The 'progressive' towns constantly listed as our best role models also lack racial diversity, finds Aaron Renn. Why has no one called them on it?
Among the media and academia and within planning circles, there's a generally standing answer to the question of what cities are the best, the most progressive and best role models for small and midsize cities. The standard list includes Portland, Seattle, Austin, Minneapolis and Denver.
In particular, Portland is held up as a paradigm, with its urban growth boundary, extensive transit system, excellent cycling culture and a pro-density policy. These cities are frequently contrasted with those of the Rust Belt and South, which are found wanting, often even by locals, as "cool" urban places.
But look closely at these exemplars, and a curious fact emerges. If you take away the dominant Tier One cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles – places no one expects the average U.S. city to be able to imitate – you will find that the "progressive" cities aren't red or blue, but another color entirely: white.
In fact, not one of these "progressive" cities even reaches the national average for percentage of African-Americans in its core county. Perhaps not progressiveness but whiteness is the defining characteristic of the group.
The progressive paragon of Portland is the whitest on the list, with an African-American population less than half the national average. It is America's ultimate White City. The contrast with other, supposedly less advanced cities is stark.
It is not just a regional thing, either. Even look just within the state of Texas, where Austin is held up as a bastion of right thinking urbanism next to sprawlvilles like Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston.
While Austin is far more diverse than a place like Portland, it is still much whiter than other major Texas cities, comparable only to Fort Worth. And while its African-American population lags the national average, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston both exceed it.
This raises troubling questions about these cities.
The state faces a water crisis and population boom, but radioactive waste from the Nevada Test Site has polluted aquifers.Years of underground nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site have left hundreds of craters filled with radioactive rubble. Above, Yucca Flat.The state faces a water crisis and population boom, but radioactive waste from the... more
"It's really just a little simple math," said Spencer Wells, Ph.D., Explorer-in-Residence with the National Geographic Society, working on their Genographic Project, which traces human migration patterns by studying DNA markers. "If you imagine that each of the Duggars' 19 kids has 19 kids, for only four generations--that's only going for 100 years--there would be 130,000 descendants of this one couple."
But, at the same time, it's not as easy as all that. Wells, and colleague Chris Tyler-Smith, Ph.D.,head of the Human Evolution team at The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, said it's too early to tell what the Duggars' genetic impact on America will be.
Let's look back at Khan again. And clarify things a bit, while we're at it. It's important to point out that nobody knows for certain that 8 percent of Asian men are descendants of the Mongol leader. What we know is that those men share a collection of genetic mutations--a haplotype--on the Y chromosome, which suggests that they all shared a common male ancestor.
Y chromosomes are passed from father to son intact, without the shake-n-bake interference of maternal DNA. So Y chromosomes don't get remixed each generation, but they do, occasionally, pick up a small change here and there from random mutation. Scientists know roughly how often those mutations happen, so they can look at a haplotype, see how different it is from the general population, and get an idea of when that family group broke off from the herd. In this case, the point of origination would have been about 1000 years ago, give or take.
Scientists associate the haplotype with Genghis Khan not because all the men who share it have a predilection for little furry hats, but because of simple logical deduction. It's a rare guy who is going to have enough children, and whose children will have enough children (and etc.) to leave such a big mark on such a large geographic area. Historically, we know that around 800 years ago, old Genghis was doing quite a bit of marrying, concubining and raping/pillaging. And we know that his immediate descendants were also powerful men who were able to have a lot of children, with a lot of different women, in a lot of different places. Chris Tyler-Smith explains it thusly,
"So we can either say that there were two separate events: One, Genghis Khan's lineage, which was present in Mongolia 800 years ago and we know was greatly amplified over the next centuries, has disappeared from the current gene pool, while another lineage that arose in the same place around the same time has reached high frequency without leaving any trace in history. Or we can say that Genghis Khan's lineage and the star cluster lineage were the same. To me, this second possibility is the simpler explanation. Indirect, but a bit more than guesswork."
