Re: a comment on Timing by Dovina	17-Oct-06/2:53 PM
Of course I can, but how can you possibly hope to stop the entire world's population growing? You can slow it down - through birth control - but I don't believe anyone could ever stop it. Therefore, overpopulation will inevitably happen one day. Does our task, by your account, end simply with pushing back that day? We cannot predict exactly what the world will be like in 300 years, but we can say pretty confidently that the planet will not be any bigger. We can also say that the natural resources are unlikely to have suddenly replenished theirselves (*grin*), and you've already said we can't rely on future technology to provide. So yes, population control will be a useful tool for giving a bit more breathing space to the future generations. But we still need to come up with an ultimate solution (nearly said 'final solution' there, that would have been interesting...), either to hold a static population level (which I don't think can be done) or find a new way of accommodating and providing for everyone. Maybe we could build massive tower blocks and multi-storey farms.
Re: a comment on Israel (Through The Eyes Of One Jewish Soul) by slana5	17-Oct-06/2:42 PM
You are inconceivably thick. 'Land stolen from the Palestinians' - which is the oldest surviving race with a claim to that land? "The land was at a crossroads of the Middle East and the Mediterranean and was therefore conquered many times: by Egyptians, Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Seleucid Greeks and Romans, as well as invading Philistines. Of these, only the Jews made the land into their national home. Jewish national culture, fused with religion, centered around the geography, seasons and history of the land and of the Jews in the land." (http://www.zionism-israel.com/zionism_history.htm) Here's one: ENGLAND Land of broken promises Land stolen from the Celts, not to mention the other third of the globe we managed to acquire from its unsuspecting natives Land of liars, crooks and Boer-murderers Land supported by the Yanks Land being slowly wiped off the map
Re: a comment on Timing by Dovina	17-Oct-06/2:24 PM
I'll have to ask forgiveness for sidetracking. I tend to chase butterflies when I'm supposed to be hunting the jabberwock, although they always turn out to be Jabberwock-Life-Force butterflies, so they're a partly relevant quarry. So the world's population is going to outgrow the planet's means of supporting it. That's true enough, but while the human race is prosperous it will always grow, and that cutoff point will be reached one day regardless of how long it's put it off. I don't believe it could ever be practically possible to keep the earth's population static. If you only want to look fifty or a hundred years into the future, then fine. Your argument is valid, regardless of whether it can be successfully implemented. But this is immediately either giving a greater moral status to the children of the next 50-100 years than to those born after, or it's saying that we have a diminished responsibility towards those born after the cutoff point. Unless, of course, you are just going for buying us a bit more time in which to find a complete answer. That's fine by me. And I'll grant that the obvious solution is fewer births...plus social change which makes it unnecessary to have many children. But, if you accept that we're going to max out the planet sooner or later, you've also got to accept that we need a more permanent solution as well. Maybe we could populate Mars. Please grant me 'theirselves'. It'll make my day.
Re: a comment on weather poem part 3: the hurricane (renga) by nypoet22	17-Oct-06/4:25 AM
Hung on heavy air -they scatter. Haze is broken by rusty stormclouds
Re: a comment on Timing by Dovina	17-Oct-06/4:20 AM
Well okay, if you're not deeply Catholic or something like that, maybe birth control should be made more available and acceptable. But you've then got to tie that in with the aforementioned shift in attitudes, and more importantly, with a change in circumstances for those people who you're talking about. And that change in circumstance won't happen if you just target the ordinary people. What power do they have? You say that women in this sort of situation would prefer to have fewer children. That may well be true at present, but it's a potentially cyclic desire. We're seeing it happen here; women wanted, and to an extent got, the power to have their own careers, lives, freedom and something vaguely approaching equality with men. And it's backfired spectacularly for some, who've got to the point where they've decided they now want a family, but can't have one. A rising number of women are now eschewing the career opportunities in order to return to having a traditional family. That's how I was brought up so my view is probably blinkered, certainly, but in 5 or 10 years we could be seeing a large percentage of women actually wanting to be housewives with 3 or 4 kids. And the same could easily happen in the parts of the world we've been discussing; after a decade or two of liberty, women may begin to actively want to return to being mothers-of-many. In which case, won't we be back to where we started? As for the typos, I'll admit to the second, should have had a space, but 'themselves' really annoys me. 'Work it out for them selves' doesn't make sense to me. The self is the possession of the individual, right? So 'my self' and 'your self' should in the plural become 'their selves', surely?
