Call me a nitpicker, but
Unless you count 'one, two, many', you (second letter down) really can't get away with a line like
'the Malthus theorem was disproved many centuries ago'.
Thomas Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population was first published in 1798.
I don't think that there can be many centuries of refutation of a text that's 213 years old.
I don't even think that switching that statement to read 'decades' really works, since, really, Malthusian-type anxieties over populations vs global resources pretty high-profile at least well into the 1970s.
***
And while I've got a grump on, how irked (etc) I was by 2 pieces in the Observer New Review:
With commenters able to hide behind a cloak of anonymity, the blog and chatroom have become forums for hatred and bile
Failure to distinguish between anonymous and pseudonymous (includes people with trackable pseuds and thus possibility of reputation assessment). Plus, have we not observed trollery by people who boast of using Their Own Names? And totally fails to get the extent to which there are legitimate, non-toxic, reasons for using handles. Self-righteous male wafflery at its worst, and masses of Point Thar Misst:
[S]he's in another "community management" job now, dealing through Facebook, which is a relief because "it removes anonymity so people are a lot more polite".
The word is not 'polite', the word is 'anodyne', surely.
Social networks are trying to be more subtle at accommodating our shifting allegiances, but they're no substitute for real time with our friends
For some time now, I've been struggling with what I call "social network emotional anaemia". The online world - rich with the communities that I once loved and learned from, the connections I forged, the old schoolmates I rediscovered, the relationships that I cultivated and maintained - has become increasingly empty as a space to perform "friendship". I'm no longer receiving the same degree of closeness I feel I need from the network; well, not from the people who matter most to me, at least. I see them offline in the pub, the theatre, the garden and the coffee shop. I talk to them on the phone.
Because I can so hang out in person with friends who are on a different continent and in a different time-zone.... Major temptation to say 'Speak for yourself, luv.'
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