I guess they aren’t as committed to capitalism and free speech as they claim

The right-wing freakout over Dr Seuss is amusing. The get everything wrong, but there is such wild-eyed outrage over his publisher not publishing books containing offensive illustrations.

Yes. That’s how it works. The people who own his works are exercising their right to not publish them. It’s not censorship, and it’s not driven by some imaginary leftist cancel culture.

I’ve been reading Seuss for most of my life, we read his books to our kids, and there are some that are popular with my granddaughter right now. They’re great books! No one is taking the Cat in the Hat out behind the chemical sheds. But there are definite examples of crude stereotyping of Asian and black people in some of them, and they taint the good.

I knew that Theodore Geisel had worked as a propagandist during WWII, as did some of the great cartoonists associated with the Warner Brothers label. If he were still alive, he’d probably be relieved to see that his racist works were being removed from the shelves of children’s libraries. We shouldn’t forget that Geisel approved of the internment camps for people of Japanese ancestry, or that he used crude steretoypes of African people, but it’s for the best that that stuff isn’t used in humorous primers intended to help children learn to read.

My grandfather fought in the Pacific during WWII, and came back filled with a lot of hatred and bigotry (which he did not outgrow, unlike Theodore Geisel). While I would like my grandkids to know something about their great grandparents at some point, I’m not going to start by sitting down and teaching them all the slurs Grandpa used for Asian people. That would be taking the wrong message from the experience.

University administrators probably won’t care

Sandra Steingraber had one of those ideal academic positions. She was doing interdisciplinary work at Ithaca College on climate justice, one of those important roles that doesn’t fit into a tidy niche. She was good at it!

For the past 18 years, I have served as our campus’ scholar in residence, recruited by a previous provost with a vision for shaping the college into a laboratory for environmental sustainability.

My post has been a joyful one. As a biologist with a master’s degree in poetry, a background in journalism and a national platform in the climate movement, I have represented Ithaca College around the world — in Congressional briefings, at the Paris climate meetings and inside church basements in struggling communities on the frontlines of environmental injustice.

My interdisciplinary scholarship and activism were welcomed on campus, and I flourished, authoring books, editing monographs and collaborating with filmmakers to create narratives that speak truth to power.

In addition to teaching my own class within the Department of Environmental Studies and Sciences (ENVS), I serve as a guest speaker across campus. My position thus offers me an extraordinary view of the Ithaca College curriculum.

I have to admire that kind of work. I’m in easy mode, in some ways: I teach canonical biology, the kinds of courses every university has to offer if they issue biology degrees, so I fit neatly into a pre-defined slot (it’s a competitive slot, though, which means it’s hard to find that position without a hundred other people fighting for it). Steingraber had to carve out her role from multiple disciplines, and also serve multiple disciplines. That’s not easy, especially since the Powers That Be — provosts seem to mostly be business people and doctors — typically lack any knowledge of what’s going on at the ground level, and don’t understand how the glue that ties together the components of an education can be just as important as the familiar scholarly groupings.

Steingraber’s position doesn’t seem to have been at risk, though. She was putting together a Center for Climate Justice, which would be quite a feather in the cap of the Powers That Be, since they love bragging to donors about Centers with fancy names. She even had a grant award to help pay for it all. But the university just had to go and do something stupid and short-sighted.

Last year, encouraged by Provost Cornish, I sought funding to launch a Center for Climate Justice at Ithaca College. My idea was to create a national destination for students seeking engagement with the climate crisis that would equip them with tools to envision a renewable future, and make it so.

To that end, I joined fellow faculty and staff serving on IC’s Climate Action Group. This committee worked for the better part of last year, drafting recommendations and helping to shape my own ambitious proposal.

The good news: after a year of planning and writing, I got the grant.

The bad news: both faculty co-chairs of the Climate Action Group are now among those losing their jobs as a consequence of Academic Program Prioritization, which, as far as I can see, is disaster capitalism for higher education.

All told, at least nine IC professors who teach some aspect of the climate crisis — in five different departments — are on the chopping block, with Recreation and Leisure Studies disappearing altogether.

Here’s the thing: When an administration decides that the most important task is aligning the size of the faculty to the correct proportion and does so by eliminating non-tenure track faculty, unique, irreplaceable areas of expertise are lost.

