Its a (Turkey) Wrap!

To tomorrow,

Because I did this last week I'm going to do it again. I am taking that next step, going there, and forging my own tradition. From the dictionary of my dome, the word "tradition" is defined as: something done once but in the classiest way possible. Thus I will straighten the bow in my hair, slip on my white silk gloves, sit up straight, and recap the most kablamo things I've come across this week.

1)I totally know how to do electrochemistry now. Yeah so you better watch out or I just might REDOX your face. OOOOO.

2)Muay (moo-ee) Thai was formerly known as "nawa arwut" (which means "nine weapons") because soldiers were taught to fight using their nine natural weapons: 2 hands, 2 elbows, 2 knees, 2 feet and 1 head. NB: the head is now forbidden but everything else is still fair game

3)Vis pacem para bellum.

4) My little brother kicks ass. My older brother...well he has an STD.

5) Pulitzer Prize winners write good: "The wealth of the world has a New York address. It piles up in buildings on land that is laced with gold. And perhaps nowhere is the essence of New York more evident than in Greenwich Village - for it is a microcosm of all that New York has become, and in its story is the story of a great city...It is one of the few places in the city where the sky has not been stolen by high and indescribably ugly buildings. You can stand on a Greenwich Village street in the early Manhattan morning and watch the night sky lighten and break into streaks of rose that suddenly saturate the heavens, then burst with sunlight that ignites the sidewalk and street." (Jimmy Breslin)

And in the words of Jay-Z...."GOODNIGHT."

A Different Kind of Growth

To all future earth spawn,

According to this population clock, the globe's citizenry is rapidly approaching 7 billion. WOW.

The world, of course, has never been home to so many humans in its entire history. Questions surrounding resources, sustainability, and other related topics all arise and are currently hot topics of debate between everybody and their second cousin. But when all the numbers conglomerate together, all all history is sewn into a tapestry of life, and those who have crossed the river into Hades coupled with those who have experienced the pearly white gates/reincarnation/paradise are put into a simple equation of addition, this question arises: do living people outnumber the dead?

Demographer, Carl Harb, has dedicated his studies to this very question. Mr. Harb starts his research at 50 000 years ago, time = 0 where he believes homo sapiens first appeared with Adam and Eve. From there he has used the information available surrounding various time periods (E.g. 8000 B.C. during the Middle East's agricultural revolution) and deduced approximate population numbers. In short, his studies conclude that from time zero to around 2002 the total of those human alive and dead reached 106 billion. Even with today's almost 7 billion, we comprise only just over 6%.

What about the future? A professor from Columbia University, Joel E. Cohen, highly doubts that the Earth's population will ever double its current figures. Following past and present trends, he predicts that "the world body's estimates range from 7.3 billion to 10.7 billion people" in 2050.

So the answer is fiction, the world's living will never outnumber the dead.

(Source: Scientific American article by Ciara Curtin)

This photo is completely unrelated
but hilarious nonetheless.
(Globe & Mail)

The Ever-Expanding Latitude of the World

To my lunch,

When making a trip to the bookstore I always pass the magazine section to see if I can discreetly check up on the current relationship status of Brad and Angelina by just glancing at headlines (you see this way I just keep my curiosity casual instead of borderline obsessive). Recently, as I was doing a quick walk-by, the special issue of Scientific American on "FEAST and FAMINE: The Global Paradox of Obesity and Malnutrition" caught my eye before I reached the US Weekly section. The bold headline, a picture of a global hamburger, and a quick flip through cemented my interest and the magazine was effectively sold.

According to most of the articles within the covers, the world is fat. I knew America was fat, I knew certain places in Canada were fat, but I didn't know that currently the number of overweight people is significantly greater than those who are underweight. In fact, studies estimate that 1.3 billion people are overweight while 800 million still go hungry. This transformation - the shift from undernutrition to overnutrition - is called the the nutrition transition and has literally happened overnight (well, within a generation).

Developing countries are the significant players on both sides of the scale (har dee har har). Famine and food insecurity are rooted in a wide variety of causes ranging from lack of good governance to natural disasters. Most often states and communities will become stuck in the poverty trap (see Jeffrey Sachs) and consequently go hungry. On the flip side, countries such as Mexico, China and even Brazil are doing the opposite.

Lifestyle changes and the adoption of more Westernized practices abroad (driving instead of walking, fast food instead of good food etc.) have created an obesity epidemic. In the aforementioned countries the percentage of adults who are obese have all practically doubled from figures from 10 years ago. For example, in China during 1991, 12.9% of adults were overweight...the figure in 2004 was 27.3%. Furthermore, the price of being fat is become cheaper and cheaper and thus a more favorable option for those on low-budget incomes. A bottle of Fanta is less expensive then a quart of milk, potato chips taste better than a raw carrot, and vegetable oil goes nicely with everything. You get the picture.

It has never been a question of lack of food in the world. It is well-known that there is enough calories on Earth to fill the stomachs of citizens from Chicago to Freetown. Discouragingly the world's belt is poking new notches in all the wrong places, while those starving a literally left in the dust.