From Anguish Languish to English Language: Trains-lading debt Furry Tail avowed Beers into a Fairy Tale about Bears

 It's been decades since I first posted Furry Tails to this blog, and since most of my readers are from countries other than the one in which Anguish Languish was first published, I thought I'd do them the favour of translating this one into Standard English. Here, then, is Goldy Locks and the Three Bears:

Wants pawn term dare worsted ladle gull hoe hat search putty yowler coils debt pimple colder Guilty Looks. Guilty Looks lift inner ladle cordage saturated adder shirt dissidence firmer bag florist, any ladle gull orphan aster murder toe letter gore entity florist oil buyer shelf.

Once upon a time there was a little girl who had such pretty yellow curls that people called her Goldy Locks. Goldy Locks lived in a little cottage situated at a short distance from a big forest, and a little girl often asked her mother to let her go into the forest all by herself. 

“Guilty Looks!” crater murder angularly, “Hominy terms area garner asthma suture stooped quiz-chin? Goiter door florist? Sordidly NUT!”

“Wire nut, murder?” wined Guilty Looks, hoe dint peony tension tore murder’s scaldings.

“Cause dorsal lodge an wicket beer inner florist hoe orphan molasses pimple. Ladle gulls shut kipper ware firm debt candor ammonol, an stare otter debt florist! Debt florist’s mush toe dentures furry ladle gull!”

Wail, pimple oil-wares wander doe wart udder pimple dum wampum toe doe. Debt’s jest hormone nurture. Wan moaning, Guilty Looks dissipater murder, an win entity florist.

"Goldy Locks!" cried her mother angrily, "How many times are you going to ask me such a stupid question? Go to the forest? Certainly NOT!"

"Why not, mother?" whined Goldy Locks, who didn't pay any attention to her mother's scoldings.

"'Cause there's a large and wicked bear in the forest who often molests people. Little girls should keep away from that kind of animal, and stay out of that forest! That forest's much too dangerous for a little girl!"

Well, people always want to do what other people don't want them to do. That's just human nature. One morning, Goldy Locks disobeyed her mother and went into the forest. 

Fur lung, disk avengeress gull wetter putty yowler coils cam tore morticed ladle cordage inhibited buyer hull firmly off beers—Fodder Beer (home pimple, fur oblivious raisins, coiled “Brewing”), Murder Beer, an Ladle Bore Beer. Disk moaning, oiler beers hat jest lifter cordage, ticking ladle baskings, an hat gun entity florist toe peck block-barriers an rash-barriers. Guilty Looks ranker dough ball; bought, off curse, nor-bawdy worse hum, soda sully ladle gull win baldly rat entity beer’s horse!

'Fore long, this adventurous girl with her pretty yellow curls came to a modest little cottage inhabited by a whole family of bears--Father Bear (whom people, for obvious reasons, called Bruin), Mother Bear, and Little Boy Bear. This morning, all the bears had just left a cottage, taking little baskets, and had gone into the forest to pick blackberries and raspberries. Goldy Locks rang a door bell, but, of course, nobody was home, so the silly little girl went boldly right into the bear's house!

Honor tipple inner darning rum, stud tree boils fuller sop—wan grade bag boiler sop, wan muddle-sash boil, an wan tawny ladle boil. Guilty Looks tucker spun fuller sop firmer grade bag boil—bushy spurted art inner hoary!

“Arch!” crater gull, “Debt sop’s toe hart—barns mar mouse!”

Dingy traitor sop inner muddle-sash boil, witch worse toe coiled. Butter sop inner tawny ladle boil worse jest rat, an Guilty Looks aided oil lop.

Dingy nudist tree cheers—wan anomalous cheer, wan muddle-sash cheer, an wan tawny ladle cheer. Guilty Looks set darn inner ladle cheer, bushy worse toe bag ferret, ant soddenly bustard.

On a table in the dining room stood three bowls full of soup--one great big bowl of soup, one middle-sized bow, and one tiny little bow. Goldy Locks took her spoon full of soup from a great big bowl, but she spit it out in a hurry!

"Ouch!" cried the girl, "That soup's too hot--burns my mouth!"

Then she tried the soup in a middle-sized bowl, which was too cold. But the soup in a tiny little bowl was just right, and Goldy Locks ate it all up. 
Then she noticed three chairs--one enormous chair, one middle-sized chair, and one tiny little chair. Goldy Locks sat down in a little chair, but she was too big for it, and it suddenly busted. 

