Friday, 17 June 2005 - 13:45 BST

Exactly!!! Anyone who has spent all day taking care of a grandchild and then tiredly waved goodbye as the child went home with its parents, anyone like that would ask, "Are you out of your mind?" of a lunatic attempting to facilitate human reproduction in the 60's, 70's. Somehow I sense that these experiments are done by men...who don't do gestation, labor, and subsequent child care.

Saturday, 18 June 2005 - 11:16 BST

Unfortunately, birth control has 'liberated' too many women who wait until their late thirties before thinking they might start a family. Then they discover that they can't conceive. So, a lot of money is spent on in-vitro fertilisation and they end up with three or four children all at once. The 'right' to have children is tempered with responsibilities - to the child and to society.

How much longer can the world sustain its billions? One day, misery, desease, war and starvation will be endemic on a global scale. Indeed, if extra-terrestrials visited Earth today, they would probably consider the human race a plague on a planet that we have over-run and which we are gradually destroying.

Sunday, 19 June 2005 - 11:44 BST

Well, it sure does seem that way from a vantage point in a city. We're all squashed in on one another.

A few times I've travelled across the American midwest, northwest, west and southwest, though, and I can tell you that a kazillion acres of emptiness exist still. Vast tracts where not one building can be seen. Also in the American east, Appalachia looks empty from the air. I flew over it five times in 2003-2004 during the winter with no leaves on trees to obscure the view. The plane I was in flew for at least an hour while I saw no evidence of human occupation below. Probably down below were occasional cabins, but nothing large enough to be seen from above, no towns, no groups of buildings. I drove down through there at least seven times in the last five years and always had trouble getting cell phone service...partly because of the elevation but also because there are so few transfer towers. Then the place where we have our farm, Venango County, Pennsylvania, has fewer than 60,000 souls in the entire county. That most reliable indicator of population density, the frequency of McDonalds franchises, tells us that in all of Venango county, there are 4 McDonalds...not enough people to support more.

As seen in America, the human race has piled up onto itself in coastal cities, as well as around lakes and along major rivers, but most of the country still lies open and quiet, comfortingly empty of human noise, fuss and mess. When we go to the farm, there's nothing between us and the Allegheny River but seven miles of forest, mountains and streams where there are plenty of bear, eagles, deer, fox, squirrels, etc, but not one human habitation. Here on 38th Street the human race is over the top, but as long as I COULD get away to the farm for solitude, I can handle the daily closeness of other people.