To tie this whole Mongolian warlord thing back to the Duggars, just look at the kids. Genghis' sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons were privileged by his power and wealth. They had the means to support BIG families, and the social capital to acquire those families. In fact, they had the social obligation to breed it up. And, thus, did the not-exactly-meek-and-peaceful Khan inherit most of Asia.
Whether the scientists of 2800 are studying the Duggar haplotype depends on how many babies the 19 Duggar kids, and their kids, have. In this case, it's not necessarily a given that the parents' productivity will be inherited. If growing up in America's biggest TV family leaves most of the kids gun-shy, so to speak, the family could end up with no more of a long-term genetic footprint than the rest of us. On the other hand, there are certainly social and religious factors encouraging the Duggarlets to follow in their parents' footsteps. And, if a large number of them do, and if their kids carry on the family tradition...we could well be on the way to welcoming our Duggar overlords. Genetically speaking.The answer: Kinda-sorta.
"It's really just a little simple math," said Spencer... more
This video is about Plans to collapse the economy of United States and Enslave and eliminate most of the population, but beware this is a plan for the rest of the world, watch and find the truth, if you don't believe it then at least research what is being said before allowing your ignorance to take over.
Some things are just to simple to see.This video is about Plans to collapse the economy of United States and Enslave and... more
In just 24 years it will increase by 10 million and hit 70 million in 2029, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
That is less than half the time it took to go from 50 to 60 million between 1948 and 2005. Every year 425,000 more people will be living here, the equivalent of a city the size of Bristol.
Across the UK the total will hit 71.6 million in 2033 from just over 61 million now. Of those, 60.7 million will be living in England.
Obviously these statistics dont take into account how many of us will be sick to death of this country by then and will have left!
But let the Eugenics people get stressed out, the same ones who think abortions are our only way to solve the problem of over-population.
So what's a national debt of over a Trillion pounds shared by 70 million? well at least having more people may take the burden of usIn just 24 years it will increase by 10 million and hit 70 million in 2029, according... more
Population discussions raise lots of hackles. And they bring the crazies out of the woodwork like termites when the Orkin Man appears. But I hope to post a series of pieces on population and water because we must stop ignoring the role of population in our environmental and water problems.
The amount of water on Earth is fixed. We’re not losing it to space and we’re not getting more (with negligible exceptions). The amount of water in a river basin or watershed is fixed. It goes up and down with natural variability, and it may change over time due to climate changes, but water is a renewable resources and our use of it does not affect the amount we get next year.
But population is not fixed. It is growing, and growing rapidly in some places. As a result, the amount of water available per person (”per capita”) is declining. Here is a simple example: assume that the average flow of water in a river basin is 10 million acre-feet per year and the population using that water is 20 million people. Then on average, the water available for use is around 450 gallons per person per day, if you could use it all (which would, of course, destroy the river ecosystem, but that’s another topic). If the population of the basin doubles to 40 million, the water availability per person drops in half, to around 225 gallons per person per day. If the population doubles again, water availability drops to just over 100 gallons per person per day.
The math is easy, but the consequences can be severe: abundance can become shortage. In simple terms, addressing water problems in the face of population growth come down to three choices: (1) increase the water supply, (2) decrease the water demand per person, or (3) change the number of people. Water policy in the past century focused only on increasing supply. Most of the work of the Pacific Institute has focused on the second because we believe the options for new supply in most places are increasingly limited, expensive, and environmentally damaging, and we see enormous potential for reducing demand. Almost no discussion, anywhere, focuses on the third choice. But the failure to address population in the long run will be disastrous. And the “long-run” is no longer so far away.
Water (Population) Numbers: While total water availability remains fixed, the population of the United States has grown from around 150 million in 1950 to over 305 million today. The population of California in 1950 was 10.5 million; today it is around 37 million. The population of the state of Georgia in 1950 was under 4 million; today it is approaching 10 million. The population of Jordan in 1960 was around a million; today it is 6 million. The population of Israel in 1960 was just over 2 million; today it exceeds 7 million. The population of Iraq in 1960 was around 7.3 million; today it exceeds 31 million.
