Frontiersman, July 2026

—Friedrich Schiller, 1801

I see people on the news lamenting the reported decrease in the growth rate of the human population. Those people are advocating various policies intended to restore the growth rate to its previous level.

Other people on the news are lamenting situations such as diseases and epidemics, famine, hordes of refugees, global warming, extinctions, pollution, desertification, deforestation, depletions of resources, and so forth. Those people are advocating various policies intended to make things better.

The people in the first group fail to recognize that making the population even bigger will cause the various consequences of overpopulation to keep getting worse. The people in the second group fail to recognize that the so-called problems that they’re trying to solve aren’t the real problems. Those things are merely consequences of overpopulation. The efforts of those people only make the consequences seem to be more tolerable, thus making it easier to ignore overpopulation, pretend that it doesn’t exist and, thereby, enable it to keep getting worse.

We’ve demonstrated our inability to solve the overpopulation problem, which will therefore necessarily solve itself. Some situation reminiscent of the apocalyptic biblical prediction seems possible, even likely. I expect that such things have happened before. That’s why they appear so often in our myths, legends and, in the case of the biblical prediction, as a prophesy. However, the biblical prophesy is incomplete. It should include five horsemen, not four. The mightiest of the five horsemen is the one that isn’t even mentioned in the prophesy, the one against which, according to Friedrich Schiller, even the very gods themselves contend in vain.

I do not wish to seem overly dramatic, but I can only conclude from the information that is available to me as Secretary-General that the members of the United Nations have perhaps ten years left in which to subordinate their ancient quarrels and launch a global partnership to curb the arms race, to improve the human environment, to defuse the population explosion and to supply the required momentum to development efforts. If such a global partnership is not forged within the next decade, then I very much fear that the problems I have mentioned will have reached such staggering proportions that they will be beyond our capacity to control.

—U Thant
Secretary General of the United Nations
<underline added>

We will call him Crazy Eddie. Always he does the wrong things for excellent reasons. He does the same things over and over, and they always bring disaster, and he never learns.

When a city has grown so overlarge and crowded that it is in immediate danger of collapse, when food and clean water flow into the city at a rate just sufficient to feed every mouth, and every hand must work constantly to keep it that way, when all transportation is involved in moving vital supplies, and none is left over to move people out of the city should the need arise, then it is that Crazy Eddie leads the movers of garbage out on strike for better working conditions.

—from The Mote in God’s Eye
by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

References
•

8 Billion Angels, Thursday, December 31, 2020
https://8billionangels.org/
•

Overpopulation and the Growth Obsession, Sunday, March 7, 2015
http://bluepyramid.org/storey/archives/3026
•

Essays About Money, Taxes, and Corporations, in Pharos
http://pharos.org.uk/Money_Taxes_Corporations/Money_Taxes_Corps.html

The Hyperspace Hypothesis
Sam Aurelius Milam III

My present place of residence has a back door that opens onto a small piece of the yard that’s between the door and two small metal buildings. I use one of the buildings as a shop and the other one for storage. That little piece of the yard is sort of “out of the way”, and doesn’t lead from anywhere to anywhere. Consequently, it’s seldom used by anybody but me. I walk across it frequently, several times a day. Just beyond the metal buildings is Sanctuary. I keep the grass between the door and the metal buildings cut short, to encourage the various little critters that live in Sanctuary to stay there. I don’t want to step on a wandering rattlesnake in a patch of tall grass, between my shop and my back door.

On Thursday, April 23, 2026, as I walked out my back door heading for my shop, I noticed a small piece of metal on the ground. It hadn’t been there during my previous trips, earlier that same day. It was laying on the surface, not imbedded in the ground. So, it hadn’t just “surfaced” but, seemingly, had just been dropped there. The grass under it was slightly flattened but mostly undisturbed, suggesting that the object hadn’t hit the surface hard, and that it hadn’t been there for long. The object is about 2 inches long. It’s of a material that’s attracted to magnets. It weighs 2.2 ounces. It was partly covered with moist dirt when I found it, but not rusted. The brown color that’s shown in the pictures, cited below, is moist dirt, not rust. Note that we were in a dry spell at the time. I don’t know why there was moist dirt on it. Remember, it was laying on top of the grass, not down in the dirt.

I don’t have a clue about its origin or it’s purpose. Maybe one of the readers might recognize it. There are pictures in the website. One possibility is that it could have fallen off of a piece of equipment but the only equipment in that vicinity is the lawn mower. I turned it over and around and couldn’t find any indication of a missing part. It still works.

Maybe the object fell out of the sky, but it didn’t make an indentation in the ground where it landed. Furthermore, why would an object that fell from the sky have moist dirt on it? One person suggested that I should check it for radiation, in case it fell from an alien spacecraft. I don’t have a Geiger counter.

Maybe it slipped out of hyperspace.

Additional Reading
•

Sanctuary, in my personal website
http://sam-aurelius-milam-iii.org.uk/#Sanctuary
•

Pictures of the object
http://frontiersman.org.uk/2026/2026-07/Images/Object.html
•

Time in Hyperspace, in the May 2021 issue
http://frontiersman.org.uk/2021/2021-05/2021-05.html#Time_in_Hyperspace
•

Back from Hyperspace, in the April 2022 issue
http://frontiersman.org.uk/2022/2022-04/2022-04.html#Back_from_Hyperspace
•

Hypertrash, in the May 2023 issue
http://frontiersman.org.uk/2023/2023-05/2023-05.html#Hypertrash
•

An Unsolved Mystery, in the November 2023 issue
http://frontiersman.org.uk/2023/2023-11/2023-11.html#Unsolved.

