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United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales, N. Ireland): 94,248 square miles

South Korea: 38,320 Square Miles (about the size of Indiana)

Sweden: 173,732 square miles

USA: 3,537,438 square miles, 79.6 persons per square mile (in the year 2000)

China: 3.7 million square miles

China's Tiger Beach, the largest aviary in the world: 6,950 square miles

Northern Ireland: 5,467 square miles

United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales, N. Ireland): 94,248 square miles

South Korea: 38,320 Square Miles (about the size of Indiana)

Sweden: 173,732 square miles

USA: 3,537,438 square miles, 79.6 persons per square mile (in the year 2000)

China: 3.7 million square miles

China's Tiger Beach, the largest aviary in the world: 6,950 square miles

Northern Ireland: 5,467 square miles

Politically the tradeoff has been you have to wire the uneconomic areas to wire the economic ones, this was true for both phone and cable. Blame your local utility commission for making that tradeoff if you want. Because our hugely populated areas pay for the service to all the sparse areas (the FCC's USF) they haven't invested in the infastructure for the densly populated areas. The only reason NYC doesn't have fiber to everyone's door is that the phone company generally offers the same set of services across the state of NY to stay out of regulatory hot water.

If anyone wants the numbers. You can wire 6.3% of Sweeden and reach 80% of the poulation. In the US you would have to wire about 15% of the counties (I couldn't find pop/km data for the US) to reach the same 80% of the population. Wiring 6.3% of the most populated counties only raches about 65% of the US population. The density map of Sweden is here. For the US I grabbed the county stats list from the census bureau and removed the states and then sorted.

>in Canada, 95% of the population is less than 5 degrees north of the 49th, and that population tend to clump near the cities

If enough people bug their senators and representatives they'll be forced to take some kind of action lest they be concerned with losing a re-election bid

How does the opinion of a few thousand computer enthusiasts affect a re-election bid when the voting demographic is overwhelmingly influenced by what they see and hear on television? Let's have a look at our democracy. According to here and here voter turnout for Presidential elections can be as high as 70% but, in the midterm elections, can be as low as 35%. Of those polled who didn't cast a ballot, one in five said they were too busy. In a midterm election that's 12% of the theoretical votes--clearly enough to sway the decision. In our last presidential election, one in five of thirty percent is still 6%--an enormous number compared to the margin that Bush used to assume victory. It doesn't take a conspiracy theory to note that when the yearly tax burden is heavier the advantage will clearly be given to candidates who support platforms which will further benefit already wealthy voters. The wealthy classes win on both sides: first, they're closer to the government trough from which those tax dollars get disbursed and second, the elected candidates are going to hold their interests as more important than the interests of working class America.

This is part of why they can't bust someone for drug paraphernelia unless they have actual drugs on them,

I know several people who've been taken into custody. To be honest they were only given a ticket--$180 for a pack of papers, in one case, because he didn't have any tobacco to prove they weren't for marijuana. Does that count as "busted"? The public defender recommended a plea of "no contest" and the individual couldn't afford private legal counsel.

Riiiight. So basically anybody called 'T Kennedy' isn't allowed to fly.

According to the 1990 census information, 0.067% of Americans have the surname 'Kennedy' - given a rough poulation of 300million, that makes around 200,000 American Kennedys.

Now, also from the above information, 4.25% of the male population and 3.35% of the female population have names beginning with T.

This means that just from that single name on the no-fly list, roughly 7600 Americans could be excluded from flying.

It's utter, utter madness.

Well, I don't know how many states have to be economically larger than how many EU countries for the GP to be considered correct, but take away the top 10 from the EU, and the remaining 60% are smaller than 36% of the US states. About 1/3 of the states > over 1/2 of the countries? I would say that qualifies as *many* states larger than *many* countries. My $0.02 (US).

But I really see research into moons as being a waste of money that could have been better spent feeding and clothing the poorest in the world.

So we'll take the $5 billion dollars we spend annually on space exploration (most likely, a gross over-estimation) and distribution it evenly amongst the one billion people in the world who live in poverty and hunger (most likely, a gross under-estimation). So every poor person in the world gets an annual $5 gift courtesy of the US government.

Whoa. Huge dent in the poverty and hunger levels there.

So let's say that $5,000 USD is an acceptable living wage for most of the world. Now you can only help a million people.

Oh, by the way, in 2002 the number of people living in poverty in the US, as defined by the Census Bureau, was 34.6 million people (http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/income02/prs03a sc.html). So dividing that $5 billion amongst just the poor in the United States gives every poor person about $144.50 every year.