It’s our contingent and NTEN faculty who are engaged in some of the most innovative, intersectional, progressive teaching on campus. I know because I’ve literally taught across our curriculum for 18 years.

They cut the foundation she needed for such a goal! They looked at the whole university, saw the things they liked and wanted to keep, and figured all the stuff outside of that was disposable and chopped it, unaware of how university programs are interdependent. Imagine what it would be like if administrators looked at my university, saw that biology brings in lots of tuition money and leads to what they think are obvious money-making careers, and decided that Art didn’t contribute to that, or the Humanities, and hey, aren’t the Social Sciences all fake anyway? And then they decided to double the funding for lab courses and pay for it by firing half of the “useless” faculty. I would hope all the science faculty would reject such a ludicrous idea. Our students are here to learn how to think and begin to take on the breadth of human understanding, they are not here to get trained as a lab tech. I teach a narrow slice of the domain of knowledge, and I rely on my colleagues to teach all the rest. I sure can’t do it.

So Steingraber looked at the direction the college was taking, refused her grant award, and resigned.

Wow. That’s courage. I salute you, Sandra Steingraber, and I hope you land a new position where your talents will be appreciated.

On the other hand, it was only a small sacrifice.

I’ll be leaving Ithaca College at the end of this year. I am sorry. I wanted to build a thriving Center for Climate Justice here, but I’m demoralized and aware that the collective intellectual capacity I was counting on is being sacrificed to austerity.

Finally, and because I believe in transparency: my salary is $31,050.

I am horrified, but not surprised. Universities are run by people who like to count beans, and see the faculty, the major expense they have, as the best place to chisel out lots of beans.

I kind of hope that she had a half-time position, because that salary is ridiculously low. Only kind of, though, because if they’re throwing that much responsibility on a part-time position, that tells you how little they prioritized her job.

Sometimes you have to shut up and listen

I’ve written a few times about how biology is more complex than people think, that all the people claiming that biology dictates that there are only two genders are liars and fools, and that we should be far more inclusive in our perspective. However, I am not a trans person; I’m a comfortable cis-het white man, ensconced in the most privileged socio-cultural group in the country, and that puts me in an awkward position. It means that by default, when I think about these issues, I lapse into thinking about them from an outsiders perspective, as someone who is safely above it all, and most likely, I’ll think about it as a science problem. The transphobes are abusing science and are citing bad science, and so what I need to do is hammer back with good science.

Riley Black corrects me.

Science isn’t going to win this one. When the argument turns to strangers trying to affirm or deny my identity on the basis of biological particulars, I head for the hills like the dinosaurs in Fantasia running from the T. rex. That’s because trans rights are not a scientific issue. They are a human rights issue. There is certainly a lot we could say—and that I would honestly love to know!—about human sexual variation, the effects of hormone replacement therapy, why hoped-for bodily changes are so emotionally fulfilling, and more. Some of these things might be wonderful topics for biology classes; imagine if every high schooler in America were educated to understand that human sex itself comes with a lot of variation. (Thinking back to my younger, closeted self, that would have helped!) But, in terms of deciding how I, as a trans person, am going to move through the world, all the information about hormones and biology affects three people, at most: my doctor, my partner, and myself. That’s all.

I see and respect the point. It would be easy to fall into the trap of cis boys shouting back and forth about the science, who is wrong, who is right, swapping journal citations and studies, and forget that all the rarefied pomposity is going on above the bodies of real people who are suffering. It’s easy for me to talk about the various tissues and organs of developing embryos and lose sight of the fact that I don’t have a direct stake in the game, and for the people who do, it’s not a game at all. It’s not something that can be settled with science!

All this time spent debating “the science” of where transgender people belong in society only confuses a truth many are struggling to accept. It is a distraction no matter which side of the argument you are on, because you are complicating and putting up for debate something that is very simple. Trans men are men. Trans women are women. Nonbinary people are valid. Trans people have always been here. We are here now. We will continue to be.

I’ll put that front and center in my head from now on. That’s the primary issue in this struggle. The transphobes are trying to abolish the fundamental equality of all people, and set aside a small group for discrimination and oppression, and the danger is that they can use the physical and psychological diversity of human beings as a tool to justify turning those differences into the basis of hatred.

