1 And stuff like this is why I have lost any sympathy for the pandas.  Endanger a species like the beaver, and as soon as you let up, they rebuild.  Do your absolute best to un-endanger the pandas. . . and they refuse to breed.

2 Building on metaphysician's comment (and possibly related to the Smurf post) I wonder if some species eventually evolve themselves into extinction all on their own, with no environmental changes.  As I understand it, not only do pandas reproduce rarely, but they are also extremely picky eaters.  Supposedly they will only eat a few types of bamboo, and only if the bamboo is close to vertical.  If it is lying on the ground, or standing at too an great an angle, they will starve before eating it.

3 I'm sure it's happened, but there's no easy way to say when and where.

4 Judging by the behavior and rationale of some humans, it is possible to make the argument that the human race is heading toward that goal!

5 I don't know if it's my Right Wing Authoritarianism or Social Dominance Orientation coming out, but as I get older, I find myself having so much more sympathy for the megalomaniacal villains that want to destroy the bulk of the human race and start over with only the ones chosen for having the chosen traits (a modicum of sense, in my case).

Of course, I'm smarter than those jumped-up Bond villains are; I know it would be only three generations before we'd be right back in the same boat, with the lunatics running the asylum.  So, since it's all pointless anyway, you are all safe from any world-destroying plots I might hatch.

Sleep well.

6 You guys make it sound like the fact that 2510 people dressed as smurfs means the human population deserves to be wiped off the face of the Earth.

C'mon, lighten up a bit, will ya?  It's just some people (okay, a lot of people) having fun.  They're cosplayers, for heaven's sake.  Next, you're gonna say that people collecting rubber duckies is a sign of apocalypse.

Silly is good.

7

People having fun and being silly isn't the problem.  People having fun and dressing up isn't the problem.

But 2500 Smurfs?  SMURFS???  Good GOD man, at least they could have dressed up as Klingons, or something even more respectable!

Smurfs?  Man, that's it.  Civilization is over.

8 I have to note, though, that 2500 Smurfettes would be no problem at all.

9 Well, there is that...

10

Hmmph. I regularly swim in the sewers of 4chan, and still haven't lost my faith in the human race. The natural world is way more simple, more ordinary, and more disgusting than anyone seems to realize, and humanity is the most adaptable, capable, and powerful thing that has ever evolved out of the mess. We can create complexity where there was none, build things that the natural world could never evolve in trillions of years, and actually clean ourselves and our environment up so well that entire generations of our own race can go from cradle to grave never realizing how nasty, brutish, and short life beyond the veils and walls really is.

If there is one thing that is unique about humanity, it's that we alone, out of all the rest of natural creation, have the sense to be ashamed of ourselves. That, I think, makes everything else worthwhile.

11

Re: Smurfs - I believe Smurfette was originally intended to be another guy.  So...

Re: Humans: I was actually not referring to the Smurf-wannabees as oppose to some of the other members of the human race (Berkeley residents, radical environmentalists, the script writers of Battlestar Galactica, et al.) who seems to be classic examples of a species that no longer believe in its own right to exist.  If by probability there is intelligent, space-faring life among the stars, any species that no longer believes it its right to exist will be exterminated (If not necessarily by Daleks) by species who still do.  In that sense, looking at some humans, it does feel like humans as a species is evolving toward extinction.

C.T.

12 A certain amount of "silly" could be said to be the sign of a society wealthy enough to afford the indulgence. I'm trying to design a Smurf on'a Stick fast food myself.