How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?

This is an excellent BBC documentary on overpopulation, conservation and consumption of Earth's resources. Maybe this sounds like boring stuff to you, but it's quite necessary to your survival. The fact is, humans are reproducing at an alarming rate and we are currently at that point where our resources are strained, and people are beginning to suffer greatly because of it.

Think about your daily life. The clothes you wear, the things you drink, food you eat, showers you take, your cleaning, care of your pets, the things you do for fun... all of these things require food and water directly or indirectly. It is a simple math problem--the amount of water on the planet is static, but our population is increasing by leaps and bounds. Something has to give.

Ideally, we will do three things to avoid death, suffering and wars over resources: 1) improve technology to make better use of the limited resources we do have, 2) conserve, conserve, conserve! 3) have fewer children--or better yet--no children at all. We can survive this if we do these three things, and do them aggressively.

It's not about being a treehugger nutjob. It's a matter of selfishly wanting to survive. The poorer nations will be the first to suffer--they already are. But it will get the wealthier nations eventually too, if something isn't done. THINK, don't breed.

We can turn this around in one generation... every couple has 0-1 children, and things will get vastly better. It's that simple. Easy? No. But simple. It's an emergency situation, and the time is now.

Do you want to go to war for water? Do you want to see your kids suffer because they don't have enough to eat? Do you want your entire existence shrunk down to an obsession for survival only? I doubt it. So act.

God is not going to come down from the heavens and save us from all this if we pray hard enough. If he were, he should have been here already. He's not coming. We are on our own. Oh, and overpopulation does not mean "not enough room to fit people"--we have plenty of space. (I was actually taught that overpopulation meant not enough space) It means not enough food, water and energy. Duh.

Brief Commentary on Gay Rights

I'm not gay. I'm as straight as they come. But I'm vehemently pro-gay rights, because gay rights are civil rights.

It's supremely disgusting that in America, in this modern day, we even have to have this discussion. I mean, seriously. I'm not even going to get into the "arguments" against gay marriage and employment rights right now because they are asinine and baseless and even a 3-year old could understand that the LGBT are people, too. There shouldn't even have to be the term LGBT, because it should be as boring and unremarkable as hair color. I don't care about nature vs. nurture. Doesn't matter, from a legal perspective. Even if it were 100% a lifestyle choice and not a biological impulse, that's completely and totally A-ok.

I'm straight and pro-gay not only because personally I believe they are regular, every day people who have equal rights to everything that I do; I'm also pro-gay because of more selfish reasons. I have the brains to realize that if society can legislate opinion, they are free to legislate and discriminate against any group of their choosing. And that could include me. And you. And him and her. Everyone. The only way to ensure safety and freedom is to PROHIBIT ONLY THOSE ACTIONS THAT ARE DETRIMENTAL TO MEMBERS OF SOCIETY. The only way to ensure safety and freedom is to PROTECT THE RIGHTS OF EACH INDIVIDUAL.

Is "pro-gay" even the right term? Honestly, I don't know. I am pro- anyone having full and equal rights.

Have you seen this poster? It sums things up pretty well:



This is exactly why we don't legislate morality, folks--at least, morality other than, you know, not killing and stealing and the like. Keeping church and state separate protects everyone.

I've heard so many times about how wrong homosexuality is because it's unnatural. It's a disorder. Gay people can't naturally have children, which automatically means they are going against God's will. They might--gasp--adopt children and ruin the children's lives. No one ever seems to have an answer on what exactly gays would be ruining (and don't we all know that heterosexual parents are consistently wonderful). Gays would be ruining children because they might...make them gay? And this is a bad thing, why? I don't get it. Besides, straight people keep having all these gay kids. They're all worried about gay people being parents, when those same people don't give a damn about any other kinds of parents. It's like they think that sexual orientation is the only litmus test for parenting. Bitch, please. All the discrimination is baseless, and points to nothing more than "I don't like it so you can't do it", with no real reason behind any of it.

The day it can be proved that homosexuality is harmful to its practitioners, and/or harmful to children, is the day I will be anti-gay. But that's not going to happen because homosexuality, in and of itself, is completely harmless, just like heterosexuality or asexuality. Do I even have to actually say this? For Pete's sake! This is common sense.

If you don't like something or don't agree with it, that's great! But things that do not cause others harm should not be illegal. Not that homosexuality is illegal--thank the FSM--but it is greatly discriminated against.

Bigotry will probably never be eradicated. We can't legislate morality, nor should we. We can't legislate opinion. What we can and should legislate, and the only focus of law, is the complete freedom of citizens.

--BadSec