Again, whoa, huge dent in poverty and hunger levels. Twelve bucks a month is not going to make a difference in poverty levels.

What really woke me up was their statement that only 6% of the worlds engineers are educated in the USA.

1. What about as an American purchaser?

1. Over half of Americans own stock, which is why the left's class warfare is becoming less and less effective.

As the AC said, bollocks. The rate of increase is decreasing . The absolute increase is also decreasing. The UN's latest projections have a majority of even the developing countries falling below the replacement level. And on their "low" projection, the absolute world population peaks at less than 8 billion in the 2030s and then starts declining. (The other projections will also peak, but beyond the UN's 2050 cutoff date.) Who knows? Maybe things will change again and we will end up with a population of 80 billion by 2500. But it's absurd to assert that it's inevitable. On current trends, it's not even likely.

As the AC said, bollocks. The rate of increase is decreasing . The absolute increase is also decreasing. The UN's latest projections have a majority of even the developing countries falling below the replacement level. And on their "low" projection, the absolute world population peaks at less than 8 billion in the 2030s and then starts declining. (The other projections will also peak, but beyond the UN's 2050 cutoff date.) Who knows? Maybe things will change again and we will end up with a population of 80 billion by 2500. But it's absurd to assert that it's inevitable. On current trends, it's not even likely.

Population officially using US dollars : 294 million American Factfinder (rounded up)

Population officially using Euros : 303 Million Euromania (rounded down)

And with more countries joining the EU and soon the Eurozone, y'all are going to need to do a _lot_ of extra breeding to keep up.

Every time I see someone complain about not having auto-routing I feel older.

"Kids today...when I was YOUR age, you whippersnapper, we didn't have these newfangled auto-route thingamajiggers to tell us where to go! We had to learn to READ maps! Chiseled on clay tablets! In Cuneiform! Uphill! In the snow!....and we were THANKFUL for it!"

Seriously though - GPSDrive can import maps at various resolutions (including "street level" 1:2500 or so) from Expedia already, and of course you can generate your own. I prefer to plot my routes out by reading the maps myself anyway. Sure, if you have good data an 'auto-route' program can tell you what way is shortest or sometimes what way may be fastest...but how many can tell you automatically which way "looks like the most fun"?

I'm working on interpreting the US Census bureau's "TIGER/Line" data for auto-generating my own maps for use in GPSDrive, myself. I've currently got it plotting highways over the NASA satellite photo data that GPSDrive can use on-the-fly as well. I haven't got it perfect yet, but it works and is fun.

And on that subject, for those who are miffed that the question posed covers a very broad area, here's a nice specific "tech support" question: Anybody know what sort of "projection" the Expedia street maps are in? They don't appear to be UTM, at least.

Between China and the U.S., 2003 trade exceeded $150Bn (from $81Bn in 1999).

The only thing I do not like about outsourcing is that I can't move as easily as jobs can. No amount of cheap food/merchandise can equate to a good job. In that sense, free trade is not necessarily fair trade (if we can call anything fair).

Would that there really was a song so popular that everybody actually wanted it.

I think 100 Million worldwide is a lot, though.

That's 1 out of every 63 people on Earth. I think that's enough to say "Everybody". :-)

That's silly, everyone knows that REAL open-source geeks read road maps directly from the source code, not some wussy precompiled map! (That is, if census.gov gets its act together - for some reason I can't get to this page at the moment. Probably running some proprietary OS or something...)

Seriously though - there are two open-source "road map"-type programs that I know of...

GPSDrive is a 'general purpose' map display program. It doesn't render roads, etc. "on the fly" (though it WILL render NASA satellite images on-the-fly if you have the gigantic raw data file for it) but does have built-in downloading of maps from online sources or importing your own. (It also interfaces with Kismet for wardriving if you are set up for it).

There IS a project for generating roadmaps on-the-fly called Roadmap, though I've not yet tried it out. (I did, of course, just download the sourcecode so that I could...)

There is a /ton/ of 'free' GIS data available on the internet.

I say 'free' because in reality the US taxpayers have paid for it, but take a look at things like:

Kansas DASC,

Census Bureau TIGER data,

collection sites like Geo Community,

and an almost limitless number of other sites. Most states now have GIS sites of one form or another, with downloadable data.

