Our Biggest Threat Is Not An Asteroid

When You Have Seen The Errors In Which You Live, You Will Understand The Good That We Have Done You By Coming To Your Land By Order Of His Majesty The King Of Spain. Our Lord Permitted That Your Pride Should Be Brought Low And That No Indian Should Be Able To Offend A Christian.

Forced To Choose Between Limiting Population Or Trying To Increase Food Production, We Chose The Latter And Ended Up With Starvation, Warfare, And Tyranny.

The Rate Of Human Invention Is Faster, And The Rate Of Cultural Loss Is Slower, In Areas Occupied By Many Competing Societies With Many Individuals And In Contact With Societies Elsewhere.

Bird Taxonomy Is A Difficult Field Because Of The Severe Anatomical Constraints Imposed By Flight. There Are Only So Many Ways To Design A Bird Capable, Say, Of Catching Insects In Mid-air, With The Result That Birds Of Similar Habitats Tend To Have Very Similar Anatomies, Whatever Their Ancestry. For Example, American Vultures Look And Behave Much Like Old World Vultures, But Biologists Have Come To Realize That The Former Are Related To Storks, The Latter To Hawks, And That Their Resemblances Result From Their Common Lifestyle.

The Adoption Of Agriculture, Supposedly Our Most Decisive Step Toward A Better Life, Was In Many Ways A Catastrophe From Which We Have Never Recovered.