Is it any wonder that California’s, or Georgia’s, or the Middle East’s water problems have worsened?
In a recent paper, Richard Seager of Columbia and his colleagues analyzed the recent drought in the southeastern United States. This drought led to water use restrictions, depleted flows in the major river basins of the region, and growing political tensions over water sharing between Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. The authors of this paper concluded that the recent drought in the Southeast was not climatologically different from past droughts, but was felt more severely largely due to the growth in population in the region. In July, a Federal judge ruled that Atlanta had to fundamentally change the way it obtains its water, and noted that
“Too often, state, local, and even national government actors do not consider the long-term consequences of their decisions. Local governments allow unchecked growth because it increases tax revenue...
more at the link
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dr. Peter Gleick is president of the Pacific Institute, an internationally recognized water expert and a MacArthur Fellow.Population discussions raise lots of hackles. And they bring the crazies out of the... more
There is this training brochure that recently surfaced (http://www.new-fields.com/ISFC/brochure.pdf) which describes procedures for "conducting morgue operations" and "activating fatality management operations."
This same document also describes training points that cover:
• Breakdown of public services
• Medical supplies shortages
• Unwillingness to follow government orders
... among other fascinating things. The conference this advertises was held August 19 - 20 in Washington D.C. by a company called New-Fields that holds, among other things, an "Iraq Aviation & Defense Summit" featuring senior U.S. military personnel and touting "one to one meetings with Iraqi officials."
This isn't the first time a company with ties to the U.S. military has been found to be involved in the swine flu pandemic. My previous article on NaturalNews exposed the DynCorp / NIH patent link, revealing that a key influenza vaccine patent was jointly owned by the National Institutes of Health and a high-level private U.S. military contractor named DynCorp. You can read that article here: http://www.naturalnews.com/026779_swine_flu_patents_vaccines.html
So what does it all mean? Like a lot of things, it just depends what you choose to believe.
I don't know if I believe the evil, nefarious conspiracy theory described as a possibility. But neither do I trust my government (and I sure don't trust public health officials). So I'm doing exactly what I recommend everybody else do: Take charge of your own swine flu defenses by boosting your nutrition and sunlight exposure. Store some food, water and other basic preparedness supplies just in case. Be prepared to survive and thrive during the coming pandemic, regardless of what happens around you.
Vitamin D is perhaps the single most powerful nutrient in the known universe for preventing influenza, and yet the Obama White House won't dare utter a word about it to the American people, even in the face of a potentially devastating global pandemic that could be largely halted by vitamin D.
Just because everybody else is planning on becoming a victim of circumstance doesn't mean you have to. With a little basic planning and some medical common sense, you can see yourself through this pandemic with ease.There is this training brochure that recently surfaced... more
The global Muslim population stands at 1.57 billion, meaning that nearly 1 in 4 people in the world practice Islam, according to a report Wednesday billed as the most comprehensive of its kind.
The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life report provides a precise number for a population whose size has long has been subject to guesswork, with estimates ranging anywhere from 1 billion to 1.8 billion.
The project, three years in the making, also presents a portrait of the Muslim world that might surprise some. For instance, Germany has more Muslims than Lebanon, China has more Muslims than Syria, Russia has more Muslims than Jordan and Libya combined, and Ethiopia has nearly as many Muslims as Afghanistan.
"This whole idea that Muslims are Arabs and Arabs are Muslims is really just obliterated by this report," said Amaney Jamal, an assistant professor of politics at Princeton University who reviewed an advance copy.