Jim Deane

A few even figure out how to go shopping

Uh... With $15.5 Billion in e-commerce sales in the first quarter of 2004 alone, I think there were more than just a "few" of these typical users that figured out how to go shopping online.

The USGS has a huge database of Streamflow data online.
You can pull tables for rivers near you, and see how often they flood.

With a bit of work, you can pull all sorts of things out of the current tiger dataset - for example, there are about 4.8 million unique street/zipcode combinations in the US.
See how many streets near where you live are unique ( two streets just down the road from me - Kentvale and Uthers - appear to be unique).

There's lots of interesting data out there, keep poking around in .gov sites, and you'll find all sorts of stuff.

1990 US population: 230,445,777 US Census
1990 US Oil consumption: about 17 Million BPD (Barrels Per Day) DOE overview

2000 US Oil consumption: about 20 Million BPD href="http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/eh/frame.htm l">DOE overview

Q: Has census data been abused in the past?

A: Yes. Information gathered by the U.S. Census bureau helped the government round up American citizens of Japanese ancestry during World War II. When the Federal government came up with the idea that these Japanese Americans were a security threat, it needed some way to hunt them down. The solution? Use the Census records. According to officials who were in charge of the internment process, Census Bureau employees opened up their files and drew up detailed maps. These maps showed where Japanese Americans were located and how many such people were living in a given area.2 In the end, nearly 112,000 people were captured and sent to internment camps, in one of the darkest episodes in United States history.3

In the years after World War II, there have been repeated attempts to expand the use of Census records beyond mere statistical analysis. Recently, there was an effort to expand the number of public entities who have ready access to these banks of data, including state and local authorities, as well as the United States Postal Service.4 These developments underline the importance of new privacy protection laws to prevent history from repeating itself.

The historical record is clear that senior Census Bureau staff proactively
cooperated with the internment, and that census tabulations were directly
implicated in the denial of civil rights to citizens of the United States who
happened also to be of Japanese ancestry.

The record is less clear whether the then in effect legal prohibitions against
revealing individual data records were violated. On this question, the judicial
principle of innocent until proven otherwise should be honored. However,
even were it to be conclusively documented that no such violation did occur,
this would not and could not excuse the abuse of human rights that resulted
from the rapid provision of tabulations designed to identify where Japanese
Americans lived and therefore to facilitate and accelerate the forced
relocation and denial of civil rights.

As others have said, the median is a throwaway number. A much better indicator of how various segments of the population are doing can be found in the 'Share of Aggregate Income' table-

http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/h02.html

Which you can plainly see shows a decreasing percentage of overall U.S. income for all fifths, except the top fifth and the top 5 percent.

Actually, if you work out some of the costs, it gets pretty scary! For example, there are about one million homes in San Diego County (Ref: US Census. The median price is $200,000 (probably more now), which means that San Diego County is worth $200,000,000,000! And that doesn't include business properties, etc.

In reality, companies are still quite small compared to countys, let alone countries.

Though some such as Coca Cola or Mc Donald's get pretty big.....

Dude, if you are a technical worker in the West(tm), and aren't in the top 30%, you need to quit your job immediately and start looking for a new one... your're being royally screwed!

Based on this census info the median HOUSEHOLD income in the US is ~$42K, while this salary survey says that the average regular tech worker's individual income is ~$67K.

It's just a little something I've been playing around with in my spare time.

It does use cookies to store the current settings, so when you go back to the page, it should be the same as when you left it.

The tiles for the photo and topo views are USGS images, sourced from Microsoft's terraserver-usa site. For the blended mode, they are generated as needed from the map and the photo, then cached locally on the server.

The address lookup is based on geo-locator using a database based on Tiger 2003.

Place lookup (and the landmark overlay) are based on both the USGS GNIS database, as well as the NGS Benchmark database. It has 2,504,693 entries in the database right now.

The Geourl overlay is based on geourl.org's XML feed - it's cached locally, and only polls geourl.org when data expires from the cache.

Dnsloc is based on DNS LOCation records - I ran a crawler a couple of weeks ago on every site listed in DMOZ, and found just over 1,000 sites that listed location info in their DNS records.

There are a few other overlays that are about ready, but I haven't put them on the main page yet - letting users add annotations, readings from weather stations, readings from streamflow stations, etc.

Basically, I want to take every web accessible database I can find containing information that makes sense when displayed geographically, and make it into an overlay.

Europe tends to de-genericise geographical indicators such as CHEDDAR(tm) cheese for cheese made in Cheddar, England.

