An Upside-down Christmas Tree in China

In an earlier post, I pointed out that national fertility rates tend to fall wherever national income rises. While such is indeed the case in China, the drop is further exacerbated by the national One-Child Policy, which went into effect in 1979. Not surprisingly, there's now a big drop in the 30-34-year-old cohort of the Chinese population. As China's population growth slows to a crawl, there's some talk of eliminating the policy, or at least cutting it back further (only about a third of Chinese couples are currently subject to the restriction).

But actually, it's already too late. The pre-policy Chinese couples are already fast heading out of their peak childbearing years, so for an entire generation to come, the reproductive potential of the Chinese is going to be severely curtailed.

In order do their part to keep China's population from dropping, every couple consisting of two only grandchildren (the 'little emperors') would have to first produce six children just to replace themselves and their parents; then another eight to replace their grandparents! Obviously, that is not going to happen. Instead, as the larger cohorts of the population die off, the population will peak, then start a long and continuous decline--even if the birth rate doubles or triples among the remaining cohorts as they come of childbearing age.

That results in an Upside Down Christmas Tree.

End Game in Iran

Three Ramadans have come and gone since I first started writing about "the impending war with Iran." I'm glad to say that none of my bellicose predictions have yet come true, but at the same time it's clear that war with Iran is at least as immanent as it ever was.

For the last year or so I've let my blogroll link to Joel Rosenberg's blog tell the story, but this time I'm going to comment directly on his latest post.

Denver, Colorado — Evidence is mounting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is increasingly prepared to order a massive preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear sites. Here’s why:

1. Iran aggressively pursuing two routes to nuclear weaponry, one via uranium enrichment, the other via plutonium.

2. Thus, Iran is steadily approaching the “red line,” the point at which Netanyahu has said Israel would have no choice but to strike.

3. Officials in Jerusalem do not see the Obama administration taking decisive action to prevent Iran from getting The Bomb.

4. To the contrary, Israel sees President Obama and Secretary John Kerry weakening their resolve and opening the door to indefinite negotiations with the new Rouhani administration, which they perceive as “moderate.”

5. Israeli military leaders believe they have the operational capabilities to destroy — or at least seriously damage — Iran’s nuclear program, but they have a shortening window of time, after which the task would be beyond Israel’s capabilities.

Now, the approaching deadline is the activation of the new plutonium-generating reactor in Arak. In the view of the US at least, the environmental damage caused by blowing up a working reactor would be unacceptable.

I'm beginning to doubt that such a threat would be enough to stop Israel at this point. Look at Operation Orchard--where the Israeli air force flew through Turkey to to Syria's norther desert and blew up a nuclear reactor being built by the North Koreans. Look at the numerous nuclear accidents in North Korea itself. It's clear that the aftermath of a nuclear catastrophe is no longer as unthinkable as it once was.

Which brings us to the matter of route and weapons. Israel is reported to have stowed MOABs at an airfield in Azerbaijan, which would allow a total fly-over of Iran without much of any warning. It's also possible that Israel would use low-yield nuclear warheads to permanently disable Iran's underground nuclear facilities, which are also far enough out in the desert to minimise the ecological fallout of such a strike.  I don't see an attack at this stage in the game being desperate enough to resort to that, though.

'Nigger' is the new 'Peasant'

One thing about living in the modern age is the ease at which one can look up the meaning of a word. And I'm not just talking about The Internet; I was able to pick up an 8-pound unabridged 1929 dictionary for its value in scrap paper. I'm therefore able to look up meanings that are now so obsolete that they may be left out of most online definitions. Thus my surprise when I found that there is a word with a very specific meaning I could have used instead of the word 'nigger' when writing this post.

The word is 'peasant.' An ancient meaning of the word, still found online, is:

a member of a class of persons, as in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, who are small farmers or farm laborers of low social rank.

Obviously, peasants were the niggers of their day. But you can see how this usage of the word has not kept pace with modern technology: niggers of the late 19th and early 20th century in the American South definitely fit this definition of peasants, but most niggers nowadays wouldn't.  You don't have to work on a plantation to belong to a class with a low social rank.

Is AIDS a curse on homosexuals?

In an earlier post, I wrote how animism and AIDS are a deadly combination, as animists continue the behaviour that gave them the HIV even when told that AIDS can't be caught by someone putting a curse on them.

In May of 2023 I got the following comment to that post:

"I've always wondered about this. So would this prove that homosexuality is in the end wrong? Bisexuals being the worst for spreading it around to women and then to guys like Magic Johnson who had sex with hundreds of women. Right? or am I wrong?" --Anonymous 5/07/2013 11:37:00 pm

I decided to delete my reply and that comment and instead devote an entire post to a more thought-out answer. In order to do so I will address the comment in sections.

"Basically most gay people would have died out if not for condoms."

Condoms have not helped keep people from dying of AIDS, if for no other reason than that a lot of people engaging in HIV-spreading behaviours don't use them. The main reason that people in Africa and elsewhere have stopped dying from AIDS is that they have been taking antiretroviral drugs, which keep them from developing AIDS even after they have the HIV.

"Bisexuals being the worst for spreading it around to women"

Well, by definition a bisexual is someone who engages in risky behaviours with both sexes, and AIDS did originate with males. But the bisexuals aren't to blame for most of the spread of the HIV, unless you include all prostitutes within the definition of bisexuals (and quite a number of them do fit that definition by their behaviour). HIV mostly spreads by means of risky behaviour between an infected prostitute and his/er thousands of (typically male) clients. So you are wrong in making this particular charge.

