The fact remains, however, that in the end, they lost the race, and that would point towards some sort of ultimate inferiority.
Indeed. In fact, I wonder if the Neanderthals' "inferiority" is something that would probably be thought of as "superiority" today, i.e. their large, muscular bodies. Sure, they're great for enduring long migrations, clobbering one's rivals or lobbing spears at wooly mammoths, but in times of famine they're a detriment. Those big Neanderthal bodies needed a lot more calories to keep them going than delicate little Cro Magnon bodies.
A prolonged famine, combined with competition from 98-pound weakling modern humans, may have hastened the decline of the Neanderthals.
It's not embryonic research at all. The research was done decades ago. Now it's just a routine medical procedure. That just happens to destroy thousands of human embryos every year.
And no one seems to notice.
They are respectful.
Again, I find it interesting that you can say these things without ever having met them.
Such people obviously want families badly and are giving the embryos their best chance.
But they're destroying ~a dozen embryos (and letting their cells go to waste because they oppose embryonic research despite benefitting from it) in order to bring just one to term! How can this be acceptable, even laudable, if using those same doomed embryos to save possibly thousands of sick and dying people is so horrible?
I don't have any problems with the transplant system in the US.
How nice. But immaterial. Do you have a problem with the transplant system in China?
I do.
Would you want to go to China for transplant surgery if it meant the difference between life and death for you?
I might, and that disturbs me. Right now I can say 'No, of course not, how horrible!' but I know that things might look very different if I were in pain and dying and organs from an executed prisoner could save me.
I hope it never comes to that.
I'm glad that my friends (and they are my friends despite our differences) didn't actually have to use IVF in order to have their family. But it still bothers me that they'd have done it without hesitation. I'm sure they would never have imagined they'd support the destruction of human embryos. But when they thought it might be necessary in order for them to conceive a child, they were all in favor of it. Things looked very different when it was their own desires that could be met by destroying embryos. Worse yet, they didn't even see the hypocrisy!
"Destruction of human embryos to save the lives of people who are suffering == evil.
Destruction of human embryos so that we can have a child who shares our DNA == good."
It does not compute for me. I wonder how you can rationalize it, esp. since you've never met these people. I wonder how they could rationalize it.
Does it make sense to sacrifice promising youth for the broken aged, past the reproduction age, and already naturally selected...
Answer that yourself when you're the one with a lingering terminal illness.
I personally know people vehemently opposed to both abortion and stem cell research, who would nevertheless create and then doom a dozen or so embryos (their own children!!!) because they found themselves infertile and in need of IVF in order to have a baby of their own.
It's amazing how people's ethics change when they're the one with a problem. I'm no different.
I personally am loudly opposed to the way some countries (that shall remain nameless but you can probably figure out which one I'm thinking of) extract the organs of executed political prisoners for transplant. But if it was me who needed a liver, and the tests showed I was a match for one of the prisoners, I can't honestly say I'd decline the operation because of my principles. I truly don't know. Ask me again when I'm dying.
Does this make me a hypocrite? Possibly. I'm really not comfortable with it. But if I were dying I might still do it. Thus I can't work up a lot of outrage toward dying people (whatever their age or wealth) who are willing to go to such lengths (destroying an embryo that was never going to be implanted, much less born) to prolong their lives and avoid suffering.
...some people produce more offspring than others. At the moment that would be the poorest portion of society.
There's the correlation. But is there causality? Maybe there's none.
Or maybe it's reversed from the way you're probably thinking. Maybe it's not so much that the poorest people are breeding more, but rather that rapid breeders become and/or remain poorest. Raising a lot of kids is expensive. In terms of time as well as more tangible resources.
Assuming no causality, or assuming that breeding can cause poverty, seems so much more reasonable than assuming that poverty somehow confers an advantage (making destitute people irresistably attractive to the opposite sex perhaps?) in procreation. Yet people continue to trot out the old saw about poor people out-breeding the rest of us (it's always "us", not "them").
