Overpopulation and Kant

The moral imperative - adopt a maxim and if you can universalize this maxim -then it becomes a moral imperative. Something like that.

This was a thought I had over the weekend while admiring the architecture of Mies and Rem at IIT in Chicago.

procreation and the environment

basically the earth is suffering from a depletion of resources, perhaps we are procreating too much...

if i make it a moral imperative not to have children - i adopt it and everyone else will adopt it - then humanity will cease to exists.
So obviously this is not ethical according to Kant.

but if i have children, and so everyone has children- then we will have overpopulation - again bad .

Number. So we need to include numbers. it is not an either/or question but an amount question. How many children is it ethical for one person to have according to Kant's moral imperative.

Perhaps every person who wants can procreate 1 person - to keep population constant - or reduce it a bit.

This is one of the reasons we need to empower women in developing countries - educated women engage in family planning -
then we wont have to resort to Kant

Some links for the day:
http://www.killerstartups.com/
http://www.gurufocus.com/
http://www.thevalve.org/

A Blustery Day

It is a blustery day in gotham. You can never say that you dont have jet - because perhaps one night you seem not to have jet lag, but the next night you do. I, by force of will, can overcome jet lag. Last night I woke at 4:30, looking for my wedding ring and not quite sure where I was. At the moment, Lian is playing 18 musicians and I am resisting the urge to fall off the coffee wagon - sipping some english breakfast from mcnulty.

This morning I logged into the Malawi server and lo and behold the server cannot be located. I am trying to track down the IT guy at the Lilongwe office so he can check on the server. I think we need to change the ip/dns server mappings again so I can log in. The security system over there is sort of labrynthine.

We went live with the system about 1 week after I finished writing it. This is sort of insane, yes. But hey, its malnurished kids, we cant wait. What I am learning about deploying tech projects in Africa, is that you need to map out a detailed deployment plan. People are not used to releasing software products, and so there is no concept of testing/debugging/soft launch. It is great that at UNICEF you can deploy a project a week after you finish. Generally this is impossible because of all the red tape at most organizatons. I believe in rapid deployment and iterative design/testing. I attempted to orchestrate a soft launch with the Ministry of Health - and this week is the soft launch, in 2 weeks is the hard launch. Launching is hard. Like Math and Titanium.

I am now focusing on my tea and finishing the Fate of Africa, an excellent book. However, I wish the Fate of Africa was more analytical and less descriptive, or to use Kant's terms, more synthetic and less analytic.