Water? I Don't Need No Stinkin' Water.

Some people (i.e. retards and bedwetters) believe that the principle of "enlightened self-interest" can, if cognitively embraced by a population, assure the success of free-market capitalism without the interference or imposed regulations of government. These people pee in their own beds while they sleep. They pass a third of their lives prostrate and unconscious in warm puddles of their own urine.

A few years I ago I had the privilege of passing a few times through The Panama Canal. Naturally, I was impressed by the scale and serviceability of this engineering marvel. During my mini-education of the Canal Zone, I was told by canal officials that the forested areas within ten miles of the canal were protected from all forms of development so that a high water table, a necessary precondition for the canal to function, would be preserved. Now comes this article explaining that clear cutting, slash-'n-burn, & other forms of deforestation have been occurring for decades within the Canal Zone, threatening the canal – the very economic lifeblood of Panama. Everyone knows that the forests keep the canal running. There's no mystery or secret to this. As far as this elementary knowledge goes, everyone is "enlightened". If nothing else, this is unequivocal evidence that people will, if given the opportunity, willfully disregard a certain pesky qualifier of "enlightened self-interest".

An additional irony in this idiotic turn of events is that the creation of the Panama Canal resulted in the famed Barro Colorado Island, which has yielded a vast cornucopia of data sets illuminating the interconnectedness of species and habitat. It is a remarkable testimony to our capacity for contradiction that we can simultaneously posses the intelligence to understand the causes and consequences of extinction, as well as the stupidity to disregard them.