Sometimes it's not "the poor" but "the stupid" who are thought to be breeding too much.
I'm sure you meant to say embryonic stem cells there. By the time the embryo is developed enough to be considered a fetus, its cells are no more versatile than an adult's cells would be. Umbilical cord cells being a possible exception.
However, they [putting the sick in hospitals, extending the lives of the terminally ill, allowing people with disease to live, paying taxes to aid the disabled] inhibit evolution.
No they don't. It might be argued that they inhibit natural selection, but they don't inhibit evolution.
By allowing people with genetic disorders or family histories of genetic disorders to procreate and pass on their traits we are destroying Natural Selection.
Not at all. It might be argued that doing so replaces natural selection with our own artificial selection (just like we did when we domesticated wild animals and plants) but selection -- and evolution -- continues. Even making the distinction between natural and artifical selection may be faulty reasoning, depending on whether one considers humans to be somehow separate from nature.
Stem Cell research needs to make up for our lack of physical evolution by finding cures to diseases that will otherwise cause the extinction of our race.
Wha? Lemme get this straight. We need to come up with better ways to save people from diseases (e.g. stem cell therapies) because saving people from diseases will cause the extinction of the human race?
I don't get it. Why is saving people with diseases bad for humanity when it's done with, say, insulin or vaccines or antibiotics, but good for humanity when it's done with some as-yet-unknown treatment derived from stem cells? Either way allows people who would have died younger to live to an older age (and then die - we still don't have a cure for death). And, yes, some of them will procreate when they wouldn't have otherwise.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm all in favor of stem cell research. But I don't expect it to save humanity from extinction. Nor do I think that abandoning or defunding it will doom the human race. It's just another way of prolonging life and preventing suffering. Surely those are noble enough goals in themselves, yes?
African Elephants... have tripled in numbers over the past 6 months
How is that possible? Since African elephants gestate for well over a year (~22 months) and almost always bear a single calf, how would the population triple is six months? It does not compute.
*If* the African elephant population is growing, there's still no reason to credit global warming for that growth. As poaching has been largely responsible for the species decline in recent decades, it seems reasonable to conclude that more effective control of poaching would be the most likely cause of any elephant population increase.
Actually, a fairly large part of the Arctic also consists of an ice sheet sitting on top of land. Like the Antarctic. It's called Greenland (officially Kalaallit Nunaat). If/when the ice there melts, it flows off the land and into the ocean, raising the sea level. Just like Antarctic ice. And unlike ice cubes in a glass.
From wikipedia:
If the Greenland ice sheet were to completely melt away, sea levels would rise more than 7 m (23 feet)...
Researchers reported in February 2006 that Greenland's glaciers are melting twice as fast as they were five years ago.
Since when does "dynamic" disallow "balanced"? Balance need not be static. Think gyroscope. More balanced *because* it's moving.
As tool-using intelligent omnivores human beings are amongst the most adaptable species on the planet, and thus amongst the most likely survivors for any such situations. Having a population that's spread accross the whole globe doesn't hurt either.
Those are certainly points in their favor. But humans have strikes against them too. They're quite fragile creatures. They take a long time to reach maturity. They kill each other en masse at the slightest provocation. And of course even if some of them do survive in a poisoned, overheated world of "rubble piles", is that really something that an "intelligent, tool-using" species should strive for? Mightn't it be better to pay more for tuna and pseudo-crab nuggets that been sustainably harvested so that our collective children and grandchildren can live in a world with viable oceans?
Humans survived in the burned-out rubble piles most European cities were reduced to in WW2, they aren't going to go extinct because tuna runs out.
From the post:
But the issue isn't just having seafood on our plates. Ocean species filter toxins from the water. They protect shorelines. And they reduce the risks of algae blooms such as the red tide.