Clamming upper stars tutor beer’s bet-rum, Guilty Looks dish-cupboard tree bets—wan grade bag bet, wan muddle-sash bet, an wan tawny ladle bet. Failing torrid, shay flunker shelf honor ladle bet, an, jester cobbler menace letter, worse sunder slip an snorting.

Climbing up a stairs to the bear's bedroom, Goldy Locks discovered three beds--one great big bed, one middle-sized bed, and one tiny little bed. Feeling tired, she flung herself on a little bed, and, just a couple minutes later, was sound asleep and snoring. 

Inner ladle wile, donors offer cordage cam beck firmer barrier-pecking extradition, currying baskings fuller rash-barriers. Whinny entity darning rum, Fodder Beer stuttered snuffing an gruelling tomb shelf.

“Warts ban goring earn hair?” crumpled dole beer, “Conjure small psalm-sing deferent a boarder horse?”

“Crashes!” crater murder beer, ashy castor quack glands adder tipple, “Hose ban muddling wet debt sop?”

Ladle Bore Beer stuttered crayon.

“Jest locket mar ladle boiler sop—oil garbled dope! An locket mar itchy pitchy cheer—oil bustard!”

In a little while, the owners of the cottage came back from their berry-picking expedition, carrying baskets full of raspberries. When he entered the dining room, Father Bear started sniffing and growling to himself. 
"What's been going on here?" grumbled the old bear, "Can't you smell something different about the house?" 
"Gracious!" cried mother bear, as she cast a quick glance at the table, "Who's been meddling with that soup?"
Little Bear started crying. "Just look at my little bowl of soup--all gobbled up! And look at my itty-bitty chair--all busted!"

Locking adder bustard cheer, Murder Beer bay-gander gat historical, an stuttered hurling tore horsebarn:

“Brewing! Brewing! Way gut BURGHERS inner horse. HORSE BURGHERS! Quack! Coiler place! Wail, dun stun dare lacking end-bustle during nosing! Coiler Place Deportment, quack!”

“Harmer garner coiler Place Deportment wen way dun heifer toiler-fun?” resplendent Brewing, inner trampling verse. “Set darn, worming, an cape quoit! Yore oil-wares thanking dare burghers inner horse!”

Oiler shame, Brewing worse jesters scarred aster udders; infect, haze niece war shagging.

Finely, Fodder Beer gutter grade bag short-gum, Murder Beer gutter muddle-sash haunting raffle, an Ladle Bore Beer gutter tawny ladle pestle, an oiler beers crypt upper stars, ware Guilty Looks worse line honor bet, sunder slip an snorting. Herring door beers, shay weakened, lipped otter door windrow, an dished aware harm jesters fascist shagged scrabble.

Looking at a busted chair, Mother Bair began to get hysterical, and started howling to her husband:
"Bruin! Bruin! We got BURGLARS in the house, HOUSE BURGLARS! Quick! Call a police! Well, don't stand there like an imbecile doing nothing! Call a Police Department, quick!"
"How am I gonna call a Police Department when we don't have a telephone?" responded Bruin, in a trembling voice. "Sit down, woman, and keep quiet! You're always thinking there are burglars in the house! 
All a same, Bruin was just as scared as the others; in fact, his knees were shaking. 
Finally, Father Bear got a great big shotgun, Mother Bear got a middle-sized hunting rifle, and Little Boy Bear got a tiny little pistol, and all a bears crept up a stairs, where Goldy Locks was lying on a bed, sound asleep and storing. Hearing the bears, she wakened, leaped out of the window, and dashed away home just as fast as she could scramble. 

Oiler beers tar darner stars, an ntoe locker doers an windrows.

“Fodder,” aster ladle bore beer, finely, “Wart worse debt discussing crasher honor bet? Wart worse debt ogling ammonol wet oil debt yowler far honor had, an hoe dint half nor far atoll honor beck? Wart worse debt hobble lurking crasher, Fodder?”

Fodder Beer shuttered.

“Comb hair, mar bore. Heresy gut lessen furrier! Debt discussing crasher worsen HORMONE BANG! Kipper ware firm debt candor ammonol! Dare nor gut! Warts mar, are dun wander catcher goring entity florist oil bar yore shelf. Debt florist’s mush toe dentures furry ladle beer!”