Pew officials call the report the most thorough on the size and distribution of adherents of the world's second largest religion behind Christianity, which has an estimated 2.1 billion to 2.2 billion followers...The global Muslim population stands at 1.57 billion, meaning that nearly 1 in 4 people... more
Japan, concerned about a graying population, is now paying its citizens to reproduce. Since Japan’s birth rate has slowed to 1.37 children per average women, there will be fewer people to shoulder the burden of a huge debt and a graying population. The Wall Street Journal reports that the nation will now give new parents monthly payments–about $3,300 a year–for every new child until the age of 15. It is also offering state-funded day care, tuition waivers and other incentives. As noted on this blog in July, China may also be reconsidering its coercive population control policies.Japan, concerned about a graying population, is now paying its citizens to reproduce.... more
"It is a world away from the world we know. But this is how the countries of the world look if maps are based on population size rather than land mass.
Academics came up with the startling images after throwing away 500 years of conventional cartography. The result was this very different global landscape.
The map below shows the distribution of the Earth's population, with the size of each territory showing the relative proportion of people living there. India, China and Japan loom large as they have the largest populations.
Britain bulges beyond recognition while Australia, one of the world's largest countries, is relegated to pipsqueak status."
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1217571/A-new-world-The-amazing-map-based-population-shows-Britain-big-player.html#ixzz0TDlskqOS
Interesting to see it like that."It is a world away from the world we know. But this is how the countries of the world... more
The world population reaches 6.8 billion in Dec. 2009. Revelation 6:8 is the Fourth Horseman Death. Does this mean that H1N1 Swine Flu could mutate and be the Fourth Horseman Death in Dec. 2009?
Copyright 2009 by T. Chase. From the Revelation13.net web site, also see Revelation13.net (Revelation 13: Prophecies of the Future, Astrology, Nostradamus, Bible Prophecy, the King James version English Bible Code).The world population reaches 6.8 billion in Dec. 2009. Revelation 6:8 is the Fourth... more
If you drew a maps according to population density, not by geographical accuracy, they'd look a little something like these...
The most interesting one is that of the world as a whole. Check out how many people live in Asia compared to North America.If you drew a maps according to population density, not by geographical accuracy,... more
Family planning is five times cheaper than conventional green technologies in combating climate change. That is the claim made by Thomas Wire, a postgraduate student at the London School of Economics, and highlighted by British medics writing in the Lancet on September 19th.
According to Roger Short of the University of Melbourne, the world’s population is 6.8 billion and is expected to reach 9.1 billion by 2050. Some 95% of this growth is occurring in developing countries. In a paper published on September 21st in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, he points out that fewer people would produce less climate-changing greenhouse gas.
A companion study published in the same issue by Malcolm Potts of the University of California, Berkeley, reckons that there are 80m unintended pregnancies every year. The vast majority of these result in babies. If women who wanted contraception were provided with it, 72% of these unintended pregnancies would have been prevented, according to a report by the United Nations Population Fund.
Mr Wire totted up the cost of supplying contraception to women who wished either to delay their childbearing years or to end them artificially but who were not using contraception. He examined projections of population growth and of carbon-dioxide emissions made by the United Nations and concluded that reducing carbon emissions by one tonne would cost just $7 spent on family planning, as opposed to at least $32 spent on green technologies.
Mr Wire points out that if all women who wanted contraception were provided with it, it would prevent the release of 34 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide between 2010 and 2050. Given the myriad of other reasons to limit human fertility (Dr Potts notes, for example, that slowing population growth is essential if poverty is to be eradicated). The Economist correspondent commends this report to the principal participants in the Bangkok meeting on September 28th to discuss the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.Family planning is five times cheaper than conventional green technologies in... more
Some killer whale populations favor king salmon so much that the whales will actually die when numbers of this largest member of the salmon family drop, according to new research.
The study, published in the latest Royal Society Biology Letters, suggests that although killer whales may consume a variety of fish species and mammals, many are highly specialized hunters dependent on this single salmon species.Some killer whale populations favor king salmon so much that the whales will actually... more
Giving contraceptives to people in developing countries could help fight climate change by slowing population growth, experts said Friday.