No, humans are probably not going to go extinct any time soon. But some of them will die (as they did in post-WW2 Europe, to steal your example). And the survivors will lack a lot more than tuna.
To the whole world would be even better. The developing world (a misnomer, as a great many of these countries are backsliding rather than developing) may have the faster growing populations, but their people consume far less resources per individual. When laying blame for the destruction of the world's oceans, one must look to the developed world's insatiable appetites as well as to the poorer countries' prodigious breeding. Both together are destroying the planet, and to condemn one without addressing the other is foolishness (or racism, but I'd rather not assume that).
The tags are on pallets and cases that let them track shipments from vendors. The tags are _not_ on the merchandise itself.
Looks like they are, actually. From the article:
Some individual products (cases of one, as Wal-Mart refers to them) will have tags.
...
The tags will be in the packaging of those individual products and the packaging will be marked with an EPCglobal symbol, indicating an EPC tag is present. The tags will be disposed of when the packaging is thrown away, and customers will not be tracked after they leave the store.
Since when did cooked (i.e., denatured) proteins retain the hormonal/enzyme activities of the native protein?
I used to think that too, since most proteins do seem to be denatured by cooking (or even by digestion, which is why diabetics can't just take an insulin pill). But it seems some proteins are remarkably heat-stable. Like those nasty prion proteins. Cooking your cattle brains before eating them doesn't seem to protect against BSE.
... at the line that indicated this is in the "tax-sink dept."?
With all the useless and/or downright dangerous and scary things are taxes are spent on, it seems very small-minded and petty to complain about the embarassing pittance that's spent on learning more about our universe.
An interesting point is that you can see that this should be possible by using Schrodinger's equation directly which isn't usually possible. Thus you could simulate it too.
But it's not a virus either, so your point stands.
The best biological weapons are the ones that act fast and have cures. You want your own troops to be immune while the disease incapacitates the enemy.
The best biological weapons are non-lethal. They make the enemy so sick they can't fight, while your healthy troops move in and sieze power, set up friendly governments, etc. After the New Boss(tm) is firmly in place, everyone gets well (except for a few infants, elderly and immunocompromised folk -- casualties of war) and there's no bad press. War without massive casualties, without destruction of property/infrastructure, but with the same result, i.e. friendly government installed.
Yeah, the conspiracy theorists' favorite diseases (HIV, Ebola, CJD) are lousy choices for germ warfare agents. They're too slow and too lethal, and they don't have cures.
Influenza is actually a very good choice for a biological warfare agent. It acts fast, it's rapidly and easily transmitted, there are vaccines available, and it's usually non-lethal.
Besides, in many fields which emulate some kind of war-like tactics, we men seem to be genetically at the advantage (on average, ofcourse).
I object to the word "genetically" in the above, but otherwise I can agree. I suspect the main reason (human) women lag behind men in war-like pursuits is learned.
Boys *learn* fighting (and gaming,and roughhousing) in their youth. Girls seldom do, which has interesting consequences.
I recall my martial arts instructor explaining why he'd rather get in a fight (not a game or a sparring match but a real fight) with a man than with a woman. He said it's because, even though he's more likely to lose to the man (physical strength, learned skills, etc.) the woman's more likely to hurt him. Because when men fight, one wins, one loses, and it's over. They might even be friends after. When a woman fights a man, she's desperate, angry, and backed into a corner. She knows she's at a disadvantage, she's out of options and she'll fight dirty. And even if you win, you don't win, because she'll come after you later, when you aren't expecting it, and finish the fight. To a man, that's not sporting, but to a woman it's to be expected. You asked for it.
I don't know if any of this applies to games, but I found it interesting.
Sure, there are lady fighter pilots, women who can exert the concentration and coordination necessary for Uncle Sam to trust them with $100M toys...All I'm saying is that statistics confirm that there are not many of them.