I don't know about the Cheddar cheese example, but I don't really care because the topic is "Pilsner" and not cheese.Similar problems can carry different circumstaincail backgrounds, you know... But if you truly want to go via the way of examples from different industries, let me give you one term: Velcro - everyone says "velcro" as if that was a general term and yet the noun is a _brand name_ - it is an american simplification to take brand names for generic terms.

And by the way, I would bet my own cash that 80% of Americans would swear to whatever is dear to them that velcro is an American invention even though it's Swiss, but that's a different topic altogether, let's not get into that...

Otherwise, how could SABMiller, which makes MILLER LITE(tm) beer, get away with claiming [xpressmart.com] that MILLER LITE beer is a "true pilsner"?

Based on the only piece of evidence you included, it is not SABMiller directly who claims Miller Lite is a "true pilsner" - it is "Biros Merchandising" who manages the online store xpressmart.com and confidently sells those kind of patches.

When a language such as English does not have a formal codification, it doesn't matter that both "Velcro" and "Pilsner" have a capitalized and non-capitalized version of the two in the "American Heritage" dictionary, because in the end, this kind of ignorance of proper usage of such words is practiced only by less than 5% of the world population.

I find it's especially useful for any application that involves "talking to a service over the network" or dealing with text-like (including html/xml) files and/or relatively simple GD-compatible graphics file manipulation (generating graphs, maps, etc.), whether it's a database server, a webserver, an ftp server, a socket, etc. etc.

My own current personal project involves figuring out the "TIGER/Line" geographic data from the US Census bureau so that I can render the features at will over other existing map graphics and turn them into maps for GPSDrive. I've already got PHP scripts generating "USGS Topographic maps or TIGER/Line [1998 data rendered from the census bureau site] features rendered atop USGS Terraserver aerial photos" for GPSDrive...

I've also considered doing a Kismet client class for PHP. Not real useful for old-fashioned web use, but could be handy for CLI (or PHP-GTK or whatever).

And why not? It's fun.

I'm not saying we need to eliminate Capitalism, just that our present form of Capitalism is full of government interventions that benefit the rich and hurt the lower classes.

You mean like protectionist trade barriers? "Hurt the lower classes"... I guess the lower classes outside the border don't count? I'm not saying that free trade automatically ensures sudden bliss for these folks, but surely they have a right to earn a living, no?

America used to be a place that prided itself on it's small businesses, on the independence of it's craftsmen.

Ah, the good old days. That never happened. Jefferson himself was a plantation owner. That's not exactly a "small" business, especially not in those times-- especially not when you consider the number of people he had enslaved there and the aristocratic atmosphere that dominated in plantation life.

So Europe doesn't have keiretsu--they still manage to make better cell phones and cars than America.

Let me know when "Europe" actually does something consistent and non-imperialist for a whole century, then we'll talk about Europe as a useful example of anything. Certain parts of Europe might make good discussion points, especially Scandinavia, but the rest of it is a mess and has been constantly changing for much of the last century.

As Keynes showed us, in some situations an economy can collapse because it doesn't have ENOUGH wealth redistribution and government spending.

And Keynes solutions never really solved the problems they were intended to solve. The second World War interrupted all that... so we'll never really know. Personally I think the idea that an economy can collapse at all is an absurdity and related to government interference in the currency markets. Wealth doesn't go away. We still have our natural resources, our manpower, our knowledge. The relative value of the dollar does not affect these things. If there is a collapse it is because the perceived value of certain pieces of paper is not well tied to the real world and everyone is simply trying to "game the system".

I used to be a rabid capitalist

I still am. Capitalism is the only system in which the workers can achieve the Marxist ideal of truly owning the means of production. The reason labor unions are losing ground is that they were always fighting the wrong battle. What the workers need is an ownership stake and direct control of their businesses. Stock ownership makes this a real possibility.

Currently the deck is stacked against the workers in terms of control, but imagine a company where a signficant amount of stock is owned by workers, these workers truly get to elect their bosses. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. CEOs get filthy rich off stock options and stock grants. Workers, instead of quibbling over little things, should be looking to emulate the techniques of the rich, not shun them. Why haven't the unions been fighting for stock options for workers and pushing for trickle-in systems like 401k matching in company stock?

Workers further enhance their own plight when they refuse to use their own earnings wisely to help prevent the social problems they perceive. Complaining about low wages and unemployment while shopping at Wal-Mart? Whining about oil prices while driving a pickup on light errands? Carping about how much time is wasted at work, just to sit home in front of the TV for 32 hours a week, on average? The people of America are getting exactly what they're paying for with both their money and their time. If that eventually leaves them unemployed and broke, that's their own problem. The "crony capitalists" have only helped them achieve their goals.

