers who feel they are not being fully informed.
Well of course it won't, because domes have not been on most people's radar for a while. But traditional rectangular houses have two main weak points: the right-angle joins, which fail in wooden structures; and the parallel walls, which respond in unison to directional shocks. That pretty much takes care of the whole house.
One thing which makes city planners shy away from domes is the problem of packing them together in high density districts. What do you do with the "wasted" space between adjoining circles? Also, how can you build high rise?
I have often wondered why we can't build in hexagons like bees. A bee must navigate using six cardinal points rather than our four. So our problem could be simply one of vocabulary. Were the honeycomb principle to be extended to houses or hotels with many rooms, those bodily directions - left, right, back and front - would be inadequate for giving directions to the restroom. It seems we are limited to the amount of limbs we have. If only it were second nature to think North, Earth, East, South, West and Worth - with East and West sliding down to 4 and 8 o'clock and Earth and Worth moving in at 2 and 10 - we might have less earthquake victims and more interesting brains. But to be as brainy as the bee we would need an extra pair of arms.
There is an ancient disused Koranic school out there in the Colorado desert - or is it New Mexico? - built on a honeycomb plan. When I wrote to Time's editorial board about this after the last Los Angeles quake, they buried the story.
I therefore mention it here for the benefit of Time readers who feel they are not being fully informed.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)