Malaria may have killed half of all the people that ever lived. (more) Over one million people die from malaria each year, mostly children under five years of age, with 90% of malaria cases occurring in Sub-Saharan Africa. (
I can see the next question being a matter of the ethics of genetically modifying an entire species, and why not, at that point, just genetically modify humans to be resistant plasmodium? Should we?
There are so many different research efforts coming at curing malaria from so many different angles, it's fascinating, and I hope they succeed soon! But I have to agree, there are easier ways than eliminating all mosquitos.
Malaria mostly kills children under 5, but it also kills the elderly. Can anyone think of a way to Fermi estimate how many of a person's ancestors were likely killed by malaria?
If someone finds out that over a million of their ancestors were murdered by malaria parasites, maybe they'll start taking it personal.
I think the above is how humans really feel when it impacts the people they care about. A lack of desire to xenocide misquitos is connected to not feeling a tangible connection to the humans who will and have been murdered by them.
Believe it or not there are billions of mosquitoes, praying in their simple little mosquito way, for you tonight, because they are innocent creatures who do not want to cause harm, but who want to live in a world where you know that GOD LOVES YOU, and because I stood up for them, and asked them, in their billions, to pray for you, and because they know what gratitude means.
Sneer if you want but I know what I am talking about,
It is not every night you read a long comment from someone who tells you:
I am the closest thing you will ever encounter to the PATRON SAINT OF MOSQUITOES and who says:(not the sort of thing one expects from the sort of person who calls himself the PATRON SAINT OF MOSQUITOES)hey, by the way, just pick up the Bible and read it
if you are smart enough to pick up the Bible because of what I said you can profit thereby, trust me
IT IS YOUR STORYIT IS THE STORY OF EVERYONE YOU LOVE
God loves us all, specifically, God loves youand God loves everyone you loveIt is hard to imagine, but it is true
Try and imagine a world in which people were basically decent
Imagine you are living in such a world and as the sun is setting you have your supper on the patio and you put out, for the mosquitoes, a little tray of red pepper sauce
and you watch them fly around, rejoicing in their good fortune (mosquitoes, my friends, prefer pepper sauce to almost anything else in this world --- I bet you did not know that ----well, I knew that, not that you care), and you listen to their little melodies, as if they were playing little versions of simple but heart-felt melodies on tiny French horns .....
TRY AND IMAGINE A BETTER WORLD
God loves you and wants you to be kind and full of understanding
Proverbs 8 ....
if you think it is "too difficult" to try and understand, well then, at least remember
some of us are not gonna stand by while you spew uninformed hatred for mosquitoes
"God loves you the way you are but loves you too much to let you stay that way"
"La nuestra ultima esperanza esta la injusticia de Dios"
and .... "I will pray for your intentions."
Btw, God listens to my prayers. So, if it is not too much trouble, try and choose a good intention for me to pray for on your behalf.
WE are all ILLITERATE when we try and read the signs of TRUTH that one imagines one might see on the waves of the sea or the clouds of the sky, but that is immaterial because God listens to your prayers.
The desire to pray is a prayer in itself and you can't really tell me you have read all this and you are thinking
HEY I HAVE NO DESIRE TO PRAY.
Well maybe you can but remember you are saying that to someone who has a a deep love in an old heart for
our misunderstood friends the mosquitoes.
among so many other misunderstood fellow creatures.
Hate on me if you want but I told you something you probably did not previously know
wwebd said: Please do not read this if you do not like long comments. I am not an accredited expert (although I am a native speaker of english and if you are reading this to see how English is spoken - go for it, my friends, and read on .....)I could talk about this subject for hours - I am a veteran of a foreign war, I am a gifted animal psychologist, and I am an expert at sounding manic or not sounding manic, depending on who is listening. So I understand the stakes (dead skeeters or dead soldiers) which are very high, and I understand the importance of the issue.It has been said that we have a limited number of senses, and that is true (the five traditional senses, and balance (the active anti-vertigo sense), and our sense of whether our internal organs are functioning correctly (bonus trivia - music composers for film know exactly how to mimic that particular sense when they are doing the background noise for (a) spaceship engines on long spaceship voyages (Passengers, the Alien franchises, and most of the other well-known sci-fi space opera films) - that brings us to 7, I think there is another one, some generic limbic system doohickey ,,,, and there are two I rarely see mentioned.