I won't trust any numbers from a site that's a thinly veiled racist anti-immigration site. Besides their predictions are based on projections from 1970's numbers (the last year the Decennial census included questions about parential origin) but the census beuro has more statistical samples performed yearly that include this information, all of the more modern analysis that I've seen shows natural births of native born citizens outstripping death rates. This means that we must be at least at replacement levels for the next generation. Not only that but according to the tables near the end of this page the average age of natural citizens is two years younger than that of foreign born citizens. Also Mexico has a larger problem with aging population than the U.S. does due to falling birth rates so it is probable that Mexican immigration will fall as fewer people fight for the available jobs in Mexico.

For example, the Dumbarton and Bay bridges (the main bridges across SF Bay) don't seem to connect in the middle in the TIGER data sets.

Same for I-280 behind Stanford.

They're a great starting point, but you have to do a fair amount of cleaning of the data yourself (or pay some company who already did). I'd love to see an open-source project of cleaning the TIGER data spring up, though.

Oh... and if you look at the 2003 TIGER/Line data you'll find that in many cases it's _more_ accurate than the commercial vendors (who all seem to be based on 2000 TIGER data). The commercial guys are just a bit more self-consistant, though - perhaps less accurate, but looks less silly because their bridges actually make it across the bay.

Your best (free) bet is probably TIGER data in either its original form or in shapefile form, updated and corrected locally.

TIGER is made from USGS DLG or DRG files, combined with some updating done by the US Census Bureau. Since the census is only done periodically, the TIGER data gets out of date.

Some organizations take TIGER data and update it and resell it in various forms. One of these is NAVTEQ, who has people out on the road constantly driving around and updating their maps. As a result, this information tends to be rather expensive, but pretty high quality. Other companies in the same business are DeLorme and UnderTow (formerly Chicago Mapping, I believe). I think UnderTow's Precision Mapping product has pretty decent licensing terms, last I looked at it (several years ago). Much better than DeLorme.

If you want to get your own imagery and work from that, there are several good free sources:

University of Maryland's GLCF site serves up 30m color imagery and 15m monochrome imagery for most of the world. To make the color imagery useful, you'll want to take a look at Scott Cherba's Tutorial using Photoshop or Terrainmap's tutorial using PaintShop Pro. One of the software companies I've founded makes an inexpensive utility called PixelSense (Windows, $49) to do this process automatically.

The United States Department of Agriculture Lighthouse Server serves up a variety of data including free 1m monochrome mosaics of virtually every county in the US. These are large files, and come in MrSID format, for which you'll need to download a Viewer (time-limited trial version) that can save out the portions you want. The nice thing about this is that they are mosaiced and brightness-balanced, whereas if you just go buy/download a bunch of DOQQs elsewhere, they may not match well at the edges of each file.

Finally, in urban areas, you may be able to take advantage of the USGS Urban Areas High-Resolution Orthoimagery available for some cities from the USGS Seamless Server. This data is fantastic, 1ft resolution color airphotos. You can see cars and individual people. It's very recent, having been aquired after 2001 for national disaster planning and response purposes.

Good luck. I'd be happy to answer questions you might have privately, as a lot of my customers do cartography.

If you want to say something useful, but the only tool you have available in your cranium is a mushroom, your content will be poor.

Yes "vapid" rubbish exists in geocities, yes I am biased against silly proprietary protocols that detract from my browsing experience. But in no way is content completely independent of the tool used to create it, and if you doubt it, re-read the first paragraph of this post.

Black people get convicted of a lot more crimes, and sent away for much longer terms. That by the very definition is racism, and the only way you can say it is fair is by taking the position that black people are subhuman (naturally commit more and worse crimes than white people).

I agree with most of what you say, but this line caught my eye (and ire). Saying that the justice system is racist just because black people are convicted more often is a leap of logic that seems to be a tad too long to me.

Let me offer you another very plausible explaination: black people may very well commit a disproportionate number of crimes not because of a natural propensity, but because of the disproportionate number of African Americans that live in poverty.

Poverty levels are known to adversely affect the amount and types of crimes (FBI "Crime Factors"). Sadly, 22.7% of the African American population is situated below the poverty line (an income below $18,725 for a single parent with three dependent children) -- astounding when compared with the rate for non-hispanic whites: 7.8% (U.S. Bureau of Census, 2001).

