In comp.os.linux.misc Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
> On 2021-11-02, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 02/11/2021 05:04, 1p166 wrote:
>>
>>> People are SMART everywhere. It's the ability to make good USE
>>> of that that tends to be the problem.
>>
>> I disagree, people are stupid everywhere, because inserting a penis
>> in a vagina doesn't take any great intelligence. Nor does groaning
>> and pushing the baby out or slapping it against a nipple.
>>
>> Even rats can do all that.
>>
>> Society needs one or two 'bright' individuals on occasion when
>> circumstances need a different approach.
>> But in general smart people are disliked and reviled and ignored
>> by the masses.
>
> Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man.
> Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded - here and there,
> now and then - are the work of an extremely small minority,
> frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed
> by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is
> kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out
> of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
> This is known as ?bad luck.?
> -- Robert A. Heinlein: The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

A great many years ago now, an Econ professor for a college Econ class
related it like so (paraphrashing from memory):

Poverty is the default, anything greater than poverty requires the
input of work.

On 06/11/2021 19:07, Rich wrote:
> In comp.os.linux.misc Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>> On 2021-11-02, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> On 02/11/2021 05:04, 1p166 wrote:
>>>
>>>> People are SMART everywhere. It's the ability to make good USE
>>>> of that that tends to be the problem.
>>>
>>> I disagree, people are stupid everywhere, because inserting a penis
>>> in a vagina doesn't take any great intelligence. Nor does groaning
>>> and pushing the baby out or slapping it against a nipple.
>>>
>>> Even rats can do all that.
>>>
>>> Society needs one or two 'bright' individuals on occasion when
>>> circumstances need a different approach.
>>> But in general smart people are disliked and reviled and ignored
>>> by the masses.
>>
>> Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man.
>> Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded - here and there,
>> now and then - are the work of an extremely small minority,
>> frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed
>> by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is
>> kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out
>> of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
>> This is known as ?bad luck.?
>> -- Robert A. Heinlein: The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
>
> A great many years ago now, an Econ professor for a college Econ class
> related it like so (paraphrashing from memory):
>
> Poverty is the default, anything greater than poverty requires the
> input of work.
>
There is a strange fact, argued over by archaeologists and
anthropologists, that hunter gatherers seem to have kept population
numbers well below mass starvation levels. Only once people started
eating cultivated starches did population levels, and famines, seem to
arise.

Did they strangle surplus babies?

--
The New Left are the people they warned you about.

In comp.os.linux.misc The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> On 06/11/2021 19:07, Rich wrote:
>> In comp.os.linux.misc Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>>> On 2021-11-02, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 02/11/2021 05:04, 1p166 wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> People are SMART everywhere. It's the ability to make good USE
>>>>> of that that tends to be the problem.
>>>>
>>>> I disagree, people are stupid everywhere, because inserting a penis
>>>> in a vagina doesn't take any great intelligence. Nor does groaning
>>>> and pushing the baby out or slapping it against a nipple.
>>>>
>>>> Even rats can do all that.
>>>>
>>>> Society needs one or two 'bright' individuals on occasion when
>>>> circumstances need a different approach.
>>>> But in general smart people are disliked and reviled and ignored
>>>> by the masses.
>>>
>>> Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man.
>>> Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded - here and there,
>>> now and then - are the work of an extremely small minority,
>>> frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed
>>> by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is
>>> kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out
>>> of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
>>> This is known as ?bad luck.?
>>> -- Robert A. Heinlein: The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
>>
>> A great many years ago now, an Econ professor for a college Econ class
>> related it like so (paraphrashing from memory):
>>
>> Poverty is the default, anything greater than poverty requires the
>> input of work.
>>
> There is a strange fact, argued over by archaeologists and
> anthropologists, that hunter gatherers seem to have kept population
> numbers well below mass starvation levels. Only once people started
> eating cultivated starches did population levels, and famines, seem to
> arise.
>
> Did they strangle surplus babies?

Not having been alive during the "hunter gatherer" era of human
history, I do not have any idea how they accomplished this. Most
likely it was a combination of multiple interconnected factors.

And, a key word in your phrase is "seem". Implying that the
archaeologists and anthropologists may not even be so sure this was
indeed the case or not.

On 11/7/21 05:55, Rich wrote:
> In comp.os.linux.misc The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> On 06/11/2021 19:07, Rich wrote:
>>> In comp.os.linux.misc Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>>>> On 2021-11-02, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 02/11/2021 05:04, 1p166 wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> People are SMART everywhere. It's the ability to make good USE
>>>>>> of that that tends to be the problem.
>>>>>
>>>>> I disagree, people are stupid everywhere, because inserting a penis
>>>>> in a vagina doesn't take any great intelligence. Nor does groaning
>>>>> and pushing the baby out or slapping it against a nipple.
>>>>>
>>>>> Even rats can do all that.
>>>>>
>>>>> Society needs one or two 'bright' individuals on occasion when
>>>>> circumstances need a different approach.
>>>>> But in general smart people are disliked and reviled and ignored
>>>>> by the masses.
>>>>
>>>> Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man.
>>>> Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded - here and there,
>>>> now and then - are the work of an extremely small minority,
>>>> frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed
>>>> by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is
>>>> kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out
>>>> of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
>>>> This is known as ?bad luck.?
>>>> -- Robert A. Heinlein: The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
>>>
>>> A great many years ago now, an Econ professor for a college Econ class
>>> related it like so (paraphrashing from memory):
>>>
>>> Poverty is the default, anything greater than poverty requires the
>>> input of work.
>>>
>> There is a strange fact, argued over by archaeologists and
>> anthropologists, that hunter gatherers seem to have kept population
>> numbers well below mass starvation levels. Only once people started
>> eating cultivated starches did population levels, and famines, seem to
>> arise.
>>
>> Did they strangle surplus babies?
>
> Not having been alive during the "hunter gatherer" era of human
> history, I do not have any idea how they accomplished this. Most
> likely it was a combination of multiple interconnected factors.
>
> And, a key word in your phrase is "seem". Implying that the
> archaeologists and anthropologists may not even be so sure this was
> indeed the case or not.
>
Primitive cultures used abortion and exposure as did the ancient Greeks
to dispose of unwanted or deformed infants. The women had found an herb
to prevent conception but though over use it was driven into extinction.
Girls were often exposed just to hold down the population.
Sometime the exposed were eaten by wild animals and sometimes they
were rescued by slavers and other pimps. The American Indigenous
of the California area used abortion.