I tried for decades to make my formerly abandoned animals feel at home, it was SO REWARDING to see the look in their eyes when they felt understood.One day, during a thunder storm, I felt, as one does, the imminent clap of electrical disturbance one feels when a thunderbolt it just about to launch itself (or be launched, if you are a Jovian even after all these years), and I looked, in that moment, at my rather intelligent cat (a tabby but with more than a touch of Siamese in her family tree) and I whisked her off the ground into my arms and when the thunder and the light washed over us I could see, in her eyes as I looked at the poor lonely creature, a look of recognition ---- a kind and innocent look of fellow-feeling that would melt your heart ...
how can anyone not want the best for cats, not want them to be happy?you too, the wonderful cat was saying, live in this world and sense it, just as I, your little cat friend, do !
So add electrical affinities to the previous 8 or so senses.
I have another story about years of friendship with birdwatchers and the possibility that we can after long effort discover in ourselves a little bit of the awareness of the True Magnetic Poles that some birds have for part of the year, but I won't tell that story, to keep this comment short.
Anyway, Milton, the great but belated epic poet, tried his best to bring mosquitoes into his life's work, Paradise Lost, and he got off a good line here or there about their small trumpets, little acoustic visions of the trumpets of angels ----and in other languages there are odes to mosquitoes.
So yes I know how much they have been vectors of disease, and I of all people, as a veteran who has seen war and what it does to people, cannot criticize those who want to build a better world by bold and powerful and blunt good-hearted steps ....
but remember, you do not know what other people know about the world, and the world is not only more complicated than you can imagine .... arguably it is not, if you are a genius , something I am not ..... but the world is, even if not more complicated than you can imagine, more than willing to enter into a conversation with you
A CONVERSATION THAT WILL ONLY TURN OUT WELL FOR YOU AND THE WORLD IF YOU HAVE EXTREME EMPATHY AND KINDNESS IN YOUR HEART. (Proverbs 8).
Thanks for reading.
Footnote - there is also a synchronistic sense that I, who have for decades and decades watched, hour after hour with fascination (and a little bit of guilt for intruding on the best hours of creatures who would probably prefer not to be observed, if they had the capability of having the choice - never forget that, my fellow natural scientists -----) there is a synchronistic sense, almost as if there were a chance that after years as a ballet dancer or a watcher of the skies you could feel, in your heart and in your soul, the passage of time as something as simple as the colors of the rainbow or the notes on the scale that the great composers of your civilization grew up listening to.
That is how I feel after thousands of hours of watching fireflies with their synchronizing and desynchronizing light displays on summer evenings, and seabirds near the shore reacting to and living with the changing tempos of the sea
As always, thanks for reading. a.k.a. efim polenov a.k.a. stephen cooper dixit
The only way I can imagine for ending war is to have an effective world government.... the horror! So, yeah, I'd rather keep war around for a while longer.
OTOH, I want death to mosquitoes, hornets, wasps, mountain lions, viruses, the treponema and their ilk, ASAP. I am speciesist and proud of it.
I don't see how to tease it apart from your hypothesis.
At the individual level, my sense of control over myself is intimately tied to my application of moral thinking to my actions.
Likewise, our illusion of control over ourselves at the society-wide level is intimately tied to our application of moral thinking to ourselves at that same level.
(I'm not attributing that claim to you, but it is how I think of it.)
What this theory predicts is that we will use moral language more when talking about groups of people whom we think are more closely tied to us by a web of social influence.
Nature represents the limit where our social influence approaches zero, so likewise moral thinking with regard to nature approaches zero.
This would be my answer to why we are "much more eager to put moral blame on humans, relative to nature." It's because we suppose that other humans can be influenced by our moral judgements, or by the threats of revenge that they imply, while nature cannot.
It's not all Mosquitoes just those varieties that bite humans:
"Of the 3,000 varieties on the planet, only 200 or so bite us; only Aedes aegypti, and perhaps the more common Culex quinquefasciatus, are thought to carry Zika."
I can see the next question being a matter of the ethics of genetically modifying an entire species, and why not, at that point, just genetically modify humans to be resistant plasmodium? Should we?
There are so many different research efforts coming at curing malaria from so many different angles, it's fascinating, and I hope they succeed soon! But I have to agree, there are easier ways than eliminating all mosquitos.
