Opossums Overrun Brooklyn, Fail To Eliminate Rats

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Opossums Overrun Brooklyn, Fail To Eliminate Rats

Posted by samzenpus on Monday September 20, 2010 @06:23AM from the urban-opossum-blight dept.

__roo writes "In a bizarre case of life imitates the Simpsons, New York City officials introduced a population of opossums into Brooklyn parks and under the boardwalk at Coney Island, apparently convinced that the opossums would eat all of the rats in the borough and then conveniently die of starvation. Several years later, the opossums have not only failed to eliminate the rat epidemic from New York City, but they have thrived, turning into a sharp-toothed, foul-odored epidemic of their own."

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as always, humans are weak in the mind by roman_mir · 2010-09-20 06:30 · Score: -1, Offtopic

People think they can predict what their actions will do in real life situations and they totally miss it yet again.
Think about it in from a larger perspective. People are trying to control and manipulate society and economy as much as they are trying to manipulate the environment around them, and they are failing.
As much as people are failing in manipulating such simplest things, as the rat population in this story, imagine how much more failure there is in all other endeavors, for example when a gov't tries to manipulate economy by doing whatever it does, it's astounding that after all of the failures of such attempts in the former USSR or Cuba, the people still believe that gov't should be meddling with economy to try and correct the market instead of allowing the market to work by removing its violent power out of the market place.
Just like the failure of removing rats in this story, the people will fail to fix economy if they try to do so by gov't action.
Of-course in case of rats, it's still possible to do something, people can always poor more and more poisons around, which of-course will poison the environment but just may kill the rats, but in case of economy, it's hopeless. Get gov't hands out of it.

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You can't handle the truth.
1. Re:as always, humans are weak in the mind by roman_mir · 2010-09-20 06:44 · Score: -1, Offtopic
  
  what are you, a drone?
  
  --
  You can't handle the truth.
2. Re:as always, humans are weak in the mind by roman_mir · 2010-09-20 06:46 · Score: -1, Offtopic
  
  what are you, a clone?
  
  --
  You can't handle the truth.
3. Re:as always, humans are weak in the mind by roman_mir · 2010-09-20 08:04 · Score: -1, Offtopic
  
  I'll give you a good example of what I mean right now.
  The 19th century in USA was a much more productive century than the twentieth, yet there was no gov't controlled money supply, interest rates were set by market forces rather than by mafia in power, sure, some banks failed, but there was nothing anybody called a 'great depression'. The standard of living went up from 18th century outhouses to an industrial century, with people building and using machines, people having indoor plumbing, people inventing sawing machines, people moving away from agrarian economy to industrial one.
  The 20th century certainly gave the world a lot of other things, including the Internet, but nothing as drastic as a move from a horse to a steam engine gave people a century earlier. And also there was the 'great depression' and now another depression, which will be known in history as the 'greatest' depression so far.
  What we know is that in between the gov't intervened into economy, created various taxes, subsidies, laws, regulations, rules, monopolies, bailouts and stimulus packages.
  Yes, based on this we can see that people actively trying to manipulate forces of market by violence (which what gov't intervention is - violence) is working as much as trying to get rid of rats by bringing opossums (which BTW, should have been known to be a bad idea based on some previous experience).
  Oh, and you may want to watch the video of a debate I linked to in the top comment.
  
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  You can't handle the truth.
4. Re:as always, humans are weak in the mind by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-20 08:23 · Score: -1, Offtopic
  
  The US underwent a series of booms and busts (crippling depressions) back in Your Ideal Age. Read a book before spouting off about what you don't know about. I'd cite but people like you already have their minds made up even when you're wrong.
5. Re:as always, humans are weak in the mind by roman_mir · 2010-09-20 08:30 · Score: 0, Offtopic
  
  You are completely off your wagon there, there was nothing that crippled USA in that time period, the proof is the dramatic rising of the standard of living in that century, and if you didn't notice, nothing that happened in any local community in US had any effect whatsoever on other parts of the country, much less the world.
  And USA didn't wage wars upon other nations all over the globe by using income tax money, and US gov't was so small that it was able to do whatever it did on sales taxes and the taxes were actually very low - single digits, under 2% low.
  Go read a book.
  
  --
  You can't handle the truth.
6. Re:as always, humans are weak in the mind by roman_mir · 2010-09-20 11:43 · Score: 0, Offtopic
  
  Right, so the true statement that 19th century, with almost no government control produced much better results than the 20th century in terms of improving relative quality of life of people in the beginning and end of the century, while the 19th didn't have anything that could even closely be described as a 'depression', while 20th had one 'great' one and now there is another huge super-great one, this gets moderated a Troll.
  Is that because moderators believe this is a false statement, or because they believe people shouldn't be reading about this?
  
