It's been a boom year for idiots so far. So many idiots, so few moments to write them all in a blog. But this one takes the cake so far, the octuplet* mom, or rather, what do you call the mother of 14 kids? A world class idiot! Not only is she an idiot for having used fertility drugs to conceive the first six kids, but the 2nd set of 8 at once is just unbelievable! The fact that those people around her who supposedly care for her well being must have all been seriously off their rockers to allow this woman to go through with this incredibly stupid plan is at the very least, negligent.

We have a population problem on this earth already. I know the religious zealots and large family kooks out there will argue that statistics show we are barely replacing ourselves; however, look at the other statistics that show we expect to grow our current planet population from 6.8 billion people to about 9 billion people by the midpoint of this current century. That's more than 53.6 million people each year! (Thank you MS Excel, my calculator wasn't big enough!) Where will we put them all? They're not necessarily going to live in the places with smaller populations and huge tracts of land like Idaho, Nevada, Montana, Canada, Russia, etc. because those aren't the places where they're having larger families. The cities will get more crowded, the suburbs will get bigger and there will be larger metropolitan sprawls around the globe spewing more pollution into the air from more cars on the road (nobody wants to take public transit), more factories creating products for more consumers, etc. The water quality will decrease as well as the quantity because with global warming and the declining rainfall in many areas, there won't be any water to feed the extra population. This is starting to head towards some kind of Ray Bradbury type of scifi thriller.

Al Gore, who ironically is the father of 4 children himself and seems to be an eco warrior fighting the apathy about global warming, trying to raise awareness of the issues. Perhaps he's feeling guilty about his own major contribution? Personally I've felt for years that an ideal solution to many of our population woes would be to automatically install the Norplant birth control rods in every 12 year old girl's arm and then remove them when she turns 18 as a right of passage into adulthood. Of course, this is totally against the other side of my ego that supports the ACLU and personal freedoms, but it does seem like a good idea, don't you think? It would save on teen pregnancy, but wouldn't help against STDs - we still need to hand out condoms for that. But since it's not allowed by the ultra conservatives to teach responsibility and prevention in schools, that effort is hampered. This is heading into a whole separate blog entry for another time.

Anyway, population is a problem. The octuplet mom should not be applauded for her efforts but chastised for her idiocy. Unfortunately, it now becomes an issue of not making the children suffer for this parent's crime. I feel sorry for the siblings.

Note: *The word "octuplet" set off my Word spell check thinking I was trying to spell "couplet" - even Microsoft can't believe someone would have that many kids!