Sunday, June 12, 2011

The Answer: PETROLEUM, OR WOMEN

The question: What will be the hardest fought Resource Wars?

Identifying sick babies before they were born, instead of casual use by parents interested in what color to paint the nursery, 
(or, whether or not to abort a baby of unwanted gender) was the original goal of ultrasound...

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-ultrasound-changed-human-sex-ratio

"It didn't matter that the early ultrasound machines yielded fuzzy images, however, or that they only proved helpful in a small proportion of pregnancies. To the 1960s public the technology looked positively futuristic. Around the time pregnancy became a choice rather than an inevitability and the business of having children became about more than generating labor for the farm, we began seeking ways to bond with our babies before birth. An image on which to pin parental hopes made that task a whole lot easier, and so it was a breakthrough to have a preview, however muddled, of the baby growing inside a mother's uterus. Coming at a time of technological optimism when Americans were enamored of outer space and kitchen appliances alike, an era some were calling the Biological Revolution, ultrasound captured the public imagination."

This article speaks to how technology speeds up implementation of existing societal goals, even when doing so creates bigger problems than the technology was trying to solve to begin with.  (Think "drift nets", "nuclear power",  "internal combustion engine", "TV", "facebook"  (lol)...)

From the Amazon Blurb:
Lianyungang, a booming port city, has China's most extreme gender ratio for children under four: 163 boys for every 100 girls. These numbers don't seem terribly grim, but in ten years, the skewed sex ratio will pose a colossal challenge. By the time those children reach adulthood, their generation will have twenty-four million more men than women.

The prognosis for China's neighbors is no less bleak: Asia now has 163 million females "missing" from its population. Gender imbalance reaches far beyond Asia, affecting Georgia, Eastern Europe, and cities in the U.S. where there are significant immigrant populations. The world, therefore, is becoming increasingly male, and this mismatch is likely to create profound social upheaval.

Historically, eras in which there have been an excess of men have produced periods of violent conflict and instability. Mara Hvistendahl has written a stunning, impeccably-researched book that does not flinch from examining not only the consequences of the misbegotten policies of sex selection but Western complicity with them."

Will it be Mars Needs Women  or, Being Gay is Okay...

FRISH