All a bears tore down a stairs, and started to lock a doors and windows. 
"Father," asked a little boy bear, finally, "What was that disgusting creature on a bed? What was that ugly animal with all that yellow fur on her head, and who didn't have no fur at all on her back? What was that horrible looking creature, Father?"
Father Bear shuddered. 
"Come here, my boy. Here's a good lesson for your! That disgusting creature was an HUMAN BEING!
Keep away from that kind of animal! They're no good! What's more, I don't want to catch you going into the forest all by your self. That forest's much too dangerous for a little bear!"

I translated this as literally as I could, exposing the weakness of the author's use of articles: he failed to distinguish between the definite and indefinite articles, sometime even confusing them with possessive pronouns. I gave him as much latitude as I could in a strict translation (probably even more, by translating 'sop' as 'soup'); using dynamic equivalence-- along the lines of the NIV--would make such inconsistencies disappear entirely. And there could be some dialect of English out there in which they wouldn't be phonemically distinct anyway.

Why there's no such thing as a Stone Age Tribe

This post has been percolating for many months, so I decided to go ahead and give it a go now, but subject it to revision as I continue to ponder the question.
Two videos have brought about this rush to print: one a series actually, to which I will get shortly; the other being this National Geographic Special about the Waorani tribe of Ecuador. In a documentary like this, the narrator typically gushes that they live as they did 20,000 years ago, and are just now finally emerging from the Stone Age.
These claims not only have no historical basis; they defy logic. The lifestyle of the Waorani is totally incompatible with the evolutionist's claim that they are descended from people who crossed the Bering Straight tens of thousands of years ago. They make their living by using darts (made from one palm) dipped in poison (scraped from the bark of a certain vine, and only deadly if injected) shot through a blowgun (made from another palm). That, for their meat supply; their vegetable staple is manioc, a domesticated crop that only grows in the tropics. Granted, they have been doing this from time immemorial, but only since their ancestors took up residence in the rain forest of the Amazon. It's impossible that their ancestors could have lived any such way before arriving there--and the forensic evidence from this video series (especially beginning with video #10) indicates that their ancestors only arrived there a few centuries earlier than the conquistadors--and that the people whom they displaced were accomplished agrarians.
Just one of the bits that jumped out at me from the movie was that the "uncontacted" Waorani no longer use stone axes or earthen pots--they trade for steel versions of the same. Only the oldest man in the community can even remember how to use a stone axe, and he made a startling revelation---the tribe had no knowledge of where stone axe heads even came from!  They found the heads abandoned in the jungle by a previous civilisation--just as my sons like to comb newly plowed fields every spring for stone arrowheads--and assumed that they fell from heaven or something. A "stone age" tribe equally dependent on outside civilisation for their axe heads, whether they be of stone or steel--incredible!
Elisabeth Elliot, half of the first team of outsiders to live among the Waorani and record their culture, reported that the Waorani told her their ancestors also had worn clothes, but had eventually abandoned all clothing but for a single string around their loins, and perhaps--to dress up--one around each arm. Obviously their ancestors would have needed quite a bit more than that to make the trek to North America!
The native ability of evolutionists to suspend the use of logic continues to astound me.
Another bit that jumped out to me: an anthropologist, who learned the language from the Waoroni civilised by their contact with Elisabeth Elliot and Rachel Saint, led the documentary team eastward to contact their downriver relatives. His research indicated that 70% of the males in the past five generations had died of homicide (oral history traces this murderous tendency back to a falling out over a tribal celebration about ten generations back). Clearly outsiders who bring in diseases that kill off a quarter, a third, or even half of the population are not the major threat to their continued existence. And those who do survive modern diseases will tend to pass their resistance to the following generations.
Again, a wee bit of logic would be helpful. How could a tribe that has lived on this land, disease-free for centuries, still only number in the hundreds--while the descendants of just a couple dozen men on the Mayflower now number in the tens of millions? Obviously murder, from conception onward, is a serious threat to population growth--in the case of "uncontacted tribes" still numbering only a few hundred individuals, clearly the greatest threat. It is notable that, the documentary reports, word filtered back to the uncontacted members of the tribe--along with the steel pots and axes--that there's no need to kill each other any more; so they've stopped the carnage (else, obviously the team would have never made it back out alive with their footage). Note: Mincaye, who had been one of, if not the oldest man in the tribe for over sixty years, has finally died of old age in his 90's. He manged to live long enough to give up his murderous lifestyle shortly before his life expectancy ran out, and "walk Waogongi's path" for the next two-thirds of his life, and on into the hereafter.
Everything in the documentary trumpets the same thing: this is not an ancient tribe peacefully perpetuating the lifestyle of their ancestors--a way of life under threat only by outside intrusion--but instead, a degenerate community in serious danger of completing the process of self-extinction if they are NOT contacted by outsiders.

