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You are absolutely correct.

https://www.h-net.org/reviews/...

"Sheppard Krech III's book The Ecological Indian sets out to probe the basis and historical validity of the idea that people of native descent are, and always have been, caring towards the environment, a characteristic commonly claimed by or attributed to them. With a series of empirical case studies he investigates whether their ideas and actions were always those of ecologists and conservationists. He finds that the Ecological Indian proposition is of doubtful validity, concluding that, for example, Indians needlessly killed many buffalo, set fires that got out of control, and over-exploited deer and beaver for their skins.

For me, this chapter provides the book's most serious challenge to The Ecological Indian. While Indians had uses for every part of the buffalo, their practice of slaughtering whole herds, at a buffalo jump or in an enclosure, sometimes produced more carcasses than a group could possibly use. As a result, waste occurred. He documents instances of Indians leaving animals to rot, utilising only the cows, or taking only the tongues and the humps. However, the overkilling did not cause the extermination of the species, which only came after non-Indians and Metis hunted them commercially for fresh meat, pemmican and hides. "

Indians were not really ecologically aware until the 19th century.

They were not into any naturally sustainable processes. As their population grew, they would have had the same problem.

Too many humans (even indians) is the problem.

There is significant evidence that Old English and Old Norse were to a certain extent mutually intelligible. Unfortunately, a number of scenes in Vikings fall flat on their face if you are aware of this.

Also the pronunciation of Old English in the show is rather poor. You would think they would have consulted someone on it but it is obvious that they did not considering the repeated mispronounciation of the vowel 'æ' and 'g' before front vowels. I give them some credit for trying though.

Ike also spoke out against the Military Industrial Complex and the increased dependence of universities upon the Federal Government for research grants.

Check out section IV for yourself: Military-Industrial Complex Speech

The WWII version was the Military-Industrial Complex, and President Eisenhower had some pretty choice words to say about it. A brief excerpt:

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

Under seventy years is not "always". Research as a significant portion of the Universities priorities is a product of the twentieth century, specifically the post WWII era. In 1961 Eisenhower warned us that "a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity." It is relatively rare today that a student is allowed to pursue pure research - the kind that has no direct application in a weapon ^h^h^h^h^h^h product.

Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us in 1961: http://www.h-net.org/~hst306/documents/indust.html

differential tuition is a reaction to basic market forces that we've been resisting for a long time.

FTFY

Universities make money from STEP programs - patents and government and industry funded research bring in revenues that liberal arts never could. The universities know that the federal government will do the stupidest thing possible in reaction to this which is to throw money at the problem, creating entitlements, and subsidizing directly STEP students. This is a trap we need to avoid.

Eisenhower warned in his Military Industrial Complex Speech that, "the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity."

You had me until "military-industrial complex"

I know, right? I mean, what kind of commie, hippie loser came up with the name "military-industrial complex" anyway? Probably some leftist liberal trying to assert his homosexual agenda on the rest of us.

In case the reference is lost to some of you, here's what the parent is talking about. The pinko usually given credit for popularizing the phrase "military-industrial" complex is none other than the former five-star general in charge of the allied European theater of WW2 and later a Republican President of the United States. You may call him Ike... and he knew something about the military and its supporting industrial base.

Admittedly, the phrase is bandied about really loosely (some may say liberally) so it has unfortunately been diluted by misuse.

UK has just scrapped their new Nimrod project. Each plane has cost us more than a space shuttle and only was air-worthy. A whole pile of money that could have fixed a significant chunk of budget hole was thrown away to our own Complex here. What a waste of time and money.

Really? Is that all you care about is downloading free music?

The point is that he had a choice between representing a monied interest and representing the people in the form of no such cronyism. He made the same choice that any politician with any distant hope of high office has learned to make.

The born again Christian paranoid Texan who left Obama one fuckwad of a mess to clean up was selling you out far further than trolling IP addresses for illegally sharing content.