Taking these facts together, a higher crime rate among African Americans appears to be nearly inevitable. I think the main culprit here is an economic environment that affords people little opportunity to improve their income status, rather than a habit of racism within the justice system.

So the thing that city folk always forget, is that most folk aren't city folk.

That is just wrong. Most people *are* city folk.

The US population has been predominantly metropolitan since 1950 and the 2000 census reports that 80% live in a metropolitan area. 60% of the US population are accounted for in urban agglomerations over 1 million people. (177m out of 290m total.)

I'm guessing that your figures (I don't know where they come from) are probably for the narrowly defined 'city' (e.g. just the centre) and do not take into account the urban area which is a more reasonable definition when considering whether a population is urban or rural.

Europe probably has even greater urbanisation and even relatively small cities (under 1 million people) such as Bibao or Salzburg have good public transportation. I know it's not so good in the US for a variety of reasons (lack of government subsidies, more suburban sprawl, cultural attachment to cars, etc.)

Cars aren't such a problem in rural areas, where they are necessary; they only become a problem through congestion in cities. (Compare rural/urban MPG figures.)

My point was not to argue any of this but just to point out that even in cities where there *are* alternatives - good public transportation, or where people are within a cycling distance (note cities in Europe have higher densities) people will *still* drive to work.

In short, the two largest states (in population) use SBC.

Here's a quick link to the Census Statistics PDF file. The population of those 13 states are an estimated 123,829,994 people. That's an estimated 42.6% of the US population.

P.S. SBC issued their own press release in response to CWA's press release.

How many people in North America are there? Let's see. The number of North America versus European posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 379x5 = 1.895 billion North American users. Asian posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of North American posts.

Therefore there are about 900 million people in Asia. A recent article put Australia at about 80 percent of the Usenet market. Therefore there are (1895+379+900)x4 = 12.6 billion worldwide Usenet users. This is consistent with the number of worldwide Usenet posts.

Due to population growth in other countries around the world, such as:

North America at 5.1%
Asia at 60.8%
Australia at 32.1%
Africa at 58.3%

Compare this with the 0.3% annual population increase of Europe, and it becomes clear that all too soon, it will become statistically insignificant.

All major surveys show that Europe has steadily declined in global population share. Europe is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Europe is to survive at all it will be among government hobbyists, dabblers, and dilettantes. Europe continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Europe is dead.

All the proof you'll need.

How many people in North America are there? Let's see. The number of North America versus European posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 379x5 = 1.895 billion North American users. Asian posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of North American posts.

Therefore there are about 900 million people in Asia. A recent article put Australia at about 80 percent of the Usenet market. Therefore there are (1895+379+900)x4 = 12.6 billion worldwide Usenet users. This is consistent with the number of worldwide Usenet posts.

Due to population growth in other countries around the world, such as:

North America at 5.1%
Asia at 60.8%
Australia at 32.1%
Africa at 58.3%

Compare this with the 0.3% annual population increase of Europe, and it becomes clear that all too soon, it will become statistically insignificant.

All major surveys show that Europe has steadily declined in global population share. Europe is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Europe is to survive at all it will be among government hobbyists, dabblers, and dilettantes. Europe continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Europe is dead.

All the proof you'll need.

How many people in North America are there? Let's see. The number of North America versus European posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 379x5 = 1.895 billion North American users. Asian posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of North American posts.

Therefore there are about 900 million people in Asia. A recent article put Australia at about 80 percent of the Usenet market. Therefore there are (1895+379+900)x4 = 12.6 billion worldwide Usenet users. This is consistent with the number of worldwide Usenet posts.

Due to population growth in other countries around the world, such as:

North America at 5.1%
Asia at 60.8%
Australia at 32.1%
Africa at 58.3%

Compare this with the 0.3% annual population increase of Europe, and it becomes clear that all too soon, it will become statistically insignificant.

All major surveys show that Europe has steadily declined in global population share. Europe is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Europe is to survive at all it will be among government hobbyists, dabblers, and dilettantes. Europe continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Europe is dead.

All the proof you'll need.

How many people in North America are there? Let's see. The number of North America versus European posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 379x5 = 1.895 billion North American users. Asian posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of North American posts.

Therefore there are about 900 million people in Asia. A recent article put Australia at about 80 percent of the Usenet market. Therefore there are (1895+379+900)x4 = 12.6 billion worldwide Usenet users. This is consistent with the number of worldwide Usenet posts.

