"Too Much Information"

'Too Much Information' is the first cut on side two of the 1981 A&M Records release 'Ghost In The Machine' by The Police, and I thought of it because of this headline in New Scientist making news on Google News today.

I've got a white-hot flash for these pseudo-eggheads at New Scientist:- It isn't any of those topics you're babbling about in your article which is causing our problems with climate change or global warming or wars, pestilence, famine, or whatever. The underlying real cause of all of those things is something that if my memory serves me correctly once appeared in Walt Kelly's 'Pogo' comic strip. Little Pogo is commenting on the nature of an enemy, and says: "We have seen the enemy, and he is us!" 

'Us' being all of humanity, and there being just too damned many of us, using up too much of our natural resources and polluting too much of our environment too quickly for Mother Nature to cope with its assimilation and recycling. In short, we're breeding ourselves right out of Spaceship Earth, and we're going to regret it, but not forever. Nothing's forever, including what you're standing or sitting on right now. Nobody wants to talk about this, but we must if we want our human race to survive into the future. The population of the world has tripled within my own lifetime, which is presently just over 80 years. If that thought doesn't bother you, then you've probably got an I.Q. about the same as my Pet Rock.