I see people are already working on this:
Making mosquitoes resistant to transmitting malaria
Godspeed to them!
Rather than eliminating mosquitoes, why not instead aim for eliminating the plasmodium parasite that causes malaria?
Why proud? Perhaps unapologetic?
Malaria mostly kills children under 5, but it also kills the elderly. Can anyone think of a way to Fermi estimate how many of a person's ancestors were likely killed by malaria?
If someone finds out that over a million of their ancestors were murdered by malaria parasites, maybe they'll start taking it personal.
https://www.washingtonpost....
I think the above is how humans really feel when it impacts the people they care about. A lack of desire to xenocide misquitos is connected to not feeling a tangible connection to the humans who will and have been murdered by them.
Knowing that, I would totally agree to wipe the 200 varieties of mosquitoes that bite humans, leaving the 2800 others safe.
Trust me, I really am - at least in the hearts of every mosquito I Encounter - the closest thing they have ever met to a patron saint.
You too can do what you were born to do:
REFRAIN FROM BEING THE SELFISH CREATURE YOU MIGHT HAVE WANTED TO BE
and just simply
be a good kind-hearted friend to a creature who never had a friend in this world
Believe it or not there are billions of mosquitoes, praying in their simple little mosquito way, for you tonight, because they are innocent creatures who do not want to cause harm, but who want to live in a world where you know that GOD LOVES YOU, and because I stood up for them, and asked them, in their billions, to pray for you, and because they know what gratitude means.
Sneer if you want but I know what I am talking about,
It is not every night you read a long comment from someone who tells you:
I am the closest thing you will ever encounter to the PATRON SAINT OF MOSQUITOES and who says:(not the sort of thing one expects from the sort of person who calls himself the PATRON SAINT OF MOSQUITOES)hey, by the way, just pick up the Bible and read it
if you are smart enough to pick up the Bible because of what I said you can profit thereby, trust me
IT IS YOUR STORYIT IS THE STORY OF EVERYONE YOU LOVE
God loves us all, specifically, God loves youand God loves everyone you loveIt is hard to imagine, but it is true
Try and imagine a world in which people were basically decent
Imagine you are living in such a world and as the sun is setting you have your supper on the patio and you put out, for the mosquitoes, a little tray of red pepper sauce
and you watch them fly around, rejoicing in their good fortune (mosquitoes, my friends, prefer pepper sauce to almost anything else in this world --- I bet you did not know that ----well, I knew that, not that you care), and you listen to their little melodies, as if they were playing little versions of simple but heart-felt melodies on tiny French horns .....
TRY AND IMAGINE A BETTER WORLD
God loves you and wants you to be kind and full of understanding
Proverbs 8 ....
if you think it is "too difficult" to try and understand, well then, at least remember
some of us are not gonna stand by while you spew uninformed hatred for mosquitoes
"God loves you the way you are but loves you too much to let you stay that way"
"La nuestra ultima esperanza esta la injusticia de Dios"
and .... "I will pray for your intentions."
Btw, God listens to my prayers. So, if it is not too much trouble, try and choose a good intention for me to pray for on your behalf.
WE are all ILLITERATE when we try and read the signs of TRUTH that one imagines one might see on the waves of the sea or the clouds of the sky, but that is immaterial because God listens to your prayers.
The desire to pray is a prayer in itself and you can't really tell me you have read all this and you are thinking
HEY I HAVE NO DESIRE TO PRAY.
Well maybe you can but remember you are saying that to someone who has a a deep love in an old heart for
our misunderstood friends the mosquitoes.
among so many other misunderstood fellow creatures.
Hate on me if you want but I told you something you probably did not previously know
GOD LOVES US ALLspecifically, GOD LOVES YOU
wwebd said: Please do not read this if you do not like long comments. I am not an accredited expert (although I am a native speaker of english and if you are reading this to see how English is spoken - go for it, my friends, and read on .....)I could talk about this subject for hours - I am a veteran of a foreign war, I am a gifted animal psychologist, and I am an expert at sounding manic or not sounding manic, depending on who is listening. So I understand the stakes (dead skeeters or dead soldiers) which are very high, and I understand the importance of the issue.It has been said that we have a limited number of senses, and that is true (the five traditional senses, and balance (the active anti-vertigo sense), and our sense of whether our internal organs are functioning correctly (bonus trivia - music composers for film know exactly how to mimic that particular sense when they are doing the background noise for (a) spaceship engines on long spaceship voyages (Passengers, the Alien franchises, and most of the other well-known sci-fi space opera films) - that brings us to 7, I think there is another one, some generic limbic system doohickey ,,,, and there are two I rarely see mentioned.
