Lightwizard wrote:It was a literary dildo.
Which is nowhere near as much fun as a real one.
I had to go out for a few hours,I seemed to have missed the flow of conversation. Howd we get to dildos?
Sorry, farmerman. It sorta happened when I looked at the first link on this thread.
LW- There is no doubt in my mind that Rand suffered from a touch of megalomania. I personally had, on numerous occasions, seen her "in action", and do believe that she had become swept up with her own concept of grandiosity.
That does not take away from, what I believe, is that many of her basic ideas were quite sound, if quite possibly, she wasn't. As I have said in the past, I am a big believer in not "throwing out the baby with the bathwater"!
for the gungasnake.
The thesis of Silent Spring was summarized in chapter 16 , which states by example that
"It was the advent of DDT and all its relatives that ushered in the true age of resistance"...Such so that the World Health Organization declared in 1960 that ,
"resistance is the single most important problem (now) facing vector control programmes"
DDT resistance, by 1948 was seen in plague fleas and shortly thereafter in Culex mosquitoes in Italy and Grece. Chlordane was then substituted for insect control and it too, initially worked well, but within 2 years, it too had begun to fail as chlordane resistant insects began to flourish"
"The first malaria mosquito to develop rsitance to DDT was Anapholes sachovari inGreece. Extensive spraying was begun in 1946 with early success. By 1949, mosquitoes were found resting under bridges ... where(since only interiors of houses were reated)the mosquitoes recovered and , (eventually became so resistant to DDT) that they ere able to alight on treated walls of the treated houses(after that no "IDLH level was able to be used without showing toxicity to the inhabitants of the houses. DDT was , therefore as effective as spraying the mosquitoes with tap water).
"
" By 1956 only 5 Anapholes species were resistant to DDT, by 1960 that number had risen to 28, including the malarial vectors in WEST AFRICA< the MIDDLE EAST,CENTRAL AMERICA{{{{INDONESIA}}}} and EASTERN EUROPE."
(India came in a few years later with the same information. Its informative thatthe area around the Sunda sea was already a DDT resistant zone, and your comment about saving lives in W Africa by using DDT is about 40 years too late
SO the real problem of DDT is that our then, imperfect understanding of how a genome "sucks Up" the "bottleneck environmental condition" and, via genetic diversity and advantageous mutation can adapt, and overcome the bottleneck.
The present approach is for minimal spot use of various insecticides and Integrated Management, including "Killer genes", environmental physical controls, parasitism and predation.
I reread Silent Spring this week , just for this thread and, rather than finding any points of agreement with you, Im now further amazed at how much a prescient scientist Rachel Carson really was. Yes , she predicted bird problems , but based upon data reported by workers in the field who, like Maurice Brown, had a front row seat to eagle flyways at HAwk Mountain Pa . Hed been an observer of the actual time when eagle populations began to plummet. He visited nests and found smooshed eggs as did a number of scientists in the UK. (Hard to argue in favor of "overhunting" unless you were there looking in the nests(unlike SUNY's Meng , who wasnt around to note the nests with eggs of unborn eagles).
GUNGASNAKE IS DANGEROUS TO CHILDREN AND OTHER LIVING THINGS.
(understands)