Actually, women (on average; we all know women AND men who are exceptions) tend to excel at just the kind of skills fighter pilots (and kick-ass gamers) need. Good reflexes, eye/hand coordination, etc. But fighter plane cockpits are crammed with equipment and most of it is designed with a MALE pilot in mind, i.e. 5'9" or taller. The best reflexes in the world aren't going to help you if you can't reach the controls.
While I can agree with much of what is said above, the following statement doesn't seem to support the argument.
If the woman were expected to bear the children of multiple husbands (which she can only do one at a time) she would be pregnant most of the time and what's left of her sexual capability would be split amongst all husbands.
Through much of history, women were pregnant (or nursing a young child, which also reduces sex drive) for most of their adult lives anyway, whether they had one partner or many. For women, fertility is not a function of how many partners she has (unless it's zero) or even how often she has sex (unless it's never) but more of her health and longevity (not taking into account contraception). The difference multiple partners would provide is: with one partner, the children would all have the same father, while with multiple partners (married or not) each might have a different father. But either way she's pregnant or nursing most of the time, so the guys aren't going to be getting much action.
With a single father, he's probably going to be more willing (though perhaps less able) to provide for them all, as they're his own flesh and blood.
With multiple fathers (again, with or without marriage) they're probably going to be more able but less willing (as they don't know if they're supporting their own child or some other guy's).
Let's all be thankful for contraception, eh? Good news for women, who don't have wear out their bodies by being pregnant or nursing all the time, and good news for men, who can cash in their resulting increased sex drive.
Because really, who wants a child (or even the possibility of a child) every time he/she has sex?
You shave for maybe 5 minutes very second day, or perhaps even less often. With prsonal music you have speakers next to, or even inside, your ears for hours on end.
People sleep all night, often every night, with electric blankets warming their bodies, and if it's cold they tuck their heads under the covers too. I'd think that'd be an even greater risk than the headphones.
Slashdot Mirror
What do we do when the second internet is overrun?
Build another. And then another after that. It's internets all the way down!
Building a new internet everytime "cyber-criminals" get on it sounds expensive...
Not when it's someone else's money.
Um... isn't that far more than the percentage of living humans who are European-derived? So where is everyone else getting their D variant genes?
Wouldn't it be more reasonable to conclude that the gene came from an ancestor common to both modern humans and Neanderthals?
The fact remains, however, that in the end, they lost the race, and that would point towards some sort of ultimate inferiority.
Indeed. In fact, I wonder if the Neanderthals' "inferiority" is something that would probably be thought of as "superiority" today, i.e. their large, muscular bodies. Sure, they're great for enduring long migrations, clobbering one's rivals or lobbing spears at wooly mammoths, but in times of famine they're a detriment. Those big Neanderthal bodies needed a lot more calories to keep them going than delicate little Cro Magnon bodies.
A prolonged famine, combined with competition from 98-pound weakling modern humans, may have hastened the decline of the Neanderthals.
I back these people 100%.
Interesting. You don't even know them!
This is embryonic research put to good use.
It's not embryonic research at all. The research was done decades ago. Now it's just a routine medical procedure. That just happens to destroy thousands of human embryos every year.
And no one seems to notice.
They are respectful.
Again, I find it interesting that you can say these things without ever having met them.
Such people obviously want families badly and are giving the embryos their best chance.
But they're destroying ~a dozen embryos (and letting their cells go to waste because they oppose embryonic research despite benefitting from it) in order to bring just one to term! How can this be acceptable, even laudable, if using those same doomed embryos to save possibly thousands of sick and dying people is so horrible?
I don't have any problems with the transplant system in the US.
How nice. But immaterial. Do you have a problem with the transplant system in China?
I do.
Would you want to go to China for transplant surgery if it meant the difference between life and death for you?
I might, and that disturbs me. Right now I can say 'No, of course not, how horrible!' but I know that things might look very different if I were in pain and dying and organs from an executed prisoner could save me.
I hope it never comes to that.
