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Showing posts from July, 2021

Excess Males (Crossposted from Big Balkan Family)

 There are about three prevailing theories for what causes war and conflict. The number one is poverty; number two is the cost of reproduction; and number three is an overproduction of elites competing for the same number of jobs.  For the final ones, there are too many undergraduate educated young adults, MBA's, lawyers, and PhD's all fighting for the same limited amount of elite positions.  All of these can overlap. A good example is the current situation in the United States. People became poor during the Great Recession and the coronavirus lockdowns, the cost of education, healthcare, and housing have delayed the age of marriage which has reduced reproductive outcomes such as births, and there are too many lawyers and PhD's fighting for the same jobs such as adjunct professors, government jobs, and law office interns. This is why we have so many mass shootings, protests, riots, and events such as the storming of the Capitol on January 6th. Young men cannot provide the w

The Dispensary is Today's Soda Fountain

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A long time ago, about one hundred years ago, modern medicine was just taking off. Handwashing was being forcefully introduced by Igor Semmelwetz to Austrian doctors who didn't like the fact that he was a Jew. Louise Pasteur and Robert Koch had only just proven germ theory. X-rays had just been discovered as well. Gregor Mendel died in anonymity, but then was rediscovered. We knew very little about the human body but we were making progress. And so the age old apothecary, or the druggist, or what we now call the pharmacist, had to change as well. This is the transition period between "your mom makes you chew willow bark for pain" to "you use medically prescribed aspirin in a tablet." With all the new innovations, but with all the folk remedies still around, and the new global transportation network, pharmacies wanted to stay ahead of the game. This was the era that radium was painted on watch faces. And children's toys because it glows. So don't get