Hutterites to the rescue--Maybe.

Since my post on the immanent demise of Monowi, Nebraska is too old to update, I'll add this link here. And if the link goes dead, the text is below. Upshot: Monowi may just end up being bought by a Hutterite colony. They won't need the tavern.

A Hutterite colony in southwestern Manitoba is considering the unusual step of buying a shrinking rural town and moving in. The tiny population left in Mather, Man., 170 kilometres southwest of Winnipeg, have learned the neighbouring Willow Creek Colony wants to purchase the community — including houses, a post office, an arena and the streets tying them all together. The approximately 30 residents of Mather were baffled by the offer, according to the owner of the local autobody shop — and he says a number of them, like him, don't plan to go anywhere. "It was maybe a little more bewilderment and shock, I think, than anything," said Bob Yake, 69, referring to a meeting last month where the Hutterite colony explained why it wanted a town that is a shadow of its former self. Buying town a 'running start' The Hutterites — anabaptists who live minimalistic, self-sufficient and communal lives — have grown beyond the ability of their colony to support their population, they told their neighbours. When that happens, Hutterite colonies split up, usually starting slowly in a new location. Typically, a few homes pop up, linked to water and sewer systems the colony members have constructed. They build more homes then, and places to work so the new colony can become self-sufficient. It can take a decade or more for one colony to become two. But in Mather, the Hutterites probably saw opportunity, according to an author finishing a book on Hutterite history. A town with existing infrastructure could be a "running start" toward establishing a new colony, said Johnny Hofer, a former teacher at James Valley Hutterite Colony, near Elie, Man. Hofer, who has heard of Willow Creek's plans, believes their thinking is outside the box, and virtually unheard of. "If you buy a town like that, the sewer system is there, the electrical is there, the houses are there, there's a couple bigger buildings," he said. "You don't get that [often], where you can buy something and then have 24 houses available to you overnight." Hofer said there are few similar cases he could think of, aside from a colony near Portage la Prairie, Man., which was fashioned out of an airport base, and a South Dakota colony that bought a seniors' home on the edge of a town. But Jock Lehr, a former University of Winnipeg scholar who wrote his own book about the Hutterites, said a similar move occurred nearly a century ago, when Hutterites bought a Mennonite community near Plum Coulee, Man. Blumengart Hutterite Colony has been in existence since 1922. Mather won't be bought: residents Willow Creek leadership are planning to make purchase offers to each property owner in Mather, but according to Yake, the colony must convince everybody to sell, since outsiders cannot live within a colony. He doesn't see that happening. "I'm personally not angry at the Hutterites or anything. I can see their point of view: they're overpopulated, and by their own rules they have to split off and start again," Yake said. "But I'm almost certain that they're not going to come up with enough loot to persuade everybody to clear out." Mather isn't growing, he says, but it isn't extinct either. "We're not quite dead yet as a community." The Hutterite colony declined an interview request on Friday. "Willow Creek Colony is in the early stages of discussions with individual property owners," Andrew Marshall, a lawyer representing the colony, said in an email Saturday. "A private question and answer session restricted to residents of Mather and immediately adjacent land owners is being held on Monday prior to any offers being made. Further information will be available as discussions progress." Google Maps More Story continues Jamie Dousselaere, the reeve of the municipality of Cartwright-Roblin — which includes Mather — did not return a request for comments. Art Harms, chairman of the local urban district of Mather, declined an interview. Other community members also declined to speak. In Yake's 41 years in Mather, he's seen two grocery stores, a school, a hardware store, a bank and an insurance agency wind up operations, as the population slipped from close to 120 residents to about 30 people. The hall and post office are still around. The rink is now a horse-riding arena. They're at the point in their life where they want to move or go somewhere else or do something else — and they see it as a way out. - Mather resident Phil Lees Yake hasn't received a direct overture, but was told by neighbours the Hutterite colony was offering around 1.5 times the assessed value for properties. That won't come close to letting him move elsewhere and buy a home, he said. At 64 years old, Phil Lees says he's one of the youngest people living in Mather. The grain hauler thought somebody was pulling his leg when he heard the Hutterites wanted to move into town. "There are some people who are kind of excited about it," Lees said. "They're at the point in their life where they want to move or go somewhere else or do something else — and they see it as a way out." But the community is split, he said. Some of his family members want to stay, while others are fine with leaving. He estimates there are 18 households in the community, and figures at least six of those homes have occupants who aren't going to be uprooted. "I don't want to move, let's put it that way," Lees said. "We're not excited about going. It's home. It's where we live and it's who we are."