Due to population growth in other countries around the world, such as:

North America at 5.1%
Asia at 60.8%
Australia at 32.1%
Africa at 58.3%

Compare this with the 0.3% annual population increase of Europe, and it becomes clear that all too soon, it will become statistically insignificant.

All major surveys show that Europe has steadily declined in global population share. Europe is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Europe is to survive at all it will be among government hobbyists, dabblers, and dilettantes. Europe continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Europe is dead.

All the proof you'll need.

The real numbers are "per capita debt"

For those interested the following is per capita debt adjusted into 2003 dollars (picked decade boundaries for the hell of it and to make math easier).

1940 - $502.65
1950 - $1,288.72 (15.64% annual rate of change)
1960 - $1,000.20 (-2.24%)
1970 - $880.54 (-1.20%)
1980 - $892.14 (0.13%)
1990 - $1,812.23 (10.31%)
2000 - $2,188.92 (2.08%)
2003 - $2,372.25 (2.79%)

Based on population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau (with 2000 and 2003 estimated from 1999 numbers using 0.9 annual growth). Also I used numbers from here to scale dollar values to 2003 levels. I also used the total gross federal debt not the total debit held by the public... Gross Federal debt is composed both of Federal debt held (owned) by the public and Federal debt held by Federal Government accounts, which is mostly held by trust funds. Federal debt held by the public consists of all Federal debt held outside the Federal Government accounts.

For example in 2003 the gross federal debit was 6,760,014 and total owned by the public was 3,913,607 and in 1970 (scaled to 2003 dollars) it was 1,805,565.54 and 1,342,358.52 (all in millions of dollars). Feel free to work with the total public debt instead if you want. In general the ratio of public debt to that in trust funds has been reducing, in other words more and more of the federal debt is in the form of trust funds (social security, medicare, civil service, military retirement, etc.).

For example, China, we "gave" $152 Billion and "took" $28 Billion in 2003. That is a $123 Billion trade deficit at a 5.4:1 ratio in favor of China.

We "gave" France $29 Billion and took $17 Billion for a deficit of $12 Billion.

We "gave" Gaza strip 1 million, and "took" 0.

we "gave" Iraq $4.5 Billion, and freedom, and "took" 300 Million for a deficit of 4.2 Billion.

We "gave" Indonesia a trade deficit of $7 Billion.

Japan, a deficit of $65 Billion with roughly 2:1 ratio.

United Arab Emirates, we actually had surplus trade at $2.3 Billion, they bought more of our shit than we of theirs. Same with Vatican City at $2.3B.

United Kingdom, $8.7 Billion deficit.

Vietnam, we "gave" 4.5 and "took" 1.3, for a deficit of 3.2 Billion.

Western Europe in general, we "gave" 266 and "took" 164 Billion Dollars, for a deficit of $101,000,000,000 at 1.6:1

Israel? we "gave" $12.7 and "took" $6.8 Billion, for a deficit of 5.8B. at about 1.8:1 . I don't really see this as any particularly special giving, especially when compared to China's ratio, and the point of the previous post, though rather winded, was that there is a lot of hi-tech benefit when compared to purely perishable goods and materials that many other countries "force" us to consume, which, with reference to the original artical context, points out is also strategic.

So, really, what we should do, is globally increase our exports, and continue technological partnership with Israel.

Oh, balance of trade.

"1000+ systems"
"Obviousally you run in a very tiny shop."
" 500,000 desktops/ servers/ etc."

Something about this exchange just struck me as really odd. So let's be generous and assume that the companies in question have 2 computers for every employee (unlikely). According to this page, that would place the first company in the top 0.306% of businesses in the U.S. and and the second company in the very elite 0.016% of businesses in the U.S.! Tiny shop, my ass.

Vermont has only the second smallest population, 616,592 (2002 estimate) after Wyoming with 493,782 (2000 census).

We are NOT... ...well, maybe Vermont is pint-sized -- a Ben & Jerry's pint, though!

All that said, the state government would not have to blanket its entire area in WiFi coverage. Adding free wireless access around government buildings, museums, etc where the wired access is already in place would be reasonably low-cost and could be rolled out over the course of many years. Of importance is the impetous to start doing this where feasable.

You know, lots of people need to be paid more. But the average teacher's salary in 2002 was $44,367. Meanwhile, the median household income in 2002 was $42,409. Further, you have to, as the previous post stated, put this into the context of the number of days per year actually worked. This yields an adjusted salary of about $60,000 (via a back of the envelope calculation).