I'm glad that my friends (and they are my friends despite our differences) didn't actually have to use IVF in order to have their family. But it still bothers me that they'd have done it without hesitation. I'm sure they would never have imagined they'd support the destruction of human embryos. But when they thought it might be necessary in order for them to conceive a child, they were all in favor of it. Things looked very different when it was their own desires that could be met by destroying embryos. Worse yet, they didn't even see the hypocrisy!
"Destruction of human embryos to save the lives of people who are suffering == evil.
Destruction of human embryos so that we can have a child who shares our DNA == good."
It does not compute for me. I wonder how you can rationalize it, esp. since you've never met these people. I wonder how they could rationalize it.
Does it make sense to sacrifice promising youth for the broken aged, past the reproduction age, and already naturally selected...
Answer that yourself when you're the one with a lingering terminal illness.
I personally know people vehemently opposed to both abortion and stem cell research, who would nevertheless create and then doom a dozen or so embryos (their own children!!!) because they found themselves infertile and in need of IVF in order to have a baby of their own.
It's amazing how people's ethics change when they're the one with a problem. I'm no different.
I personally am loudly opposed to the way some countries (that shall remain nameless but you can probably figure out which one I'm thinking of) extract the organs of executed political prisoners for transplant. But if it was me who needed a liver, and the tests showed I was a match for one of the prisoners, I can't honestly say I'd decline the operation because of my principles. I truly don't know. Ask me again when I'm dying.
Does this make me a hypocrite? Possibly. I'm really not comfortable with it. But if I were dying I might still do it. Thus I can't work up a lot of outrage toward dying people (whatever their age or wealth) who are willing to go to such lengths (destroying an embryo that was never going to be implanted, much less born) to prolong their lives and avoid suffering.
...it's not as if we're intensely breeding for attractiveness.
Of course not. We've got plastic surgery for that!
...some people produce more offspring than others. At the moment that would be the poorest portion of society.
There's the correlation. But is there causality? Maybe there's none.
Or maybe it's reversed from the way you're probably thinking. Maybe it's not so much that the poorest people are breeding more, but rather that rapid breeders become and/or remain poorest. Raising a lot of kids is expensive. In terms of time as well as more tangible resources.
Assuming no causality, or assuming that breeding can cause poverty, seems so much more reasonable than assuming that poverty somehow confers an advantage (making destitute people irresistably attractive to the opposite sex perhaps?) in procreation. Yet people continue to trot out the old saw about poor people out-breeding the rest of us (it's always "us", not "them").
Sometimes it's not "the poor" but "the stupid" who are thought to be breeding too much.
Guess who "us" is in that argument.
...fetal stem cells are far more versatile...
I'm sure you meant to say embryonic stem cells there. By the time the embryo is developed enough to be considered a fetus, its cells are no more versatile than an adult's cells would be. Umbilical cord cells being a possible exception.
However, they [putting the sick in hospitals, extending the lives of the terminally ill, allowing people with disease to live, paying taxes to aid the disabled] inhibit evolution.
No they don't. It might be argued that they inhibit natural selection, but they don't inhibit evolution.
By allowing people with genetic disorders or family histories of genetic disorders to procreate and pass on their traits we are destroying Natural Selection.
Not at all. It might be argued that doing so replaces natural selection with our own artificial selection (just like we did when we domesticated wild animals and plants) but selection -- and evolution -- continues. Even making the distinction between natural and artifical selection may be faulty reasoning, depending on whether one considers humans to be somehow separate from nature.
Stem Cell research needs to make up for our lack of physical evolution by finding cures to diseases that will otherwise cause the extinction of our race.
Wha? Lemme get this straight. We need to come up with better ways to save people from diseases (e.g. stem cell therapies) because saving people from diseases will cause the extinction of the human race?