The Amish have returned to Nebraska

In earlier posts I wrote about the Nebraskan legislature running resident Amish out of the state--but according to this data, they're moving back:

Map: U.S. counties with extant Amish settlements as of 2010,  Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies.


Amish communities are spreading at the rate of nearly 15 a year. Since they need lots of land to live on, that means emigrating to wherever land is cheap and Amtrak routes (red lines on the map) or bus lines allow them to get back home to visit. Or to return, if things get too hot for them in their new home.

The two Nebraskan counties now recording Amish residents are directly to the East and South of the beleaguered town of Monowi, now only one obituary away from becoming a ghost town.

So, there may be hope for Monowi. Once its last residence dies and the tavern closes down, don't be surprised if an Amish community buys out the whole town and turns the former tavern into a bent-and-dent bulk food store.

Demographic Winter

If you found this post interesting, you've got to watch this whole video:
Demographic Winter
There are only two possible ways to stave off the impending Demographic Winter: stop killing babies, or start killing old people.

Since this video was made, the Netherlands has been paying mothers to have children, and paying doctors to kill adults. But their welfare state still collapsed.

An Albino Race--or not.

96885 My posts on albinism fast turned out to be the most popular destinations on this website, outpacing reads about Arthur Blessitt's divorce ten to one this week. I've continued to keep my eyes out for more information on the subject, which has resulted in a couple of discoveries: One, that some of my own cousins probably carry the albinism gene; the other being possible evidence for an actual race of albinos along the southernmost Caribbean coast:

 "The Kuna have a very high incidence rate of albinism. In Kuna mythology, albinos (or sipus) were given a special place. Albinos in Kuna culture are considered a special race of people, and have the specific duty of defending the Moon against a dragon which tries to eat it during an eclipse. Only they are allowed outside on the night of an eclipse and used specially made bows and arrows to shoot down the dragon."

Well, these claims don't bear up so well under scrutiny--especially the 'special race' part. Since carriers of the albinism gene are indistinguishable in the general population, it has never been possible to isolate the albino population into a separate race. If albinos are encouraged only to marry other albinos, an albino population will immediately emerge, but this still will not serve to keep albinism out of the general population; only a controlled breeding program empowered by the modern science of genetics could succeed in that. And no one has tried it, nor is ever likely to, as albinism is a very debilitating condition. I have now received some reports of two successive generations of albinos, but not yet of three [UPDATE: there is now at least one current case of a third-generation albino, referenced in another post on this topic].

But back to the Kuna/Cunas of Panama. Despite their accepted social status, the physical limitations of their defect keeps Kuna albinos from fully engaging in Kuna society (albino men are limited occupationally to traditionally feminine or adolescent roles). Yet albinism persists, due mainly to the small tribal gene pool (compounded, it would appear, by a high rate of incest), misunderstanding of the genetic cause ('moon children' have traditionally been thought to form due to Lamarckian influence at some point in the development of the foetus), and lack of meaningful artificial selection against it (the herbal remedies against fetal albinism being totally useless, racial infanticide being traditionally frowned upon, and the miscegenation prohibition unenforceable in the face of rampant fornication).

The Kunas, despite their unusually high percentage of albinos and social acceptance thereof, generally do not allow them to marry, and take active steps (however futile) against passing on the gene through non-albino carriers. So much for a 'special race,' if such a term actually means anything.

A few cogent observations could be made on what we have learned so far:

- Environment has not appeared to be a factor in the development of a high percentage of albinos in a population. In fact, the populations with the most albinos are very close to the equator, where climactic conditions make albinism the least survivable.

