

A Bug's Death (2003) - saryant
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/25/opinion/a-bug-s-death.html

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revelation
People can wake up and spend the entirety of their day enclosed in various
climate controlled environments, travelling on man-made surfaces using energy
from burning dinosaurs to propel them, sit down and write about potential
_ecological hazards_ from genetic engineering. New York itself can't bear the
thought of having nature among it, so they put cars into central park.

This is clearly more informed than many other opinion pieces out there, but
it's hard to escape the feeling that someone from an alien species reading it
and considering the world we live in would not immediately start laughing from
the utter satire it is.

~~~
speik
> New York itself can't bear the thought of having nature among it, so they
> put cars into central park.

This seems like an extremely cynical, not to mention pretty dubious
explanation for why there are (occasionally) cars in Central Park.

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jakobegger
Somehow I expect that releasing such a death gene would just breed a race of
mosquitos that is immune to the death gene...

~~~
gwern
Well, yes - it would be the other existing species of mosquitoes. But that
would be mission-accomplished if those other species don't happen to be
malarial vectors. Carrying malaria is not a necessary thing for mosquitoes to
do in Africa, they don't _need_ to spread malaria to humans in order to
survive and reproduce.

~~~
jakobegger
I wasn't clear enough. I meant a race of the malaria-carrying species.