Of course after an epidemic ripped through a population
a lot of children were no longer excess and escaped exposure.
Lots of infantile and childhood deaths before the modern era i.e.
before we came up with antibiotics and vaccines. Such times
may return as the effect of drugs is diluted by over exposure
of the microbes to those antibiotics.

And then of course the idiocy of the Anti-Vaccination
mob. George Washington mandated smallpox vaccination by the
way at Valley Forge lest all his soldiers die. We embraced
mandatory smallpox vaccination and eventually smallpox
was wiped out except in laboratories were it only exists
in isolated cultures for study.

bliss-“Nearly any fool can use a GNU/Linux computer. Many do.”
After all here I am...

--
bliss dash SF 4 ever at dslextreme dot com

In article <sm8t5d$gua$1@dont-email.me>,
Bobbie Sellers <bliss@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
....
> And then of course the idiocy of the Anti-Vaccination
>mob. George Washington mandated smallpox vaccination by the
>way at Valley Forge lest all his soldiers die.

I keep hearing this story from the anti-anti-vax crowd (of which I am a
member), and it is a good story, but the sad fact is that the dates don't
quite line up. Look it up. The smallpox vaccine was discovered/invented
by Edward Jenner in 1796. The American Revolutionary War was fought in the
late 1770s.

This is a problem.

--
[Donald] Trump didn't have it all handed to him by his parents,
like Hillary Clinton did.

- Some dumb cluck in Ohio; featured in Michael Moore's "Trumpland" -

On 11/11/2021 20:12, Kenny McCormack wrote:
> In article <sm8t5d$gua$1@dont-email.me>,
> Bobbie Sellers <bliss@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
> ...
>> And then of course the idiocy of the Anti-Vaccination
>> mob. George Washington mandated smallpox vaccination by the
>> way at Valley Forge lest all his soldiers die.
>
> I keep hearing this story from the anti-anti-vax crowd (of which I am a
> member), and it is a good story, but the sad fact is that the dates don't
> quite line up. Look it up. The smallpox vaccine was discovered/invented
> by Edward Jenner in 1796. The American Revolutionary War was fought in the
> late 1770s.
>
> This is a problem.
>

Thomas Dimsdale inoculated Catherine The Great against Smallpox circa
1767. The benefits of watching Russian dramas on Amazon Prime :-)

AIUI prior to Jenner's work with Cow Pox, people were inoculated with a
weak strain of smallpox itself.

I know nothing about Washington w.r.t vaccination, but it seems possible.

On Thu, 11 Nov 2021 15:12:38 -0500, Kenny McCormack <gazelle@shell.xmission.com> wrote:

> In article <sm8t5d$gua$1@dont-email.me>,
> Bobbie Sellers <bliss@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
> ...
>> And then of course the idiocy of the Anti-Vaccination
>> mob. George Washington mandated smallpox vaccination by the
>> way at Valley Forge lest all his soldiers die.
>
> I keep hearing this story from the anti-anti-vax crowd (of which I am a
> member), and it is a good story, but the sad fact is that the dates don't
> quite line up. Look it up. The smallpox vaccine was discovered/invented
> by Edward Jenner in 1796. The American Revolutionary War was fought in the
> late 1770s.
> This is a problem.

They didn't use a vaccine to protect the soldiers. In 1777, he used intentional
natural "vaccination", aka herd immunity, by infecting the soldiers with smallpox
away from the front lines so they wouldn't be prone to infection while fighting.
https://www.history.com/news/smallpox-george-washington-revolutionary-war

Regards, Dave Hodgins

gazelle@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack) writes:
> Bobbie Sellers <bliss@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
> ...
>> And then of course the idiocy of the Anti-Vaccination
>>mob. George Washington mandated smallpox vaccination by the
>>way at Valley Forge lest all his soldiers die.
>
> I keep hearing this story from the anti-anti-vax crowd (of which I am a
> member), and it is a good story, but the sad fact is that the dates don't
> quite line up. Look it up. The smallpox vaccine was discovered/invented
> by Edward Jenner in 1796. The American Revolutionary War was fought in the
> late 1770s.
>
> This is a problem.

I suspect Washington used https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation, a
practice at least couple of centuries old at the time and possibly much
older. Jenner wasn’t even first to use cowpox to immunize against
smallpox, but he does seem to have been instrumental in mass adoption.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/