[1] Juliet Schor, The Overworked American, Basic Books, New York, 1991, pg 81.
[2] Canadian Economic Observer, Sept/98, lists changes in real annual earnings of Canadians, by decile, from 1981 to 1995. Eight of the ten deciles show losses. The lowest decile showed the biggest loss (11.4%) and the highest decile showed the only significant gain (5.5%). See also Jaqueline Thorpe, "15 years of stagnation" National Post Jan 19/05, pg A1.
[3] Encyclopaedia Britannica CD 98, Sensory reception: animal sensory reception: thermoreceptors in vertebrates: amphibians & reptiles. Since this book was published I have heard that there may be some question about this phenomena but I don't plan to boil a frog to find out. Even if frogs don't always behave as the 'syndrome' suggests we all know that humans often adapt to, rather than react to, slow changes.
[4] Species became extinct and the climate changed before humans arrived and long before any human system developed, of course, but the rate of change in the past few hundred years has been of a different order of magnitude.
[5] In fact ants appear to have evolved new patterns within historic time. Within the past ten years entomologists have discovered several "supercolonies" of ants, in Japan, Switzerland, the United States and other countries, that cover more ground area that human cities.
The largest supercolony found so far stretches from the Italian Riviera to Spain. This specific supercolony is described in an article entitled "Ant colony stretches from Italy to Spain" by Randolph E Schmid of the Associated Press, printed on page A20 of The Toronto Star, April 16/2002. Schmid's article is adapted from an article published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
The oldest known supercolony, in Japan, is believed to be only a few thousand years old. Considering the size of supercolonies, it is hard to imagine that anything short of a volcano could destroy a large one.
[6] Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel - the fate of human societies, W. W. Norton and Co, NY, 1999, pg 20-21.
[7] The danger of disease in dense populations is illustrated by statistics from the American Civil War, in which men who had been raised in rural environments were housed in the crowded environments of army and prison camps. Of a total of about 2,750,000 soldiers on both sides of the war about 617,000 died, but only about 204,000 were killed in battle. About 413,000 men were killed by dysentery, typhus, malaria, pneumonia, smallpox, measles tuberculosis and other diseases. Numbers from Shelby Foote, The Civil War, Vintage/Random House, New York, 1986.
[8] Marvin Harris, Cannibals and Kings, Vintage books, New York, 1978 paperback, pg 234.
[9] Ralph Linton, The Tree of Culture, Knopf, NY, 1955, notes on pg 39 that cities are never self sustaining for population. They need in-migration to survive.
[10] Donovan Webster, Aftermath, The Remnants of War, Pantheon Books, NY, 1996, pg 234, 245.
[11] Aftermath, The Remnants of War, Pantheon Books, NY, 1996, pp 131-2.
[12] "Purity police would not let girls flee fire, National Post, March 19/02, pg A3.
[13] "401 horror. Father throws girl off overpass, then jumps."Toronto Star, Mar 7/05, pg A1.] The next day another man doused himself with gasoline and set himself afire in front of TV news cameras.
"Man sets himself ablaze," National Post, Mar 10/05, pg A1.
[14] Joel Baglole and Ian Mulgrew, "Jury finds Ellard guilty of murdering Virk," National Post, pg A5, Apr 13/05.
[15] "Girl, 13, lured to golf course and killed with tools, suspect says," National Post, Apr 19/05, pg A4.
[16] Lee Greenberg, "Homolka won't be charged with sister's death," National Post, pg A5, Apr 13/05.
[17] Melissa Leong, "Teen jailed in murder of Orangeville's 'gentle giant'," National Post April 22/05, pg A13.