I don't get it. Why is saving people with diseases bad for humanity when it's done with, say, insulin or vaccines or antibiotics, but good for humanity when it's done with some as-yet-unknown treatment derived from stem cells? Either way allows people who would have died younger to live to an older age (and then die - we still don't have a cure for death). And, yes, some of them will procreate when they wouldn't have otherwise.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm all in favor of stem cell research. But I don't expect it to save humanity from extinction. Nor do I think that abandoning or defunding it will doom the human race. It's just another way of prolonging life and preventing suffering. Surely those are noble enough goals in themselves, yes?
African Elephants... have tripled in numbers over the past 6 months
How is that possible? Since African elephants gestate for well over a year (~22 months) and almost always bear a single calf, how would the population triple is six months? It does not compute.
*If* the African elephant population is growing, there's still no reason to credit global warming for that growth. As poaching has been largely responsible for the species decline in recent decades, it seems reasonable to conclude that more effective control of poaching would be the most likely cause of any elephant population increase.
From wikipedia:
Since when does "dynamic" disallow "balanced"? Balance need not be static. Think gyroscope. More balanced *because* it's moving.
As tool-using intelligent omnivores human beings are amongst the most adaptable species on the planet, and thus amongst the most likely survivors for any such situations. Having a population that's spread accross the whole globe doesn't hurt either.
Those are certainly points in their favor. But humans have strikes against them too. They're quite fragile creatures. They take a long time to reach maturity. They kill each other en masse at the slightest provocation. And of course even if some of them do survive in a poisoned, overheated world of "rubble piles", is that really something that an "intelligent, tool-using" species should strive for? Mightn't it be better to pay more for tuna and pseudo-crab nuggets that been sustainably harvested so that our collective children and grandchildren can live in a world with viable oceans?
Humans survived in the burned-out rubble piles most European cities were reduced to in WW2, they aren't going to go extinct because tuna runs out.
From the post:
No, humans are probably not going to go extinct any time soon. But some of them will die (as they did in post-WW2 Europe, to steal your example). And the survivors will lack a lot more than tuna.
That would be a lot easier to do if the U.S. President would stop defunding the United Nations Population Fund.
To the whole world would be even better. The developing world (a misnomer, as a great many of these countries are backsliding rather than developing) may have the faster growing populations, but their people consume far less resources per individual. When laying blame for the destruction of the world's oceans, one must look to the developed world's insatiable appetites as well as to the poorer countries' prodigious breeding. Both together are destroying the planet, and to condemn one without addressing the other is foolishness (or racism, but I'd rather not assume that).
IIRC the theremin is the only musical instrument that can be played without the musician actually touching it.
(ignoring for a moment the bothersome little detail of whether the electrical field surrounding the instrument is part of the instrument itself)
Looks like they are, actually. From the article:
"Who are you?"
Always wondered how a real robot would answer that...
A real robot would be too busy whupping the silicon out of all the other robots in the arena to answer philosophical questions like that.
Since when did cooked (i.e., denatured) proteins retain the hormonal/enzyme activities of the native protein?
I used to think that too, since most proteins do seem to be denatured by cooking (or even by digestion, which is why diabetics can't just take an insulin pill). But it seems some proteins are remarkably heat-stable. Like those nasty prion proteins. Cooking your cattle brains before eating them doesn't seem to protect against BSE.
...Is there anything it can't do?
... at the line that indicated this is in the "tax-sink dept."?
With all the useless and/or downright dangerous and scary things are taxes are spent on, it seems very small-minded and petty to complain about the embarassing pittance that's spent on learning more about our universe.
An interesting point is that you can see that this should be possible by using Schrodinger's equation directly which isn't usually possible. Thus you could simulate it too.
You mean when his cat plays with the nanoyarn?
Malaria = bacterium (plasmodium faciparum sp.
IIRC that's a protozoan, not a bacterium.
But it's not a virus either, so your point stands.
The best biological weapons are the ones that act fast and have cures. You want your own troops to be immune while the disease incapacitates the enemy.