Christian humor

Do Christians get the funny drilled out of them? I ask because I recently got this ad from Ray Comfort:

Don’t try to analyze it. It’s about as funny as a fart, which means you have to be in a certain state of mind to be amused, and even then, it’s not going to be a clever joke, let alone one of the “world’s funniest one-liners”. It’s just part of the Living Waters grift — you can buy the booklet for $10, which is probably almost entirely profit for Ray, especially since buying it would immediately put you on his mailing list of gullible people.

Oh, also, he gives the content away for free! The ordering info includes the complete text, which is nice. There isn’t much that’s funny in there, though.

101 of the World’s Funniest One Liners

1. Ninety-nine percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
2. Borrow money from a pessimist — they don’t expect it back.
3. Time is what keeps things from happening all at once.
4. Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.
5. I didn’t fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian.
6. Never answer an anonymous letter.
7. It’s lonely at the top; but you do eat better.
8. I don’t suffer from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it.
9. Always go to other people’s funerals, or they won’t go to yours.
10. Few women admit their age; few men act it.
11. If we aren’t supposed to eat animals, why are they made with meat?
12. No one is listening until you make a mistake.
13. Give me ambiguity or give me something else.
14. We have enough youth. How about a fountain of “Smart”?
15. He who laughs last thinks slowest.
16. Campers: Nature’s way of feeding mosquitoes.
17. Always remember that you are unique; just like everyone else.
18. Consciousness: That annoying time between naps.
19. There are three kinds of people: Those who can count and those who can’t.
20. Why is “abbreviation” such a long word?
21. Nuke the Whales.
22. I started out with nothing and I still have most of it.
23. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
24. Out of my mind. Back in five minutes.
25. A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
26. As long as there are tests, there will be prayer in public schools.
27. Laugh alone and the world thinks you’re an idiot.
28. Sometimes I wake up grumpy; other times I let her sleep.
29. The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the ability to reach it.
30. You can’t have everything; where would you put it?
31. I took an IQ test and the results were negative.
32. Okay, who stopped the payment on my reality check?

Editorial: Probably the most thought-provoking one-liner is “Eat right. Stay fit. Die anyway.” It’s sad but true — no matter what you do, you will die. This is because you have sinned against God. Let’s see if that’s true: Have you ever lied (even once)? Ever stolen (anything)? Jesus said, “Whoever looks upon a woman to lust after her, has committed adultery already with her in his heart.” Ever looked with lust? If you have said “Yes” to these three questions, by your own admission, you are a lying, thieving, adulterer at heart; and we’ve only looked at three of the Ten Commandments. How will you do on Judgment Day? Will you be innocent or guilty? You know that you will be guilty, and end up in Hell. That’s not God’s will. He provided a way for you to be forgiven. He sent His Son to take your punishment: “God commended His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Jesus then rose from the dead and defeated death. God promises everlasting life to all those who confess and forsake their sins, and trust in Jesus Christ. Please do that today . . . you may not have tomorrow. See John 14:21 for a wonderful promise. Then read the Bible daily and obey what you read. God will never let you down.

