The Word Cloud

14 Comments

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  by Caducean Whisks 3 months ago

  That's worrying, isn't it? Looks like Moldova's the place to go if you want a bit of space in the future.
  Fascinating, Tony :)
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  by Skylark 3 months ago

  Ok, maybe I'm just being a bit thick (and I've not clicked the link to check out the wesbite) but can you possibly be the 2,446, 776, 752nd person to be born? I might be completely wrong about the maths here but if, at the moment, the world population is 7 billion, that doesn't mean that Johnny Blogs born tomorrow is the 7 billionth and 1st person born because that doesn't take into account all the people who have died along the way. Far, far more than 7 billion people have been born to date, but 7 billlion people are currently alive on the planet. Isn't that what it means? So surely, when you were born, there must have been more than 2 billion whatever it is people already born, a fair number of whom would have already passed on.....? Yes?
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  by Wrathnar the Unreasonable 3 months ago

  Whoa, that graph is well scary! Weird to think the world's population has more than doubled since I was born.
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  by Tony 3 months ago

  It's worth looking at the site, Skylark. It doesn't tell you this, but actually the number of people alive today is approximately half (yes, only half) of the total number of people that have ever lived! Put another way, the total number of people that have ever lived, but are now dead, is roughly the same as the total mumber of people alive today. Amazing, isn't it?
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  by Skylark 3 months ago

  I put in my date of birth and it said that when I was born I was the 4,215,265,201st person alive at that moment and that 78,666,282,093rd have lived since history began. That means that the number of people alive now (if we take the population as being 7 billion) is less than a tenth of the total number of people that have ever lived - either that or I don't understand my millions and billions (which is a distinct possibility!!) Please help me understand - my brain hurts!!
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  by Tony 3 months ago

  Hmmm. I hadn't even noticed that second figure. If you click on 'How did we calculate that' you see a very brief explanation. You need to click on the link to Carl Haub to read how he worked it out. He has had to use wild approximations and guestimates over a 50,000 year period, which he assumes to be the appropriate time. Either he's wrong (which is quite possible) or I am (which is remotely possible, I suppose... maybe). I can't remember where I came accross my statistic, but given the exponential curve of the graph, I don't find it at all unreasonable. Howver one big difference may well have been the estinated age of the human race, which creation scientists put at more like 6000 years, 10000 at the most. However, since I can't give chapter and verse, you must feel perfectly free to believe whatever figure you wish :-)
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  by John Taylor 3 months ago

  From an article in New Scientist a month or two ago, Skylark's figure looks more accurate.
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  by Skylark 3 months ago

  Ah, I didn't realise your statistics came from elsewhere - my head's very muddled by all the big numbers! I suppose a large part of it must be guesswork. Fascinating all the same :-)
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  by Skylark 3 months ago

  Crossed with you, John :-)
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  by Tony 3 months ago

  I thought I'd do a bit of research and it seems my statement above is based on a popular myth around in the latter half of the last century. So my apologies for misleading you. Estimates seem to range from 56 billioin to about 125 billion, so it's obviously a very inexact science. Maybe I wasn't even the 2,446,776,752nd to be alive on earth after all. Doh.
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  by Spangles 3 months ago

  It's a fun site. But it takes no account of the time of day when you were born, so you might be number 2,446,776,752, Tony, or you might be 2,446,777,835 because you were born an hour later than the point at which that figure was calculated.
  
  I have an image of midwives across the world with giant blackboards and pieces of chalk (which is what they would have had in my day) and a wonky phone ('Operator! Operator!') with which to keep score.
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  by Jill 3 months ago

  Yes, brain hurting from such figures - shall we agree that all Cloudies are 1st's? Well, we can dream of being listed 1st somewhere in literary life!!
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  by Tony 3 months ago

  Well, quite, Spangles. lol. I don't really mind if I'm only the 2,446,776,753rd. I guess just to be included in such a vast hoard is honour enough.
  Absolutely, Jill. We're all the first to have written our novels. In fact we're the only ones to have written our novels. We're unique!
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  by John Taylor 3 months ago

  Yay! We're all unique. And even targeted advertising doesn't know quite what's going on in each wonderful, individual head.