The best biological weapons are non-lethal. They make the enemy so sick they can't fight, while your healthy troops move in and sieze power, set up friendly governments, etc. After the New Boss(tm) is firmly in place, everyone gets well (except for a few infants, elderly and immunocompromised folk -- casualties of war) and there's no bad press. War without massive casualties, without destruction of property/infrastructure, but with the same result, i.e. friendly government installed.
Yeah, the conspiracy theorists' favorite diseases (HIV, Ebola, CJD) are lousy choices for germ warfare agents. They're too slow and too lethal, and they don't have cures.
Influenza is actually a very good choice for a biological warfare agent. It acts fast, it's rapidly and easily transmitted, there are vaccines available, and it's usually non-lethal.
Besides, in many fields which emulate some kind of war-like tactics, we men seem to be genetically at the advantage (on average, ofcourse).
I object to the word "genetically" in the above, but otherwise I can agree. I suspect the main reason (human) women lag behind men in war-like pursuits is learned.
Boys *learn* fighting (and gaming,and roughhousing) in their youth. Girls seldom do, which has interesting consequences.
I recall my martial arts instructor explaining why he'd rather get in a fight (not a game or a sparring match but a real fight) with a man than with a woman. He said it's because, even though he's more likely to lose to the man (physical strength, learned skills, etc.) the woman's more likely to hurt him. Because when men fight, one wins, one loses, and it's over. They might even be friends after. When a woman fights a man, she's desperate, angry, and backed into a corner. She knows she's at a disadvantage, she's out of options and she'll fight dirty. And even if you win, you don't win, because she'll come after you later, when you aren't expecting it, and finish the fight. To a man, that's not sporting, but to a woman it's to be expected. You asked for it.
I don't know if any of this applies to games, but I found it interesting.
Sure, there are lady fighter pilots, women who can exert the concentration and coordination necessary for Uncle Sam to trust them with $100M toys...All I'm saying is that statistics confirm that there are not many of them.
Actually, women (on average; we all know women AND men who are exceptions) tend to excel at just the kind of skills fighter pilots (and kick-ass gamers) need. Good reflexes, eye/hand coordination, etc. But fighter plane cockpits are crammed with equipment and most of it is designed with a MALE pilot in mind, i.e. 5'9" or taller. The best reflexes in the world aren't going to help you if you can't reach the controls.
While I can agree with much of what is said above, the following statement doesn't seem to support the argument.
If the woman were expected to bear the children of multiple husbands (which she can only do one at a time) she would be pregnant most of the time and what's left of her sexual capability would be split amongst all husbands.
Through much of history, women were pregnant (or nursing a young child, which also reduces sex drive) for most of their adult lives anyway, whether they had one partner or many. For women, fertility is not a function of how many partners she has (unless it's zero) or even how often she has sex (unless it's never) but more of her health and longevity (not taking into account contraception). The difference multiple partners would provide is: with one partner, the children would all have the same father, while with multiple partners (married or not) each might have a different father. But either way she's pregnant or nursing most of the time, so the guys aren't going to be getting much action.
With a single father, he's probably going to be more willing (though perhaps less able) to provide for them all, as they're his own flesh and blood.
With multiple fathers (again, with or without marriage) they're probably going to be more able but less willing (as they don't know if they're supporting their own child or some other guy's).
Let's all be thankful for contraception, eh? Good news for women, who don't have wear out their bodies by being pregnant or nursing all the time, and good news for men, who can cash in their resulting increased sex drive.
Because really, who wants a child (or even the possibility of a child) every time he/she has sex?
You shave for maybe 5 minutes very second day, or perhaps even less often. With prsonal music you have speakers next to, or even inside, your ears for hours on end.
People sleep all night, often every night, with electric blankets warming their bodies, and if it's cold they tuck their heads under the covers too. I'd think that'd be an even greater risk than the headphones.