More than 200 million women worldwide want contraceptives, but don't have access to them, according to an editorial published in the British medical journal, Lancet. That results in 76 million unintended pregnancies every year.
If those women had access to free condoms or other birth control methods, that could slow rates of population growth, possibly easing the pressure on the environment, the editors say.
It's not the first time lifestyle issues have been tied to the battle against global warming. Climate change experts have previously recommended that people cut their meat intake to slow global warming by reducing the numbers of animals using the world's resources.Giving contraceptives to people in developing countries could help fight climate... more
What do you do when you have an aging population? Offer cash for kids of course..... But does money really get the root causes why people are having less children in Japan?What do you do when you have an aging population? Offer cash for kids of course........ more
Farmers in the western United States are drilling ever deeper to water their crops. Mainers are concerned with lowered water levels in their wells when water bottlers come to town. Arizonans see the Santa Cruz River withering away. In communities around the country, these citizens are all seeing the effects of a decline in one of our most crucial but least understood natural resources: groundwater.
The water that settles between rocks and dirt under the earth’s surface after it rains accounts for about 40 percent of our drinking and agricultural water supply. Through the watershed, it links to surface waters, which share sources of water from both above and below the ground. When it disappears, pumping through wells becomes harder and more expensive; rivers, lakes, streams and wetlands dry up; and even the land itself can cave in.
Today, our groundwater resources are disappearing in many parts of the country. In some regions, underground water levels are falling because we are pumping water through wells faster than it is naturally replaced by rainfall. This may permanently damage our aquifers’ capacity to hold water, and can have broad consequences for our entire freshwater supply.
How much danger are we in? We don’t know. According to the United States Geological Survey, no one has ever comprehensively studied groundwater level declines across the country. Many states collect data on a local level, but vary in how much data they collect and the resources they contribute to such projects. Even when states do collect data, local data can only provide limited information about whole aquifers, which often cross state lines.
Without scientific data on groundwater availability, state water managers cannot make sound decisions about water allocation. That is why scientists, government agencies and non-governmental organizations are asking the federal government to collect groundwater quantity and quality data on a national scale.
Because groundwater pools beneath our feet, we do not always register its absence until the effects become drastic.
We cannot wait for the visible effects of groundwater depletion to kick in before taking action. The federal government must take action now by supporting nationwide groundwater data collection projects — so that we can accurately evaluate the status of our groundwater and take steps to protect it before it is too late.
You can read the entire report at the link.
end of excerpt.Farmers in the western United States are drilling ever deeper to water their crops.... more
THIS little island doesn't look like much. It's a slab of rock not even half a hectare big, packed with rusty metal shacks, garbage, fishermen and squads of prostitutes - essentially a micro-slum bathing in the middle of Africa's greatest lake.
But Migingo island lies along the disputed watery border between Kenya and Uganda, and politicians have even threatened to go to war over it.
The reason? Fish. Lots of them, but maybe not enough. The island is an angler's paradise, surrounded by schools of tasty - and exportable - Nile perch. But Lake Victoria, one of the world's biggest bodies of fresh water, which 30 million impoverished Africans depend on for their survival, may be running out of these fish.
According to a recent study, Nile perch stocks are down by nearly 70 per cent.
But there may be an even bigger issue here - the rapidly receding lake itself. Water levels have dropped nearly a metre in the past 10 years and algae blooms are choking the fish.
This is irrefutable evidence, environmentalists say, of climate change, overpopulation, pollution, deforestation and other modern ills coming to a head in a part of Africa unprepared to deal with the problems.
At a recent rugby match between Kenya and Uganda, Kenyan fans chanted: ''Migingo, united, can never be defeated.''
In April, Kenyan hooligans ripped up the railway line to Uganda. Fishermen on Migingo say that the Ugandan police prowling the island have been dishing out beatings - and worse, stealing their catches.
The dispute heated up this year when Uganda sent soldiers to claim the island. The Ugandans even planted a flag.
The Ugandan Government claims that Migingo is in Ugandan waters and that it is illegal for Kenyans to fish there.