"guys like Magic Johnson who had sex with hundreds of women."

Yes, Magic is probably responsible for passing on the HIV to many of his female risky-behaviour partners. But I don't know as that has ever been alleged or proved in court, so at best it's a reasonable assumption--all the less reasonable if he was consistent at using a condom.

As more and more American money is spread around Africa in the form of free retrovirals, the death rate from AIDS will go down regardless of animistic influence on behaviour. But in the mean time, AIDS will continue to strike animists disproportionately, especially since animists are reluctant to even be tested for AIDS, which of course is necessary to be entered into a retroviral treatment program. 

"So would this prove that homosexuality is in the end wrong?"

Well, that's a moral question, and how you answer it depends on your moral foundation. If you don't believe in The Creator, than your only foundation is the Survival of the Fittest. Since homosexuality doesn't pass on one's genes, it's morality is already seriously suspect from that point of view. Bisexuality would be just fine for one of that moral persuasion, other than that bisexuals are even more likely to pass on the HIV as homosexuals.

But in the end, the fact that animists are more likely to die from AIDS than rationalists has no bearing on the rightness or wrongness of homosexuality, regardless of your moral foundation.

Okay, so much for the comment--now to the actual title of my post--"Is  AIDS a curse on homosexuals?"

In order the answer this question with a specific 'yes' or 'no', we must first establish several things:

1) Is there anyone with both the ability and the motivation to design and send a disease on someone?
Well, as far as design is concerned, only The Creator has that power. If you don't believe in The Creator, then you can stop your investigation right now, and answer the question with "no." You may not be right, but at least you'll be certain.
If you do believe in The Creator, then you can go on to wonder whether The Creator would do such a thing. Now you are inquiring into the Nature and Character of The Creator, and to get anywhere in that sort of investigation, you will need to find out whether there is any first-hand information that addresses that.
Well, the Bible does give information on the Nature and Character of The Creator, but if you don't believe the Bible, you may as well stop right there and say that at best, you don't know the answer to the question. If you do believe the Bible, then studying it will get you a long ways towards your answer as to whether God would, or did, design and send a specific disease targeting a specific sinful behaviour.

2) Is the HIV designed in such a way as to specifically target homosexuals and/or their behaviour?

3) Is the HIV effective in targeting homosexuals to the extent that it only harms them and is incapable of transmitting widespread harm to the population at large?

I think once you get this far in the investigation, you will realise that AIDS cannot be a curse on homosexuals--that's too specific a charge. Change the question slightly, and ask if AIDS could be a curse on fornicators in general, and you're much more likely to end up with a positive answer.

Where in the Middle East was the Red Sea?

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I've been online a bit of late researching the fairly recent (as Bible scholarship goes) theory that the Israelites, upon escaping from Israel, crossed that part of the Red Sea now known as the Gulf of Aqaba (in Israel, the Gulf of Eilat). Even Snopes has tried to debunk the theory, and the best they can come up with after five years is "Undetermined."

I'm not happy with the slipshod manner in which this theory has been investigated on the ground, but I will say one thing: It's clear that "the Red Sea" (when doubly capitalised in the KJV, it's always a translation of yam suf) does, in at least a handful of places in the Torah, refer to the shoreline of Edom on an arm of the Indian Ocean (interestingly, both 'Edom' and 'Indian' can carry the connotation of the colour red).

Thus it has to be at least a possibility, from a biblical perspective, that the Israelites walked across the Gulf of Aqaba on dry ground. Moreover, even Eusebius in his Encyclopedia located it there. However, apparently out of respect for Constantine's mother, who had located Mt Sinai in what is now (because of her) known as the Sinai Peninsula, he failed to explicitly locate Mt. Sinai in Midian (where it must have been, if the Gulf of Aqaba was crossed in the Exodus).

The problem is, it doesn't appear to be a physical possibility. The Gulf is at least 800 meters deep at the center of its portion of the Great Rift Valley. I have yet to see a sea chart of any stretch of the Gulf that would allow for passage by foot should the water level drop--unless it were to freeze over, and that goes against the statement that the Israelites crossed over "on dry ground."

The Gulf-of-Eilat theory requires that the Israelites covered about 200 miles in what appears from Exodus to be a three-day period. Usually proponents of this route are semantically able to stretch that out to about a week, but still--could an entire nation really cover 30 miles a day, even if that day were prolonged by a massive nightlight overhead?

I found documentation to show that this is basically impossible by natural means--of course if God wanted to, he could have made all the toddlers run 10 miles an hour around the clock, but were that the case, they could have made the trip in only one day!

The Spanish Road was a 16th-century supply line linking the Hapsburg Empire's domains in the Low Countries and Italy. Although sea travel around the Iberian peninsula was faster, the Road was preferred because it ran entirely through territory friendly to the Hapsburgs. Marching soldiers could average 12-15 miles a day along its 1000-km length. And it wasn't darkness that limited them to that--it was the sapping heat of summer, when the days were longest. The fastest trek on record, during the dark month of February, averaged 23 miles a day.

If an army at forced march couldn't top 23 miles a day, even 30 miles a day for an entire nation on the move is supernaturally fast. Fifty to sixty miles in three days over level land, however, is entirely within the realm of possibility. Thus we are forced to accept a Red Sea Passage over the Gulf of Suez.