On the Principle of Population

 Is the earth becoming like The French Laundry the high-end restaurant in Napa Valley where you can wait a lifetime for a reservation? In France they say "nous somme complets” or "desole" when you ask for a prenotazione (Italian for reservation). In other words is the planet running out of things? In the Hamptons a fragile ecology is threatened by a dearth of farmland. Why kill yourself growing corn when an acre can go for millions? On the other hand there are, in fact, huge swathes of desert and ocean that beg the notion of eternity. Malaysia 370 has not been found. The Mariana Trench, which James Cameron has reached in a submersible, is like Everest upside down. Still population is not decreasing in the undeveloped world where there will always be too many mouths to feed. In tandem with this phenomenon is the fact that the birth rate is declining in highly affluent societies where there's food to spare.

read "An Incident of Defenestration" by Francis Levy, Vol.1Brooklyn

and listen to "Lazing on a Sunny Afternoon" by The Kinks