Absolutely. Now, consider this: the same sponsors, corporate interests, vested interests in the status quo, and, if you like, the same Establishment brought us both Presidents. This system is sometimes called the "military industrial complex" after a speech given by Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1961. Meanwhile, two parties with a complete duopoly on any important public office means an affordably low number of factions to buy off, err I mean to support their campaigns. Do you see the problem?

As an outside observer who is not American, when I look at the mess GWB left for BO to deal with I have to say he's doing one hell of a job. The USA would be a third-world country by now if it wasn't for the crazy hard decisions Obama had to make to keep the US from tanking more than it did!

You're talking about a man who hires staffers with opinions like "never let a good crisis go to waste." If that were me in charge I'd have fired that person immediately as a public service. That's an attitude that is unworthy of proximity to power and not to be trusted with it.

He's not a God or the second coming of Christ, but he's doing a pretty good job leading the US out of the tar pits.

He's a puppet but he's a really charismatic one. The whole skill of politics is to adopt a position because of the way that the wind blows and then wear it so naturally that you must have felt that way your entire life. The author of the script he's always reading from a teleprompter is the one you should be looking at.

None of this is new, it's just that Presidents in the past would speak extemporaneously at least some significant portion of the time. The basic motivations that determine their choices remain extremely similar, with insignificant differences to which much attention is called. That's why the whole "Left" and "Right" deal is just two forms of Statism. Their differences concern only implementation details. But the constant bickering over those "ideological differences" distracts from the realization that they are indirect paths to Statism. The name for this effect is "divide and conquer".

The only interesting question is to what degree this arrangement is deliberate. Is it the product of a great deal of intentional engineering, or is the political environment more like an evolutionary pressure in the sense that politicians who aren't like this have no hope of competing with politicians who are? The very high incumbency rate of Congress gives one the impression that failing to really represent the interests of the people carries negligible political consequences.

Whether Cheney was in office or not, that company would have seen the same benefits from the wars. Claiming that he steered benefits to them is a bit crazy as it has been pointed out time and time again that the infrastructure involved was already in place under different presidents including Clinton and Haliburton also carried the best bid once the bidding was opened.

You are being fooled by your own ignorance and will to remain under that spell.

The fact that multiple officials in high office had connections to this company prior to one of its executives becoming an official in high office only illustrates the revolving door that exists between well-connected large corporations and politicians. That doesn't contradict anything I've said. In fact it reinforces it.

This is exactly what Eisenhower warned us about when he talked about the advancement of the military-industrial complex. From this speech:

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

That speech was given in 1961. I'll leave it up to you to reconcile what I am talking about with the fact that a fairly sharp politician saw it happening and beginning to establish itself 49 years ago. Of course that won't be as easy as claiming that I'm "under [a] spell" but it will be far more worthwhile.

What's next?

Watching your social security trust fund go toward buying some more up-armored humvees, obtuse weapon systems, drones, and benefits for the blasted apart.

Seriously dude, be upset that in the US we spend more than most nations COMBINED on defense. This will be the downfall of our country, that and the leeches that make up the top 2%.

Ike knew it would lead to this:
http://www.h-net.org/~hst306/documents/indust.html

Eisenhower said:

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

http://www.h-net.org/~hst306/documents/indust.html

I wonder why people always ignore that part.

Is it worth considering that arms were drastically less advanced at the time the Bill was written?

Compare 18th century firearms to, for example, an AA-12 shotgun (admittedly not legally available to civilians) which is automatic, almost recoilless and can take 32-round magazines of fin-stabilised mini-grenade rounds. That's a huge difference in the destructive power that a single person can wield as they see fit.

I've neither handled, nor witnessed the use of, a functional firearm in my life, and don't consider myself qualified to opine one way or the other, just throwing this out there to see if anyone more informed or closer to the issue wants to weigh in.

That there is a (often extreme) liberal bias in the US academic world is only arguable or argued by extremist liberals who see that bias as representing their views and therefore not biased

Right, all those math and science and engineering professors whose research is funded by the DOD are a bunch of extremist liberal peaceniks.