Each year, Uganda earns more than $A120.2 million exporting Nile perch, though overfishing and environmental mismanagement are imperilling that trade.
end of excerptTHIS little island doesn't look like much. It's a slab of rock not even half a hectare... more
The river has dried up, the well yields only dust, and Li Yunxi is hard pressed to irrigate his plot of land, even though he lives right next to the largest water project in history.
The elderly farmer watches in despair as his corn crop wilts under the scorching northern China sun, knowing that a fresh, abundant stream is only a stone's throw away.
"We ordinary people don't dare use that water," Li told AFP as he nodded toward the fenced-in canal, part of China's hugely ambitious but troubled South-North Water Diversion Project.
"That water is for Beijing, and people here do not steal water."
The temperatures have approached 40 degrees centigrade (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for weeks this summer in Hebei province, a region surrounding Beijing that has been stricken by drought for much of the last decade.
But although Li's crops are withering away, he is getting no sympathy from the authorities -- quite the opposite.
Earlier this year the government announced that the completion of the project's central canal, stretching 1,300 kilometres (800 miles) from a tributary of the Yangtze river to Beijing, will be delayed five years to 2014.
This means that instead of being a beneficiary of the project, Hebei will now be tasked with supplying water to the capital until the project is completed.
The delay will further complicate a water shortage in northern China that experts say is caused by global warming, drought and rising demand from 96 million people who live in the booming Beijing region that includes Hebei.
Currently a 300-kilometre portion of the canal from the Hebei city of Shijiazhuang to Beijing is supplying emergency water to the capital from three reservoirs that previously provided water to the parched province.
The canal, which sits above Li's farmland, abruptly disappears as it nears the dry riverbed of the North Yishui river only to reappear on the opposite bank next to a large pump station that sucks the water through pipes underneath the dusty riverbed.
"There has been no water in the river for 30 years," the bronzed Li said, sweating under a straw hat, a partially capped silver tooth gleaming in the sunlight.
His family's well dried up about 10 years ago, so he like other villagers must now rely on water from a machine-pumped well -- and pay for it, making irrigation prohibitively expensive.
"At first the machine-pumped well was only 30 or 40 metres deep, now it is well over 100 metres deep," Li said of the falling underground water table, a phenomenon seen throughout north China.
This situation should have been alleviated by the water diversion project -- an unprecedented 400-billion-yuan (58-billion-dollar) plan to channel water from the humid south to the parched north along three separate lines.
"Now that (construction of the canal) has been pushed back for five years, we will see a deepening of the crisis in the North China region," said Zhang Junfeng, a water expert with Green Earth Volunteers, an environmental group.
"The North-South project was supposed to come on line earlier and it was designed to reduce the amount of underground water being used in urban areas."
The delay means that the region will have to rely on pumping more underground water to meet demand.The river has dried up, the well yields only dust, and Li Yunxi is hard pressed to... more
Never in my lifetime did I think I would read the headlines I am reading now. I truly am saddened by this because it is just one event in a chain of events suggesting that the human race needs a wake up call.
excerpt:
Kenya has been losing 100 lions a year for the past seven years, leaving the country with just 2000 of its famous big cats, says the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) — which concludes the country could have no wild lions at all in 20 years. Conservationists have blamed habitat destruction, disease and conflict with humans for the population collapse.
But Laurence Frank, a wildlife biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, thinks the KWS estimate is optimistic. "Lions are disappearing so fast from Kenya, as well as the rest of Africa, that I think they will disappear [from Kenya] in less than 10 years if action is not taken very quickly," says Frank, who runs several lion conservation projects in the country.
The IUCN suggests that large lion populations of 50 to 100 prides are necessary to conserve genetic diversity and avoid inbreeding.
Frank says that the decline of the big cats is due to the inexorable growth in human population and consequent conflict with people over livestock, rather than disease.Never in my lifetime did I think I would read the headlines I am reading now. I truly... more