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  You can't handle the truth.
7. Re:as always, humans are weak in the mind by Burning1 · 2010-09-20 12:20 · Score: 0, Offtopic
  
  You're absolutely right. There were no significant differences between the 19th and 20th centuries, except for the level of governmental involvement in the economy. This proves your statement that the government is what caused the great depression.
8. Re:as always, humans are weak in the mind by nomadic · 2010-09-20 12:28 · Score: 0, Offtopic
  
  You are completely off your wagon there, there was nothing that crippled USA in that time period
  
  Except the major depressions of 1839 and 1873, the Panics of 1837, 1857 and 1893, the depressions of 1807 and 1815, and the recessions of 1802, 1812, 1822, 1825, and 1828. Other than that we did swimmingly.
9. Re:as always, humans are weak in the mind by mjwx · 2010-09-20 19:12 · Score: 0, Offtopic
  
  Except the major depressions of 1839 and 1873, the Panics of 1837, 1857 and 1893, the depressions of 1807 and 1815, and the recessions of 1802, 1812, 1822, 1825, and 1828. Other than that we did swimmingly.
  Didn't a few people also die of dysentery.
  
  Also there was a pretty major civil war.
  
  Not to mention cholera, polio, influenza was deadly. Oh and most people in the US were subsistance farmers or workers before and in the industrial revolution
  
  Where's this Roman Guy to tell us how much better life was before then, what was the average life expectancy of an American in 1850, infant mortality, adult literacy?
  
  Feck, in life expectancy alone the US is up about 10 years in the last 60 or 70.
  
  --
  Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
10. Re:as always, humans are weak in the mind by roman_mir · 2010-09-21 03:41 · Score: 0, Offtopic
  
  1807 duration: 3 years.
  1812 duration: half a year.
  1815 duration: 6 years.
  1822 duration: 1 year.
  1825 duration: 1 year.
  1828 duration: 1 year.
  1839 duration: 1 year.
  1857 duration: 1.5 years.
  1873 duration: 5.5 years.
  1893 duration: 1.7 years
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  That's right, those are busts, which are CURES for the booms that preceded them. Government WAS NOT INVOLVED AND THOSE RECESSIONS ENDED.
  1929-42 - that's 'Great Depression' that happened with gov't involvement, which turned a recession into an asset bubble, but US economy still was strong because it still had its manufacturing/production intact and when the war ended a lot of cheap labor came back from war and was utilized to rebuild the economy.
  The Keynesian ideas were used all throughout the 20th century to try and re-pump the bubble before it burst, and because of this the inflation, the money printing, getting off the gold standard, giving powers to monopolies, setting wage laws, fixing prices, bailing monopolies out, gov't spending and wars, all of that is now resulted in the biggest bubble that is being pumped right now, the treasury bill bubble, the bond bubble, when it bursts, the US will print enough money to buy back all those useless papers thus turning USD into a piece of garbage, which will result in a hyper-inflationary depression.
  Rather than that, the gov't is doing swimmingly.
  
  --
  You can't handle the truth.
Re:Hipsters by retech · 2010-09-20 06:41 · Score: -1, Offtopic

Mod this post up!
Re:Wild Animals Should Stay In the Wild by Shakrai · 2010-09-20 06:48 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Actually, ignorant rednecks who think their manhood enhancement will solve anything are far worst than any animals.
The only thing worse than ignorant rednecks is stereotyping anti-RKBA asshats such as yourself.

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I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Re:Obligatory Simpsons by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-20 06:53 · Score: -1, Offtopic

When the lions become a problem, bring in gorillas to fight the lions
They've already got gorillas in New York City.
Re:Wild Animals Should Stay In the Wild by Shakrai · 2010-09-20 06:56 · Score: 1, Offtopic

I've never seen a gator shot -- what kind of gun do you use on them to ensure a quick and clean kill? Do you really use a varmint gun (when I hear that I think of the Mini-14 and .223) or something with a little more power behind it?

--
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Re:Wild Animals Should Stay In the Wild by Jaysyn · 2010-09-20 07:18 · Score: -1, Offtopic

You still talking, mouthbreather?

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There is a war going on for your mind.
Re:Wild Animals Should Stay In the Wild by Shakrai · 2010-09-20 07:48 · Score: 0, Offtopic

It's idle. Everything is offtopic.
Besides, I don't care that they mod me down. Got lots of karma to burn. I only care that the dipshit who is hurling insults isn't being modded down along with the rest of us.

--
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Re:Wild Animals Should Stay In the Wild by nomadic · 2010-09-20 10:31 · Score: 1, Offtopic

Wow, tons of anti-second amendment idiots in this thread. Way to waste those mod points!

Right, because firing a gun is the answer to every problem in every situation in ever environment and anyone who says differently is trying to take your gun rights away from you.