Submitted by Scott Baker, Nov 27, 2006 11:48

I too, have been thinking recently of the glaring discrepency in reproduction rates between the western world and the islamic world. Is it possible we are seeing a new darwinian force at work here? One in which the western high-resource use, low birthrate, high individual worth model will fail, and the muslim high-birthrate, low individual value (roughly $2,000 per suicide bomber paid to their families by Iran and previously, Sadamm), low resource use (what resources can there be amongst the rumble?) will fail? If so, it's the dark ages, squared, for the bulk of humanity. Perhaps the best idea in that case really *is* for those in the west not to bring more children into the world. In biological terms, the grandmother who blew herself up and left 41 decendants would be called a K-strategist - someone who has a lot of "kin" in the hopes that enough survive to perpetuate the gene pool, and the western world is mostly made up of R-strategists - people who have few "kin" both lavish all their resources on those few in hopes that they will prosper and carry on their genes. It's clear which strategy is working at the moment.

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