Comments | ekorber: a few fun facts

ekorber

a few fun facts

Mar 11, 2006 01:05

Some interesting facts at the Population Reference Bureau. I was talking to someone about this kind of thing recently (easwaran?) - we were rather far off on our estimate of the percentage of people ever born who are alive now (not that the estimate here is perfect, but it is at least based on something other than a random guess ( Read more... )

Comments 14

shippo March 11 2006, 18:54:03 UTC

Link propagation counts as content, especially if the links are interesting. I, for one, never knew that E's father was a famous physicist that I've never heard of.

In order to be truly content-free, one must post quiz results that inform the world which Care Bear you were in a past life.

ekorber March 11 2006, 21:36:26 UTC

Oh, wow, Care Bears, haven't thought about them in years... they were "born" (in stuffed animal form) the same year I was, so many of the pictures of my early childhood feature a lot of Care Bears. Based on my name, heritage, and birthday, I recieved a totally absurd number of Good Luck Bear-themed items for my 1st-4th birthdays.

Even more absurd quiz idea - which Popple were you in a past life? Did they even have distinct personalities?

bbsy March 12 2006, 01:08:37 UTC

I never saw Popples in my childhood. But they look like a hybrid of Care Bear and Smurf. And troll doll.

ekorber March 12 2006, 02:24:32 UTC

You never saw Popples as a kid? And you are a person about the same age as me who also grew up in the US?!?! *boggle*

I didn't know that they had a TV show until I looked at the Wikipedia article on them just now, but the stuffed animals were everywhere. They were fun because you could roll them into their "pocket" form and play ball games with them indoors with minimal risk of breaking stuff.

In what used to be my "room" (curtained-off portion of the kitchen) in the boathouse where my parents spend most of the summer, there are still Smurf curtains. They're pretty awesome.

Thread 6

easwaran March 11 2006, 23:12:19 UTC

So that's the Everett these philosophers of physics all like ( ... )

ekorber March 12 2006, 01:07:52 UTC

I guess I have no reason to either doubt or believe their 10-year guess. For me at least, I don't intuitively "count" people unless they live for more than a few months, but they are probably counting everyone who survives birth as contributing to the population. I would imagine that the ubiquity of hard slave labor in early civilizations contributed significantly to the death rate of children and young adults. My totally baseless intuition says that maybe 10 is too little but I'm pretty sure 20 is too much.

And somehow I don't think the world's current religious landscape would be quite the same if only 6 people had been alive in ~0 (BCE/CE) (is the year 0 designated at one or the other?)

ekorber March 12 2006, 01:10:45 UTC

Also, interesting graph from Wikipedia here. The immediate observation is that the world population looks like basically just the population of Asia plus a constant factor that might be slightly perturbed by the rest of the world.

easwaran March 12 2006, 22:12:31 UTC

Well, it's a logarithmic scale, so that's the population of Asia times a constant factor.

That graph surprised me, because I was sure that Africa still had fewer people than Europe, but it suggests that Africa passed Europe a couple years ago.

Thread 6

Erin... cdbarker March 14 2006, 02:44:11 UTC

My AP U.S. History kids would like to "thank" you for giving me the idea for the most deceivingly ass-hard extra credit questions I have ever given them. I am more saddened that most of them missed what is the current population of America.

Re: Erin... ekorber March 14 2006, 05:53:15 UTC

Glad I could help. I will have to watch my back the next time I'm in Michigan in case some vengeful US History students are out to get me...