Re: a comment on Work by half.italian	17-Oct-06/4:03 AM
Euphoria? Not an overpowering sense of nihilism? That's what I often get from films. What did you think to Requiem For A Dream? I utterly hated it. 'Crash' had the finest moment of raw emotion in of any film I've ever seen.
Re: Crappy by drnick	17-Oct-06/3:58 AM
Heh. Line 5 needs punctuating, and the final rhyme is too direct - all the rest are loose/half rhymes. 'Sure you could rewrite the world' makes me think this was written about a computer programmer/serial gamer.
Re: Do you fit in-to the dark? by Hostileintent	16-Oct-06/12:53 PM
Have you ever thought of rhyme As some sort of metric crime?
Re: Work by half.italian	16-Oct-06/12:51 PM
Which film? It sounds vaguely American Beauty-esque.
Re: a comment on Timing by Dovina	16-Oct-06/12:36 PM
I tend to go off on tangents. All anyone can do at such a time is nod politely and humour me. The thing is, if we have to afford potential human beings equal (or nearly equal) consideration, as you seem to be saying, is it not more immoral to deprive them of the chance to live than it is to let them come into a world where their chances of a high quality of life are slim? I guess it's an extension of the abortion issue. And anyway, if modern humanity was bright enough to be able to agree on this, surely we wouldn't need to instigate any action? People would work it out for theirselves. Rather than leap into action against the ordinary people (quite literally) on the street, I'd rather see some sort of advancement take place in the higher echelonsof government; i.e. less corruption and more looking after the people they're supposed to represent. Naive of me to say this, I'm sure, but at present the lifestyle many impoverished families lead is the only one which is going to allow them to see tomorrow. I don't think that any change of attitudes, however noble and right, will remedy the situation one little bit. Unfortunately the West, who has the potential to make changes happen, has been neutralised in the regime-altering department after Afghanistan and Iraq. America might get away with going into Iran, but beyond that what political clout will you be left with? We already have none, and I don't see that improving for a long while.
Re: Four and a half paragraphs of silence by ?-Dave_Mysterious-?	16-Oct-06/9:00 AM
Yours is the finest username on poemeranker. -?-
Re: Being Called Dave by ?-Dave_Mysterious-?	16-Oct-06/8:53 AM
Genius.
Re: a comment on Timing by Dovina	16-Oct-06/2:20 AM
What have I to lose? By 2050 I probably won't care too much about this, if I'm still alive, because by that point I'll have to keep working until I die just to live that long. The fact is (as I see it) that giving women more liberty and keeping the world's population down share very little common ground. Nobody should be wholly subject to another person. But if everyone is completely independent, where does that leave marriage? It will no longer be a binding force which keeps people together through the rough times out of necessity. As soon as a marriage has its first problem, there's nothing preventing one party upping sticks and leaving. You'll say that there's nothing to show such a result will necessarily happen, and there isn't. But just look at the general first world trends over recent decades. Divorce rates and the number of single-parent families are increasing on a scale unimaginable a century ago. What was once a sacred bond is becoming little more than a token novelty which can be discarded at any time. As for the rising population, well we're going to reach the limit one day unless natural forces intervene, aren't we? And when we do, war, famine or plague will keep the numbers in check. It's ironic that you call the mentality one from the Middle Ages (which is true enough) but look for a reduction in numbers, because the only thing which can drastically diminish the number of human beings on the planet (aside from a good ol' epidemic) is a social return to the Middle Ages. While we continue to attempt to create an entire first world planet, we will create more problems of space and resources. After all, the whole point of first world society is to be populous and prosperous. But are there enough world resources for Earth to be totally first world? I don't think any of my comment made sense.