- Albinos are anywhere from two to two hundred times more likely to be found in dark races than in light ones, despite the much more obvious stigma that they would carry among people who look so much different then themselves. Three concentrations of albinism have been identified so far: The Hopi/Zuni of Arizona, the Kuna of Darien, and a so-far unspecified population of Tanzania [UPDATE: The highest concentration of albinos turns out to be due to artificial selection. See articles on Ukerewe Island].

- The main common factor behind the various ethnogeographical concentrations of albinism seems to be animism, functioning in three ways: one, sexual promiscuity resulting in uncontrolled inbreeding; two, a strong resistance to a scientific approach for preventing the passing on of the trait; and three, a typical association of whiteness with heightened spiritual power or influence. This last factor could be a result of the fallacious cause-and-effect reasoning of animists: an albino shaman did something that was perceived to be a demonstration of great spiritual power, and the source of that power was then attributed to his or her whiteness.

- Animism, especially in Africa, puts a premium on body parts from albinos, which results in pressure on albinism in the general population, but also in an artificial concentration of albinos in safe havens, where they are more likely to pass on their albino genes.

There is much we are still learning about the cultural factors behind the preponderance of albinism, but one thing seems sure: No albino race has apparently ever existed, nor is one ever likely to.

Monowi, Nebraska: Requiem for the small town

Monowi had always been a small town. But it contained, within living memory, a school, a church, and a general store. And a tavern, of course--the only business still operating. Elsie Eiler, the proprietor, is also the town's mayor. This gives her the unique privilege of renewing her own liquor licence every year.

You see, in addition to being Monowi's mayor, she's also the town treasurer and tax collector. As well as being the only resident taxpayer. She is, in short, the sole resident of Monowi, and has been ever since her husband died several years ago.

What happened to the thriving town of Monowi to shutter its store, its church, and its school? Why are all its streets overgrown with grass? Why have all of its houses been left to collapse, many of them still containing the possessions of their last inhabitants? And why is the only business still standing a tavern?

We can trace the demise of this town back to the excessive regulations that have gradually made everything in town unprofitable, except getting people drunk. And oh--by the way--state regulations make it so unprofitable to transfer Elsie's liquor licence that she's stuck with running the tavern herself until the day she dies. So when she dies, so dies the town. The irony is that her tavern has no lack of customers; they just, for one reason or another, don't happen to live in Monowi.

Nebraska can be a hard place to make a living--especially for farmers. The Amish who followed Yost Yoder from Juniata County, Pennsylvania out to Gosper County, Nebraska 130 years ago found that out. The dry plains just didn't yield the kind of harvests they were used to, and within 25 years they had all packed up and moved back to Pennsylvania, where even to this day their hard-working and simple-living descendants are known as "Nebraska Amish."

They were the first Amish to leave Nebraska, but they weren't the last.

More farmers moved into Nebraska in the years leading up to World War One. Railroads crisscrossed the state, making it possible for farmers to sell their harvests to consumers thousands of miles away. Those who could hang in there through the lean years would make it all back, and more, when they harvested a bumper crop with the latest machinery. But the War brought many changes to Nebraska, including the first in a series of regulations that drove hard-working farmers and merchants from the rural areas, and from the state as a whole.

It started with the decree from the Nebraska State Council of Defense that banned teaching foreign languages in all schools in the state. This draconian measure, unthinkable today, was intended to inspire patriotism in the populace. A year later, they even banned the use of foreign languages in churches.

The Amish had the unfortunate distinction of not only using German in their church services, but also teaching it in their schools (so that their children would know how to read their German Bibles). Despite the fact that they had come to America for the very reason of escaping service in the Kaiser's armies, they were now labeled--for purely linguistic reasons--as enemy sympathisers. When the government moved in to shut down their parochial schools, the peace-loving Amish had had enough. To a man, they left the state--and have never returned, except to visit the graves of their ancestors. No one noticed it at the time, but the depopulation of rural Nebraska had already begun.

The War was now over; the State Council of Defense disbanded--but the regulations, as they always do, continued to mount. With the Amish gone, tractors began moving in. Mechanization now made it possible for one man to do the work of dozens. Children were no longer indispensable farm hands, but liabilities. The country schools that the Amish had left the state to avoid attending withered and died for lack of students to fill them. And as the schools closed, it was no longer feasible for families to live in the rural areas. Commutes to school stretched out to fifty, sixty, even seventy miles.

