OOC

[Old_Bean]

0_o cool

[Lisard]

I'm sure having a spartan child running around doesn't help you much either, Trilli

[trillicat]

I'm sure having a spartan child running around doesn't help you much either, Trilli

It is something of a c**kblocker to have him sneak into bed with us at 5:30am, yesh. Plus the little bastard's sleep schedule is all wonky right now. We just put him down to bed. It's 11:15pm. WTH?

[trillicat]

Laugh at the people who think they're made from actual lead.

Lord Cloudsquatter, why do magic 8-balls always lie?

hehehehe Lord Cloudsquatter hehehehe Made my day!

[AtrecRandier]

Thanks! I am rather proud of that one.

[Gojoe]

So my girlfriend saw pepper's new display pic on facebook and was all like. Who is this new hot person on your facebook.

[Old_Bean]

INORITE? Super sexy facebook photo is super sexy.

[Gojoe]

INORITE? Super sexy facebook photo is super sexy.

Totally agree.

[trillicat]

INORITE? Super sexy facebook photo is super sexy.

Totally agree.

Absolutey. Peppercat is lookin' hawt.

[AtrecRandier]

Link?

[Old_Bean]

Link?

Oooooh checkin' out the local talent ay?

EDIT: Actually, peps you should def put that pic in the Obligatory Picture thread

[AtrecRandier]

-_-

More a matter of finding out what the heck you guys are on about.

Seen it now anyway...

[Old_Bean]

Seen it now anyway...

nice though, right?

[AtrecRandier]

I believe that would indeed come under the colloquial umbrella term of 'nice', yes.

[peppercat]

Link?

Oooooh checkin' out the local talent ay?

EDIT: Actually, peps you should def put that pic in the Obligatory Picture thread

Nah. I'd rather remain faceless/way too drunk in the meatup thread.

[Old_Bean]

argh! I can't find a picture of a 350 chev with the number 350 written on it anywhere

[Gojoe]

NEW SIG!

[Old_Bean]

Old Bean, I did see that xkcd comic before. I also think he's full of it. Sometimes that guy gets a bug up his butt and thinks he knows more than anyone else. He posts a lot of inflammatory comics like that. It doesn't make him any more right. The fact of the matter is that there are a lot of people who are reproducing in large numbers and have no money, education, means, etc. It doesn't mean that Idiocracy is likely to come to fruition. It's a dystopia that is designed to scare people. However, I'm in a position to know a large number of people at prime breeding age. The vast majority of the college educated people that I know (and I know a LOT) do not have children, and a large percentage of them do not want them. College education is not the end all be all, but it is A metric, which is something I do not see Mr. Munroe using. All I see him doing is making an assertion that to notice the obvious is to be a bigot. Not true.

Randall Monroe writes a comic, which means he has 4-8 panels in which to present and back up an opinion or argument. As such, brevity leads to boldness which infers arrogance. Not necessarily true. The point he makes is that the lower socio-economic classes have, throughout recent history, bred more than the upper classes, which is true. And yet we're doing okay so far. Whether or not that continues to be the case is yet to be seen, however, by the time a thinning of the gene pool becomes an issue we'll have polluted the water, destroyed the air, mined every natural resource and most likely bombed the world into oblivion.

[trillicat]

But there's a difference now: healthcare. Our health care is significantly greater than what it once was. People are living longer. More people are living at least long enough to breed.

Also, the lower socio-economic classes didn't go so much into inbreeding, so there's a chance that there was a greater available pool of intellect there than in the higher classes. I do NOT make the claim that because someone is poor, they are unintelligent. Far from it. However, a large percentage of those who are poor have undeveloped skills in critical thinking and logical deduction. They are more commonly emotional decision makers, rather than rational decision makers. There are exceptions to be had, in significant numbers, and I also acknowledge that there are huge numbers of financially well-endowed folks who are terrible at making decisions. But when we talk about a population at large, there are trends that cannot be ignored. I don't purport to suggest this cannot be altered. I don't advocate any particular plan to alleviate the situation. Yet I do see people having gobs of children, often with health problems, and pumping them out as welfare children. Children whose mothers smoked crack while they were pregnant or drank heavily. Children whose families are so large, they have to break the law to live in an apartment that is illegally small. (Here, the law is that you must have no more than 2 people per bedroom of a home. Not to say you can't have 6 people sleep in a room together, but you'd need at least 3 bedrooms in the home in order to have a family of 6.)

My mother-in-law just retired as a nurse working for the state. She dealt with the worst case scenario kids from families like the ones I mentioned above. Children whose parents were so careless with their health that horrible things happened in utero, such as a child's kidneys developing on the OUTSIDE of the body. And these children are surviving more and more to adulthood. But the parents just keep breeding like rabbits.

I'm glad that you can see Mr. Munroe's perspective. And as I said, I do not anticipate the world being nearly so bad as it was portrayed in Idiocracy. That film was designed to sell, not to portray an accurate picture of the direction of the world: I see no future in which skyscrapers will be held together with gigantic pieces of string to prevent them falling down. But I DO see a lot of irresponsible people having hordes of children that they cannot afford and are not capable of rearing. I DO see a lot of people who are financially capable of having children but feel that it would be "unethical" to "bring a child into this world." This is contrary to what I would like to see. I'd much prefer if those who had the means were the ones who were more inclined to breed, if those who paid attention to healthful habits were those who were the ones angling for children, if those who acknowledged that there ARE "best practices" for how to raise a family were the ones attempting to do so. It's unethical and immoral to mandate who can or cannot have children. But it doesn't stop me being saddened by the trends that I see.

And if you think he isn't arrogant with his comics that completely denigrate anyone who disagrees with him...then I think you and I have very differing ideas of what it means to be arrogant.

[Old_Bean]

I agree that it is unfortunate that there is a rising trends in people choosing not to become parents even though they are the very people that SHOULD for the very reasons that they WON'T. It is also unfortunate that children are being born as welfare breaks, it happens here too. But smart people are born into unfortunate families and dumb people into fortunate ones. To suggest that the world is going to get dumber because smart people aren't breeding, to me, seems baseless. The idea that 'Smart people have smart babies' is all well and good but you and i know both know that it's not always the case.

And like i said, Randall writes a comic. It's goal is to be entertaining or amusing. If he were to write some long winded diatribe about his opinions on idiocracy it wouldn't be a comic it would be a blog with a stick figure in it. I could be wrong, maybe if i go and read his blog now it will be every bit as arrogant as you say, if that's the case then fine, you win. But i think it's unfair to make judgements about a mans character based on the pictures he draws.