The Human Experiment Experience

By Dan Barber

If I may be presumptuous enough, I would like to call attention to our human experiment in the social/political/environmental sciences. I would like to write down some thoughts that have been rattling around in my head off and on for a while now before they can escape again.

Recently I have noticed a lot of talk in the news about white people having “white privilege” and poor people resenting what rich people have, and self-appointed or elected leaders promising to create opportunities to redistribute wealth from the one-percent of richest people to everyone else and to make a level playing field for everyone.

How about sharing the diversity of cultures, ideas and educational opportunities for inclusion in the human condition rather then building barriers with political clichés, government interference and over-regulation that bar entrepreneurism for individuals?

Then there are the environmentalists who worry about what humans and farting cows are doing to the earth and oceans, those righteous self-appointed or elected leaders also make promises to create opportunities for scientists to clean up the environment; develop cattle food that will prevent cow gas; and to provide renewable and affordable “clean” energy and to take away people’s guns so they can’t shoot one another with them.

We also have animal rights groups who are concerned with carnivorous humans who eat beef, pork, poultry and fish; and use domesticated animals to perform some tasks for humans such as providing companionship, guiding blind people or sniffing out drugs, bombs or criminals hiding in bushes, or fetching dead ducks.

Environmental and animal rights activists butt heads over environmental and animal rights issues because huge windmills kill birds… some of which might be endangered because they are nocturnal hunters who can’t see the blades of the wind mills at night. Then huge solar farm developments in the desert, where sun shines the most, that have displaced endangered desert tortoises and other critters from their natural habitat in some areas to make room for the large solar array, to other areas of the desert with enclosed habitats for the tortoises own protection… however a problem with this idea has created overcrowding of the artificial habitats which means some of the desert denizens there have to be euthanized so a healthy population of tortoises can be maintained.

In addition, the large mirrored arrays of solar farms concentrate the desert sun’s heat on a tower which also kills birds because they fly through the concentrated heat and catch fire in flight… they do this because they mistake the mirrored fields below as a large body of water, which attract the birds wanting a cool drink. I’ve heard the workers at the solar farms call these birds “smokers” because they leave a trail of smoke as they fall from the sky to the ground.

I recently read in the news that herds of deer are overtaking the grounds at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) so they have equipped a special operating room at the NIH so they can neuter or spay the deer at a cost to taxpayers of only $1,000 each so they don’t have to euthanize any of the animals to maintain a healthy population… my question is… don’t deer also fart? And, wouldn’t it be cheaper to allow hunters to shoot a few of them each year for food?

My suggestion is to separate and isolate the political scientists from the environmental and social sciences so they don’t muddy what water we have left.

OK, I’m done.