33. We are born naked, wet and hungry. Then things get worse.
34. 42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.
35. Be nice to your kids. They’ll choose your nursing home.
36. If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
37. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be without sponges.
38. Eat right. Stay fit. Die anyway.
39. My mind is like a steel trap, rusty and illegal in 37 states.
40. Nothing is fool proof to a sufficiently talented fool.
41. On the other hand, you have different fingers.
42. I’ve only been wrong once, and that’s when I thought I was wrong.
43. God made mankind. Sin made him evil.
44. I don’t find it hard to meet expenses. They’re everywhere.
45. I just let my mind wander, and it didn’t come back.
46. Don’t steal. The government hates competition.
47. Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
48. National Atheist’s Day April 1st.
49. All generalizations are false.
50. The more people I meet, the more I like my dog.
51. Work is for people who don’t know how to fish.
52. If you don’t like the news, go out and make some.
53. For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism.
54. IRS: We’ve got what it takes to take what you have got.
55. I’m out of bed and dressed. What more do you want?
56. I used to think I was indecisive, but now I’m not too sure.
57. I can handle pain until it hurts.
58. No matter where you go, you’re there.
59. If everything is coming your way, then you’re in the wrong lane.
60. It’s been Monday all week.
61. Gravity always gets me down.
62. This statement is false.
63. Eschew obfuscation.
64. They told me I was gullible…and I believed them.
65. It’s bad luck to be superstitious.
66. According to my best recollection, I don’t remember.
67. The word “gullible” isn’t in the dictionary.
68. Honk if you like peace and quiet.
69. The Big Bang Theory: God Spoke and BANG! it happened.
70. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
71. Despite the cost of living, have you noticed how it remains so popular?
72. Save the whales. Collect the whole set.
73. A day without sunshine is like, night.
74. The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
75. Corduroy pillows: They’re making headlines!
76. Gravity: It’s not just a good idea, it’s the LAW!
77. Life is too complicated in the morning.
78. We are all part of the ultimate statistic — ten out of ten die.
79. Nobody’s perfect. I’m a nobody.
80. Ask me about my vow of silence.
81. The hardness of butter is directly proportional to the softness of the bread.
82. The last thing on earth you want to do will be the last thing you do.
83. Diplomacy is the art of letting someone else get your way.
84. If ignorance is bliss, then tourists are in a constant state of euphoria.
85. If at first you don’t succeed, don’t try skydiving.
86. If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?
87. Stop repeat offenders. Don’t re-elect them!
88. I intend to live forever. So far so good.
89. Who is “General Failure” and why is he reading my hard disk?
90. What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
91. I used to have an open mind but my brains kept falling out.
92. Energizer Bunny arrested; charged with battery.
93. I didn’t use to finish sentences, but now I
94. I’ve had amnesia as long as I can remember.
95. Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.
96. Vacation begins when Dad says, “I know a short cut.”
97. Evolution: True science fiction.
98. What’s another word for “thesaurus”?
99. Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.
100. A flashlight is a case for holding dead batteries.
101. I went to the fights, and a hockey game broke out.
. . . Don’t forget to read the editorial!

Right. The editorial is the whole point, that and the $10 and getting on his mailing list.

He doesn’t even include his very best joke!

Man, Christians can be scary people. How does he know what God says? If you snuck into his house and wired his bed with hidden speakers that whispered unspeakable suggestions to him all night, you could get him to do some very scary shit. I also hope he never gets schizophrenia.

Spider jump scares

Always good for a laugh.

Which reminds me…yesterday, my wife tried to cheer me up by telling me she saw some small insects in the house, which means the return of the spiders can’t be far off. This seems to be an unusual response by most hu-mans.

I’m kind of laid up from a fall yesterday, having trouble getting any sleep because any turn of my head sends alarm signals up and down my spine. This is cramping my plans. I have a spider agenda! I need to move all the spiders, especially the lady spiders, to shiny clean new containers, so they can spend the next week getting comfortable and filling it with new silk. They won’t know it, but they’ll be making their nuptial bed. Yeah, time to try breeding! They’re still on the small side, so they’re comparable to human teenagers, but we’ll see if they’re as horny as people get in their youth.

I still have concerns about species matching, though. There are two spider species, Parasteatoda tepidariorum and Parasteatoda tabulata, that I can’t tell apart, short of dissecting their genitalia, which absolutely ruins them for mating, and I don’t want to put P. tep together with P. tab, since that could just end with cannibalism (wait, different species, so not cannibalism? Just violent murder?). My solution for this go-round is simple: I’m going to put male spiders on their sister’s nuptial bed. I want an inbred line anyway.

I’ll try to record their activities next week, so maybe I’ll have a movie for you then. With any luck, it won’t be a gory murder/horror flick, but instead a little incest porn. I hear that’s popular, but have no idea why.

And no one was surprised…

That dogmatic suppositionalist, Sye Ten Bruggencate, seems to have done a naughty. The only question is whether it was something so horrible even an atheist would be horrified, or something only a weirdly repressed believer would find objectionable. Hey, maybe he just put on mixed fabrics, or had shrimp for dinner. That’s the optimistic perspective.

Atheism is dead. Atheists killed it.