Back in Washington, D.C., legislators were reaching deeper and deeper into the pockets of Americans across the country, but spending that money disproportionately in urban districts. At the same time, legislators in Lincoln continued, year after year, to add to the ever-burdening list of regulations that everyone in the state, urban or rural, had to follow. It just wasn't cost-effective anymore to operate small stores and groceries. Selling raw milk became illegal, putting small dairies and the farms that supplied them out of business. Before long there was hardly anything that could be done profitably in the sparsely settled rural areas, except for getting people drunk. The demand for that never went away--not even in the cities, where the growing populations depended more and more on the largesse of the population at large. Driven from downtown by the rising crime rate, business and employed citizens moved to the suburbs.

Such is the foreseeable end of the overregulated populace: abandoned, decaying small towns and city centers, inhabited by hopeless drunks. EDIT SEPT 2024: Here is a rare YouTube video featuring Elsie, still the only resident of Monowi.

Islam will not take over the world after all, it appears

This video shows that the changes I predicted would happen in Muslim countries are already underway.

UPDATE DEC 20, 2012
The overall US birth rate decreased by 8% between 2007 and 2010, with a drop of 14% among foreign-born women. The overall birth rate has fallen to 63.2 births per 1,000 women who are of childbearing age. That is down from 122.7 births in 1957 at the peak of the Baby Boom.

UPDATE NOVEMBER 15, 2016
I may have spoken prematurely.  A closer look at the Pew Report shows that, whether they be way above replacement rate, or just barely, Muslim birthrates top those of non-Muslims in every area. So Muslims continue to grow as a proportion of every population.

One more thing to crab about

This is so typical of the way governments respond to simple problems in the real world.

The Russian fishing industry, largely responsible for the Western Nations making their continental waters off limits to foreign fishing boats, got the brilliant idea way back in 1961 of introducing King Crabs to the Barents Sea. For several decades, it didn't appear that the experiment had worked. Then, suddenly the Northern Atlantic appeared overrun with the critters, ironically just as they appeared close to commercial extinction in their home waters of the Bering Sea on Russia's other coast.

The solution was all too typical of the government: the respective nations on both sides of Russia slapped heavy restrictions on their own fleets, while Russian fishermen proceeded to flood the world markets with crabs caught in their own newly expanded territorial waters.

While this action barely saved the King Crab in the Bering Sea--the quota was filled one season in only four days of frantic fishing--it did little to contain the explosive growth of the King Crab in the Barents Sea. Grudgingly, the governments raised the quota year by year--but, maddeningly, in both oceans. This, despite the clear evidence that the crabs were nearly extinct in one ocean, but a burgeoning invasive species in the other.

And note this--the Atlantic population had been assumed extinct for at least 15 years when they suddenly appeared out of nowhere, in numbers far more than the fisherman could initially handle. And they've already made it more than halfway to the North Pole, surviving even under the ice cap.

Humans only think they have the power to raise a species up, or put it down.

Fuel burns

Southern California is aflame with several massive wildfires eating through thousands of acres of federal land.

That last phrase is the key to the problem. LA suburbanites have built their homes right up to the wooded foothills that house, among others, the Los Padres National Forest. Now, there are two things about this that make the fire so devastating.

One, since the federal land is rugged, fire crews have a hard time getting out on it to put out the fires.

Two, since the federal land is protected, no one has been allowed to clear out the dead brush that is currently feeding the flames. Some of that fuel has been accumulating for fifty years.

The combination of suburbia bordering a massive fuel dump has naturally resulted in the loss of dozens of homes, with many more to come before the fire can be contained. Ironically, the best news for these homeowners is that the remnants of Hurricane Jimena are on their way with far more water than has been thrown at the fire to date.

The other good news is that the burned-over areas are not going to be susceptible to wildfires for at least another few years.

Muslim Population Growth: A Ticking Time Bomb?

In an earlier post, I wrote about the escalating effects of Muslim population growth on a nation's civil liberties. But in this study, it doesn't appear that Muslim population growth is nearly such a threat as it is usually made out to be. Apparently much of the misinformation has been based on the way population growth numbers are generated. I will look at some of them here.

1) Muslim population growth numbers are often based on country-of-origin statistics, and then extrapolated into country-of-destination figures. But this is not reasonable. Studies have consistently shown that moving to a rich, industrialized country causes a tremendous drop in birth rates for transplanted communities. Since religion is not tabulated in census figures in America, all estimates of Muslim population, and its growth, are little better than wild guesses.