Just like all the agricultural science professors figuring out how to run more efficient battery cage operations are a bunch of radical animals rights advocates, and the criminal justice departments are full of future social workers, and the folks teaching the MBA program are all labor union activists.

you don't perceive them as biased and therefore have to come up with bizarre conspiracy theories to discount all the evidence of that bias

It's not a bizarre conspiracy theory, it's a criticism of a poor study. Read the fine article I linked. AEI, the far-right thinktank that claimed to have indisputable evidence of liberal bias in academia, cherrypicked their data.

Really, it's the other way around: Since the first Red Scares of the early 20th century, the right wing has been so successful in biasing discussion that anything considered "moderate" in the rest of the world seems leftist here.

As the perfect example, the whole "Politically Correct" movement is a left wing matic attack on free speech originating in the academic world.

Yes, it is a perfect example. Because there is no such thing. The "PC movement" is 10% a couple of isolated actions by boneheads on the authoritarian extreme of the left, and 90% a pure fiction of the right's propaganda machine.

In my opinion there's plenty of idiocy, in different areas, on both side's views of the world.

There is certainly plenty of idiocy. But since the 1980s when the conservative moment allied itself with fundamentalist religion and made biology a campaign issue, to today's White House attempts to quash climate science, the Republican political machine has deliberately moved toward ignorance. (So much so, that many of them can't properly distinguish the noun from the adjective forms of the name of the other major party...if I hear one more idiot talk about the "Democrat Party" I swear I'm going to hit something.)

Sure, I hear a lot of stupid, wrong, and ignorant stuff from Democratic politicians, but you don't see any of the Democratic presidential candidates denying the reality of biological evolution.

'Scuse me?

Remember how this started out - a sexual harassment lawsuit. I forget the details ...

You do forget the details. How this all started out was an investigation into the Whitewater investments made by the Clintons while Bill was sitting in the Arkansas Governor's office.

This morphed, after Kenneth Starr took over as special prosecutor, into an allegation made by Paula Jones of sexual harrassment when he was Governor of Arkansas -- a case prosecuted under a law pushed through Congress by the Clinton Administration to make things more fair for women in the workplace (ironic, that). This is due to an apparent fascination Mr. Starr has with sex. He's the type of person who would pull as many strings as possible to place himself on a censorship board so that he could see all of the fascinating material that ought to be censored and save personal copies of that material that was left out due to his censorship.

With respect to free speech...

The Supreme Court has, over the lifetime of the United States, reined in this radical notion of "free speech." Mr. Starr will, doubtless, call the banner unfurled by Joseph Frederick an "action." You and I might see a sign that has words on it as "speech," or "press" if you want to stretch the issue of printing on a banner. But if you read all of the Supreme Court decisions that limit free speech, you'll see them redefined as "actions," not "speech."

Personally, when it comes to speech, I'm a radical. I would like to see the "act" of hollering "Fire!" in a crowded theater protected. I would also love to see those persons inconvenienced by the person who did that protected in their assault on that idiot (hoping that their assault was one of words). I would also like to see theaters allowed to prohibit the admission of those who might emit false alarms.

I am in favor of the ability of all citizens of majority age to view, trade, distribute and read pornographic materials showing really disgusting acts and bizarre behaviors -- as long as no person acting within those materials was under the age of 21 and as long as nobody was harmed in the actions (I would mention that nobody is ever harmed by textual documents). This puts me outside of the mainstream of thought. I'm not a total sleaze-bag who gathers materials like that -- I just think that restricting anything is a violation of rights. This First Amendment is problematic and, the framers of that Amendment wanted it to be problematic. They grew up in a society that tried to control political discourse so that nobody who accused the government of ill will towards its citizenry could be charged with a crime and silenced by a long tour of a cell in some prison.

I would recommend that all persons concerned with this issue read John Wirenius' excellent book on freedom of speech as well as Richard N. Rosenfeld's The American Aurora (review) which should, hopefully, provide a bit of an educational background for the context of freedom of speech.

Mr. Starr is a true conservative in the sense that the conservatives during our American Revolution wanted limits on speech and the press. I wish him well as the "marketplace of ideas" proves his conservative viewpoint absolutely and irretrievably wrong.