Re: a comment on Timing by Dovina	15-Oct-06/4:03 PM
The world as we know it will change either way. If we do nothing then eventually nature will cut us back down again. It's already happening in China, in the AIDS-ridden countryside. But if we go for an all-out change of attitude on a large scale, there is no way that the world can stay the same either. For one thing, the idea of lasting marriage will continue on the slippery downward slope that it's already on.
Re: a comment on Timing by Dovina	15-Oct-06/2:43 PM
Well I've never been to India or any third world nations, so I'll take your word for it (Amanda doesn't seem particularly enslaved though, to be fair). I wouldn't want to see anyone have to live as a slave, man, woman or child. But similarly, being totally freed will not make any impact on the situation, I don't think. If you're talking about children being born purely as workers, then simply changing attitudes won't do anything. Kids will still be mass-conceived purely out of necessity. You've got to find some way of making everyone richer without adversely affecting the economy. If you say everyone should be totally free, you can't then limit the number of children they can have. You can't even set an unofficial 'target', because that's doing pretty much the same thing as enforcing a strict limit, except it's being done through emotional blackmail rather than armed troops. And hasn't China proven that even if you do set a child cap, the population will still swell uncontrollably?
Re: a comment on Fat girls Who Wear Short Skirts During Winter Quarter by DurtKL	15-Oct-06/2:28 PM
Oh how I laughed at your comment, sir. It's funny 'cos it's true. You don't want to be there on a Saturday anyway. That's when all the wideboys (and girls) from the valleys come down and the students all go elsewhere. Try Thursday next time, or Monday at the union.
Re: a comment on A Poetry Reading by Dovina	15-Oct-06/2:23 PM
I'd even say the verbs are pretty definitive. What it needs is a solid image, like the podium, on which to build the story.
Re: a comment on A Poetry Reading by Dovina	15-Oct-06/2:21 PM
Sure, finality can have a degree of uncertainty to it. Even with death, maybe it's not the end. But in the poem you explicitly say 'and never read again', which has a sort of post-apocalyptic 'never ever, not under any circumstances has she, does she, or will she read. Not once.' I'd like to see that tone built to throughout. I am not a poet. I barely count as an apprentice. But at the moment I'm going all-out crazy on metrics; the more I look for, talk about, and criticise other peoples' use of metre, the better I'll become at it. I'll probably sign up to eratosphere tomorrow, it looks a pretty good place to go for improving. I'll stay on the ranker as well, but probably worry less about posting proper critiques, and more about the fun stuff like renga-writing.
Re: a comment on Timing by Dovina	15-Oct-06/2:13 PM
Scrap the idea of women as possessions you mean? Maybe it would work. But you could also argue that it'll have the reverse effect, like over here. Women are not treated as possessions (for the most part) in Britain any more, so thirteen-year-old girls are free to fuck whoever they want without contraception, get pregnant, and contribute to the rising teenage pregnancy rate. Not to mention the spiralling number of single-parent families. That's in very simple, not-capable-of-much-real-thought terms, but I think it explains what I mean. Of course, I'm not saying that women should be treated as objects. But if you don't want nine billion people on the planet, absolute liberty isn't the solution.
Re: a comment on Timing by Dovina	15-Oct-06/6:54 AM
Yes, but it's populated mostly by non-whites with a religion which nobody understands, odd-shaped gods, brightly-coloured clothes, stuff being sold in the street, and lepers. So of course it's going to be seen as full of quaintly backward poor people too helpless to do anything for theirselves by those of us fortunate enough to live in this respectably black-suited world of legalities and pristine healthcare. I mean, it's not as though we have to worry about beggars here, is it?