I'm not saying that this isn't commensurate with their value to society. Money is a horrible indicator for actual value. What I am saying is that based on the job, it's really not horrible money. Read more here.

We as consumers benefit from outsourcing in the form of lower prices.


Lower nominal prices, but not lower real prices.

U.S. Real weekly wages fell by 0.7% in March, the month for which data is most recently available. From a $100 check you were going to pocket for your hard work on March 1st, you only had $99.30 on April 1st. For those making $40,000 a year, that's (very roughly) $800 a week, so take $5.60 from such an American's paycheck and throw it into an economic furnace.

Sure, competitive pressures will pull down prices with time. But the average wage earner will not see these price drops for quite some time. And in the interim, their small stash of wealth keeps leaking away, with no liquid investment available on the market that can compensate via a comfortable return.

The biggest problem is something that doesn't come to mind at first. America has an aging population, consisting of many retirees who rely on fixed-income investments to keep them solvent. The 65+ segment of the population is expected to grow by 2.4% a year, more than 3 times the rate of the US population as a whole. These seniors may fall into financial trouble as their income decreases, and will serve as a severe drag on all that growth that isn't manifesting itself in terms of wages. Families will have to support their elderly and suffer reduced work hours that can easily put a kink in that productivity we're supposed to have achieved.

Sure, my kids might enjoy lower prices, but even a 25 cent item is useless if you have but a dime to spend on it.

My jaw dropped when I saw this unsupported line of BS in that rebuttal:

# By the days of Noah there were not enough people on the earth to require a worldwide flood.

I estimate that 12 to 15 generations had been born on the earth by the time of the flood. (Genesis chapter 5 tells us that Noah was the ninth generation from Adam.) Easily, there could have been a billion people alive on the earth by the 600th birthday of Noah. "

A few quick calculations, starting with two people (Adam & Eve, of course, since Lilith got the boot):
Let's assume each generation has ten offspring per mating pair, and that puberty occurred in both genders at the same age it does today. I realize many couples in earlier days had plenty more than ten children, but then again, a lot of them died as infants.

Ok, so we have Adam & Eve, who only had a couple of children, but for the sake of simplicity we'll keep every generation at 10 offspring per mating period. (I'm assuming that, for instance, Adam & Eve had ten children, and then as their children were having children, Adam & Eve were having another back of 10, and so on.)

We'll also assume a zero death rate, again for the sake of simplicity.

So, we get divergent series where each generation is the sum of all previous generations, times 10.

1. 2
2. 12
3. 140
4. 1,540
5. 16,940
6. 186,340
7. 3,726,800
8. 39,317,740
9. 432,495,140
10. 864,990,280

Now, by completely inflating the number of possible offspring (by the 10th generation, Adam & Eve have had one hundred kids!), we've gotten to the point where we're even close to a billion.

According to a US Census Bureau report, the global human population was just about one billion in the mid 18th century. If it only took us ten generations the first time around, why'd it take us so long to repeat it?

Hmmm... 50% of people live below the poverty line? Congratulations! You just won the IAFOS Award! (I'll let you guess what that means)
According to some real statistics made up by HHS:
The latest poverty figures in the US are at 12.1%
Keep in mind that poverty does not necessarily mean you are some bum about to starve to death. You can own a car, a house, have cable TV and major appliances and still be considered living in poverty. Many people in other countries would love to be poor in ours.

Oh, and a link (warning PDF file):

2002 census info

Actually, you're way off base here. The electoral college actually levels the playing field between the states.

Electoral College Votes by State
Population by State

Without the Electoral College a few things would happen.

1. The Dakotas, Vermont, Wyoming, New Hampshire, Idaho, Rhode Island, Maine, D.C., Alaska and Delaware would never see a candidate campaign in their state. They would be completely irrelevant. Carrying Virginia would completely invalidate losses in all of those states.

2. Every ticket would have a Texan, Californian, or New Yorker on the ticket. Politicians from the aforementioned states would be completely ignored. And before anyone nitpicks this one, historically candidates very rarely lose their home state.

Wyoming accounts for roughly 0.1% of the nation's total population, yet it makes up 0.5% of the Electoral College. California accounts for roughly 15% of the nation's total population, but only 10% of the Electoral College. It's not much, but ultimately the EC makes things a little fairer for the smaller states, which is exactly why it was created.