One of my major problems with Christianity, a problem that has become increasingly vivid in recent years, is the cultish refusal to dissent from their own extremists — there’s an attitude of servile “getting along” with leaders who have become more and more deranged. We’ve been seeing that for years, with people like Pat Robertson and the Falwells and every one of those horrible organizations with “family” in the name, all certifiably hate-filled and determined to stamp out every deviation from their pale ignorant angry norm. It’s gotten so bad that the derangement has become the point, rather than the Christianity, so that the flock went ga-ga over a paranoid narcissist who has never exhibited the feeblest spark of religious devotion. Their new Jesus figure thinks he is the god and the Christians must lift every voice and sing his praises.

There have been many great Christian dissenters, people who believe in the religion with every fiber in their hearts, but who also see charity and reducing human suffering as the true great mission of Jesus Christ. I can disagree with their theology while respecting their goals and methods. Their priority is to be a good person and help others. Unfortunately, we don’t have a Cult of Jimmy Carter, but we do have a cult of Donald Trump.

So yes, I respect Christians who are willing to stand up and reject the Christianity that fuels armed mobs of “militias”, that reject the Christianity that says LGBT folk must be shunned and punished, that reject the Christianity that treats women as chattel, the Christianity that has wed itself to white supremacy, even if they do believe in gods and prayers and ancient mythology. What matters isn’t the poems they love, it’s the actions they take. Right now, the important thing is that they take a stand against the religion of conservative hate that is hijacking their faith.

We atheists have a similar responsibility. It’s not as if we’re somehow immune to the unreason and poison of the far right ideology. We should look at this and be appalled.

I’ll let James Croft explain it.

Yes, Atheists for Liberty were at CPAC to hobnob with fellow true believers in the anti-social justice cult which has captured US conservatism – and, to be fair, where better? CPAC is not a normal political conference, after all. In the range of acceptable, rational political opinion, it is not so much to one side of the scale as outside the scale entirely. CPAC brings together the vilest conspiracy theorists and hatemongers in the GOP and the conservative movement, and gives them a massive megaphone. It has consistently promoted false and harmful political ideas: this year it promoted the conspiracy theory that Trump won the presidential election, as well as transphobic and anti-immigrant rhetoric that wouldn’t be out of place at a neo-Nazi rally. It is a cesspool of the worst elements of American politics, and everyone who swims in that cesspool gets covered with slime.

A consistent theme of this year’s CPAC – as well as in conservative spaces more broadly – is the idea that social justice warriors are trying to “cancel” everything they disagree with. A great tide of illiberalism is washing over the USA, they claim, generated by angry Black Lives Matter and anti-fascist activists. Some of the biggest cheers of the evening were against “cancel culture”, something you’d think would be a boutique interest in the time of a massive global pandemic. But this seems to be what US conservatism has fixed on as its new bête noire, and Atheists for Liberty agrees.

This is an example of a new and growing phenomenon: the lines between religion and nonreligion, and even conservatism and liberalism, are becoming less important compared with the line between the “woke” and the “anti-woke.” Where you stand on the approach and concerns of contemporary social justice culture is becoming the signifier of political allegiance in the USA, and since Atheists for Liberty are anti-woke, they will happily dive into the CPAC cesspool.

I took a look in my archives, and I think I first started writing about the Deep Rifts in Atheism way back in 2009. I notice, though, that what I was saying back then was that we’d find our strength in the arguments over our goals, that internal dissent was the force that would drive us to be better atheists. I was so optimistic back then! Looking back over a dozen years, what I can see is that I was wrong (about so many things), and that there was no resolution, and that there could be no resolution. Atheism is a granfalloon. For those of you who aren’t great fans of Kurt Vonnegut (also an atheist and humanist!):

A granfalloon, in the fictional religion of Bokononism (created by Kurt Vonnegut in his 1963 novel Cat’s Cradle), is defined as a “false karass”. That is, it is a group of people who affect a shared identity or purpose, but whose mutual association is meaningless.

In that spirit, I repudiate “Atheists for Liberty” and all who find common cause with their opposition to justice. I will and always have criticized the atheist movement, and will not be one of the sheep who follow the worshippers of authoritarianism and prejudice and oppression into their hell on Earth.

Besides, look at that photo: smug assholes happily wallowing in the insanity of CPAC. How could anyone think that is behavior to admire or emulate?