Technocrap
Sam Aurelius Milam III

When I was young, my father told me that the Model T Ford was the best automobile ever built. The more I learn, the more inclined I am to agree with him. So far as I can tell, the Model T Ford did everything that an automobile needs to do and none of the things that an automobile doesn’t need to do. I suggest that the automotive engineers of today should be ashamed of themselves because of the technocrap that they’re designing. Furthermore, the managers and the marketing swindlers should give us a choice between the technocrap and some very basic, simple models, instead of giving us a choice of only which piece of technocrap to buy.

Stray Thoughts
Sam Aurelius Milam III
•

Government authorization, in any form, should never be a prerequisite to a person’s legitimacy, or to his access to things. Citizenship should always be completely voluntary.
•

Just war is a contradiction in terms. Some wars might be unavoidable or even necessary, but no war is ever a just war.
•

You know that there’s something wrong with the economy when it’s cheaper to buy something that was made in China and shipped here than it is to buy one that was made here.
•

A compulsive need to worship one god or another suggests the presence of a subservient mind.

DNA and The Bell Curve
Sam Aurelius Milam III

Of the women with whom I had intimate relationships over the years, half of them claimed to have been the victims of sexual mistreatment. There might have been others who didn’t mention it but half of them, by actual count, did. They weren’t talking about gender discrimination in the workplace. They were claiming to be the victims of actual, physical sexual abuse. If the instance of such perceptions in the general female population is as high as it was in my own little sample of the female population, then 50% of all women could make similar claims. From the commotion that I see from women on the television, that seems possible. Then, it seems possible that 50% of men might engage in behavior that the women regard as abusive.

Eyes of the Beholder
Sam Aurelius Milam III

—from the March 1996 issue

Mirror, mirror, on the wall
Showing nothing, hiding all.
Mirror, mirror, dare I see,
More than you reflect of me?

Fifty percent is a big number. If that many men, or anything even close to it, engage in such behavior, then women have a different problem than they think they have. Fifty percent is at the middle of the bell curve. That makes it normal, by definition. If that’s the case, then women are not objecting to abnormal behavior by men. They’re objecting to our normal behavior. Legislation, litigation, and all of the whining in the world can’t remove the middle of the bell curve. Maybe instead of trying to nag us into something that we aren’t, women should learn to understand us as we are, to accept us for what we are, and then find constructive ways to deal with us. Maybe they could avoid us, for example, instead of forcing their way, unwanted, into our workplaces, or the other intrusive and manipulative nonsense that they’ve tried for so long which, according to their own testimony, hasn’t worked.

On the other hand, if only a few men engage in such behavior, then why are half of the women encountering them? Surely, so many women can’t all encounter the same few men by chance. Are they actually seeking such men? Could they be putting themselves in harms way for some dark reason that’s buried in their own DNA? It’s an interesting question. In that regard, see my article Dark Reflections, in the March 1996 issue..

Additional Reading
• Dark Reflections, in the March 1996 issue
http://frontiersman.org.uk/1996/1996-03/1996-03.html#Dark_Reflections
• Thanks for the Mammaries: a Ma’amoir, in Pharos
http://pharos.org.uk/Adventures_and_Misadventures/Adventures.html#Ma-amoir

Depression Era Jokes
As told to me by Poppa.
•

The cafe owner walked over to the table where his only customer was sipping coffee. He looked out the window and said, “Looks a little like rain.” The customer said, “Yeah, but it tastes a little like coffee.”
•

A man who’d been riding the rails, looking for work, walked into town and saw a sign in the cafe window. The sign advertised, “All the soup you can eat, 5¢.”

He went in, gave the owner 5¢, and sat down by the window to eat some soup. He finish his first bowl, waved to the owner, and asked for a refill. The owner said, “You already finished.” The man said, “The sign says all I can eat for 5¢.” The owner said “One bowl full is all you can eat for 5¢.”
•

A woman went to the local grocer to buy a pound of butter. He wrapped it in paper, took it to the counter, and she bought it.

Later, at home, she unwrapped the butter and sat it on her table while she prepared some vegetables on her countertop. When she turned around, there was a mouse that had just climbed onto her butter. It hadn’t eaten any, or caused any visible harm, but she didn’t want to use the butter.

She took the butter back to the grocer and explained the situation. The butter was unharmed, she just wasn’t comfortable using it, knowing that a mouse had sat on it. She explained that another customer, ignorant of the butter’s recent history, could use it without harm. So, she asked the grocer to exchange it for a different pound of butter. He agreed.

The grocer took the pound of butter in back, wrapped it in a different piece of paper, and returned it to the woman. She left happily, with her original butter.

Elementary
As retold by Sam Aurelius Milam III.
Watson:

By Jove, Sherlock! Where did you get to be so smart?
Sherlock:

In school, my dear Watson. In school.
Watson:

By Jove, Sherlock! What school was it?
Sherlock:

Elementary, my dear Watson. Elementary

It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.

—Abraham Maslow
1966

Ole was on his death bed. For the convenience of the people who were helping to take care of him, and for the convenience of visiting friends and family members, a temporary bedroom had been established for him in the spare storage room, just off of the downstairs hallway, near the kitchen and the downstairs bathroom.

Lena was in the kitchen, preparing food for the funeral reception. Among other things, she was making her famous chocolate chip cookies, widely known as the best in the county. Ole smelled the chocolate chip cookies. He really wanted some of those cookies. With great effort, he pulled himself out of his bed and onto the floor. With stubborn determination, he crawled the few feet along the hallway and into the kitchen. With great effort, he pulled himself up onto his stomach on a chair at the kitchen table. With trembling hands, he stretched his arm toward the big platter, heaping with freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.

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— Sam Aurelius Milam III, editor