I tried for decades to make my formerly abandoned animals feel at home, it was SO REWARDING to see the look in their eyes when they felt understood.One day, during a thunder storm, I felt, as one does, the imminent clap of electrical disturbance one feels when a thunderbolt it just about to launch itself (or be launched, if you are a Jovian even after all these years), and I looked, in that moment, at my rather intelligent cat (a tabby but with more than a touch of Siamese in her family tree) and I whisked her off the ground into my arms and when the thunder and the light washed over us I could see, in her eyes as I looked at the poor lonely creature, a look of recognition ---- a kind and innocent look of fellow-feeling that would melt your heart ...
how can anyone not want the best for cats, not want them to be happy?you too, the wonderful cat was saying, live in this world and sense it, just as I, your little cat friend, do !
So add electrical affinities to the previous 8 or so senses.
I have another story about years of friendship with birdwatchers and the possibility that we can after long effort discover in ourselves a little bit of the awareness of the True Magnetic Poles that some birds have for part of the year, but I won't tell that story, to keep this comment short.
Anyway, Milton, the great but belated epic poet, tried his best to bring mosquitoes into his life's work, Paradise Lost, and he got off a good line here or there about their small trumpets, little acoustic visions of the trumpets of angels ----and in other languages there are odes to mosquitoes.
So yes I know how much they have been vectors of disease, and I of all people, as a veteran who has seen war and what it does to people, cannot criticize those who want to build a better world by bold and powerful and blunt good-hearted steps ....
but remember, you do not know what other people know about the world, and the world is not only more complicated than you can imagine .... arguably it is not, if you are a genius , something I am not ..... but the world is, even if not more complicated than you can imagine, more than willing to enter into a conversation with you
A CONVERSATION THAT WILL ONLY TURN OUT WELL FOR YOU AND THE WORLD IF YOU HAVE EXTREME EMPATHY AND KINDNESS IN YOUR HEART. (Proverbs 8).
Thanks for reading.
Footnote - there is also a synchronistic sense that I, who have for decades and decades watched, hour after hour with fascination (and a little bit of guilt for intruding on the best hours of creatures who would probably prefer not to be observed, if they had the capability of having the choice - never forget that, my fellow natural scientists -----) there is a synchronistic sense, almost as if there were a chance that after years as a ballet dancer or a watcher of the skies you could feel, in your heart and in your soul, the passage of time as something as simple as the colors of the rainbow or the notes on the scale that the great composers of your civilization grew up listening to.
That is how I feel after thousands of hours of watching fireflies with their synchronizing and desynchronizing light displays on summer evenings, and seabirds near the shore reacting to and living with the changing tempos of the sea
As always, thanks for reading. a.k.a. efim polenov a.k.a. stephen cooper dixit
The only way I can imagine for ending war is to have an effective world government.... the horror! So, yeah, I'd rather keep war around for a while longer.
OTOH, I want death to mosquitoes, hornets, wasps, mountain lions, viruses, the treponema and their ilk, ASAP. I am speciesist and proud of it.
I don't see how to tease it apart from your hypothesis.
At the individual level, my sense of control over myself is intimately tied to my application of moral thinking to my actions.
Likewise, our illusion of control over ourselves at the society-wide level is intimately tied to our application of moral thinking to ourselves at that same level.
(I'm not attributing that claim to you, but it is how I think of it.)
What this theory predicts is that we will use moral language more when talking about groups of people whom we think are more closely tied to us by a web of social influence.
Nature represents the limit where our social influence approaches zero, so likewise moral thinking with regard to nature approaches zero.
This would be my answer to why we are "much more eager to put moral blame on humans, relative to nature." It's because we suppose that other humans can be influenced by our moral judgements, or by the threats of revenge that they imply, while nature cannot.
It's not all Mosquitoes just those varieties that bite humans:
"Of the 3,000 varieties on the planet, only 200 or so bite us; only Aedes aegypti, and perhaps the more common Culex quinquefasciatus, are thought to carry Zika."
There is a discussion of the topic here.
That's plausible, though I'm not sure how to test it.