2) In countries of origin, it is often very difficult to change one's religious categorization. For example, second- and third- generation Christians in India are still being tabulated as Hindus, because their ancestors were Hindus. The same is true in many Muslim countries, where it is legally impossible to change one's religion from Muslim to anything else. Thus even many children being labeled as Muslim in census and birth records are in fact of some other religion altogether.

3) It is very difficult to keep up high birth rates in an industrialized country. There are some exceptions, and these are the very countries in Europe where up to half of all births are to Muslim women. These countries, such as France and the Netherlands, actually pay women to have children, pay them to raise them, even pay to put them in daycare so they can go back and have another one. Thus the incentive to have lots of children is even stronger than it was in the old country, and guess what: Muslim women are having lots of children. The Muslims are taking over Holland and France, and the Dutch and French are paying them to do it. And they have to; without the rising work force of immigrant labour, there will be no one to pay the retirement benefits for the increasingly barren Hollanders and Frenchmen.

But this is not the case in most Western countries, where a number of factors serve to hold down the number of children per family:

a) Child labour laws. Whereas in the country of origin a child can be earning his own keep by the age of six, not so here. By the time he is finally allowed to legally earn enough to support himself, the typical American child has set his parents back several hundred thousand dollars--money they will never see again, except for indirectly, through his payroll taxes, when they retire on Social Security.

b) Car seat laws. Whereas back in the old country the entire family could crowd into a compact car, or pile on the back of a motorcycle, here they will need, at the very least, a minivan. Once they have over five children, they'll be forced to step up again, to a much more expensive full-sized van. These are many times more expensive to purchase, operate, and maintain than the old 'family car'. These laws alone are a strong incentive to limit family size to four children or less.

c) Zoning laws. In many places it's not possible for a large family to rent an apartment. Houses are designed for six people or less; motel rooms for a maximum of five. Especially difficult is finding accommodations for the typical three-generation family of the third world that is so crucial to meeting the needs of a large number of children.

d) College expenses. Even after twelve years of virtually free public education, parents of a large number of children will likely find that a college degree for every one of their many children to be beyond their reach. College typically costs more than what a student can earn working even 30 hours a week, so there's no way a typical breadwinner is going to be able to support two or three students at a time for the decades that it takes to put all his children through college.

e) Last but not least, medical insurance that covers contraceptive drugs and surgically induced barrenness. Where birth control is not readily available, families tend to be larger by default. But when free birth control becomes a perk for working full-time, it becomes very advantageous for a woman to make use of it. Being a SAHM in a secular environment is neither a doctrine nor a duty of the Islamic woman, and many Muslim women do work outside the home. These will not be available to continue the 8-children-per-woman tradition of the old country, especially without Grandma available to help raise those children.

Although America doesn't keep statistics on the religion of birth mothers, it does keep track of their education levels. And these statistics show that, in general, the higher a woman is educated, the fewer children she will bear. As members of Muslim society attain higher educational levels--or aspire to them for their own children--Muslim fecundity is very likely to approach the national average. It should be noted that having large families is neither a doctrine nor a duty of Islam--it just happens to be presently reflected in the statistics.

Polygamy is one reason why Muslim families had such large numbers of children, back in the old country. But the statistics can be deceiving. While virtually all women under polygamy have children, many of the men don't. And the average number of children per woman under polygamy rarely exceeds four, and is often no higher than three--a rate of growth quite attainable under monogamy.

In closing, I should offer one historical example. In the late 1800's, overpopulation pressures drove millions of Germans to emigrate. World War I decimated the remaining population. When Hitler took over in 1933, his solution was to pay German women to have babies, and pay them well--whether they were married or not. The women of Germany took up the cause, and birthrates soared as Hitler prepared to loose his armies upon Europe. But Hitler was defeated, his doctrine of "lebensraum" annulled, and only two generations later, German women no longer have enough babies to maintain their population--even though the government still covers much of the cost. North Africans and Asiatics are gradually taking their place.

In my genealogical studies, I've come to the conclusion that an average of three grandchild-producing children per female is about typical for a sustainable national growth rate, with four being the highest one can reasonably expect. And the key word here is "sustainable." The Muslim population growth rates being bandied about by fearmongers are clearly not sustainable. Sooner or later, like everything, they will revert to the mean.

UPDATE NOVEMBER 15, 2016:

It turns out that the mean worldwide birthrate for Muslim women is only just over three, after all.