Nope nope nope nope nope

I tried to walk in to open up the genetics lab this morning, and it ain’t happening. The roads and sidewalks are sheets of glassy ice — I got as far as the corner of my house before I went flying. I’ll be OK, I landed on my head.

Unfortunately, I can now feel every muscle and bone in my spine from thorax to cervical vertebrae aching and complaining. I’m going to be feeling this for several days.

Every year, godfuckingdamnit, I have take at least one serious fall. This is it. This better be the last one.

Shermer: Reliably wrong every time

People still pay attention to this conservative fraudster?

Skip it. Irreversible Damage is simply more right-wing hysteria. The premise is that the transeses are transing our kids against their will — the usual moral panic we saw about the gayses recruiting kids with their flamboyant, ever-so-appealing gayness. It’s a garbage book by someone who writes for the Federalist and other such reactionary venues. I’m not going to watch it, but I’m pretty sure Shermer won’t be doing a critical, or dare I say it, skeptical interview.

Watch this instead.

If you don’t want to watch a video, here’s a solid critical review of Shrier’s book. It’s published by Regnery? Yuck. She didn’t interview any of the kids she describes, but rather talked to their parents, who are very upset that their kids were transgender? Jesus.

How many people lined up to live on Devil’s Island?

Why do artists always put domes up? We’d be living in tunnels deep under the Martian surface.

Maybe Devil’s Island is a poor analogy — prisoners sent there had a 75% mortality rate, but it was a tropical island and they had air to breathe. Mon dieu, free air! And water fell out of the sky! Maybe a Siberian gulag would be a better example. The air is still free, but it’ll eventually kill you if you try to breathe it at -50°C, and they were, of course, work camps. We really have nothing to compare with Mars here on Earth. Yet Elon Musk is dreaming of sending a million people to live there, all beholden to the company store, that is, Elon Musk. Maybe you could find a few utopians who could be fooled into moving there, but the volume Musk fantasizes over? No way. I also suspect the effort would bleed his fortune dry.

But here’s a thought experiment for you: Charlie Stross gives him everything he could want.

Let’s suppose that Musk’s Mars colony plan is as viable as his other businesses: there are ups and downs and lots of ducking and weaving but he actually gets there in the end. All the “… and then a miracle happens …” bits in the plan (don’t mention closed-circuit life support! Don’t mention legal frameworks!) actually come together, and by 2060 there is a human colony on Mars. Not just an Antarctic-style research base, but an actual city with a population on the order of 500,000 people, plus outlying mining, resource extraction, fuel synthesis, and photovoltaic power farms (not to mention indoor intensive agriculture to grow food).

Do I believe that will happen? I do not. I think when the first thousand colonists die off and the few survivors start desperately begging for rescue from this hellhole, the supply of potential colonists will wither away and that venture will end. But it’s a thought experiment — we’ll assume that it all comes together that way at first.

Then Stross flicks over one little domino…what if a new deadly coronavirus variant emerges on this distant world?

You are the Mayor of Armstrong City, facing a variant SARS pandemic, and supplies and support are 15 months away. What do you do?

Alternatively: what are the unforeseen aspects of a SARS-type disease infiltrating such a colony?

And what are the long-term consequences—the aftermath—for architecture and administration of the Mars colony, assuming they’re willing to learn and don’t want it to happen again?

I don’t know, this doesn’t seem like an unusual circumstance for a new colony. It’s happened in the past, many times. You set off to a rich, fabulous bit of country, like Virginia or Massachusetts, in a new land, and initially you’re suviving a hair’s-breadth away from catastrophe, and a plague sweeps through your colony, and it’s the 17th century so you don’t have things like vaccines or even decent medical treatments. What happens?

You die.

I don’t think there are that many unforeseen aspects of such an epidemic, although certain people want to willfully ignore the possibilities (they’re not going there after all — some other gullible sap is). This would be a colony that requires a well-maintained infrastructure to maintain the basics of life, like air, water, and food, and something will crumble and the whole thing will collapse, and everyone will die, while sending frantic, woeful transmissions back to Earth at the speed of light.

The long-term consequences will be that no one in their right mind will want to go to Mars, and the way to prevent such a catastrophe is to send robots, assuming there is some economic gain to be had from exploiting the planet in the first place.

Maybe you have a more optimistic perspective? Try to persuade me.