Population Control Freaks

I somehow missed the 2006 horror flick Population 436 at my local theater.

Jeremy Sisto and Limp Bizkit lead singer Fred Durst star in this thrilling story about a U.S. census taker who is assigned to assess the population in a remote mountain community. The census taker becomes trapped in this prison-like town full of 'golden rules' (that no one ever breaks) that doesn't allow its population to drop below or exceed exactly 436 citizens, a number in accordance with 'God's Law.' He eventually learns that NO ONE is ever allowed to leave Rockwell Falls and that the town citizens will do whatever it takes to maintain the status quo. After fending off a lobotomy and pretending to go along with the program, the U.S. census taker eventually tries to escape. Will the population finally be altered, or will the story of Rockwell Falls live on?

I don't know why Hollywood hasn't produced more movies in which census takers fend off lobotomies. It sure would have made Driving Miss Daisy more exciting.

We're More Dead Than Alive

Nancy Bovy sent a link to a cool SciAm article that debunks the myth that 75 percent of all people ever born are currently alive.

To calculate how many people have ever lived, [Carl] Haub followed a minimalist approach, beginning with two people in 50000 B.C.—his Adam and Eve. Then, using his historical growth rates and population benchmarks, he estimated that slightly over 106 billion people had ever been born. Of those, people alive today comprise only 6 percent, nowhere near 75 percent. "[It is] almost surely true people alive today are some small fraction of [all] people," says Joel Cohen, a professor of populations at the Rockefeller and Columbia Universities in New York City. [Link]

I wonder how many of those 106 billion people left enough evidence of their existence that they may be genealogically (and not just genetically) linked to persons alive today, and how many are ancestors we will never find.

299,999,999...

Today at 7:46 a.m. (EDT) the 300 millionth American will be born—or, more likely, will slip across the Mexican border astride an elephant.

Back in 1967 when Robert Ken Woo was anointed the 200th American, President Johnson held a news conference. This time, the government is scaling back the festivities somewhat.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said the Bush administration isn't playing down the milestone, though he said he had no plans for Tuesday. Census Bureau employees planned to mark the moment Tuesday afternoon with cake and punch. [Link]

You can watch the population clock roll over here.

Who's Robert Ken Woo?

The 300 millionth American will be born sometime in October, after which Robert Ken Woo, Jr., will once again fade into obscurity.

When Woo was born Nov. 20, 1967, at 11:03 a.m. EST in Atlanta's Crawford Long Hospital, Life magazine proclaimed him the 200 millionth American. In the years since, he has worn his footnote in history lightly and well, his flicker of fame fanned anew by the approaching milestone.

"I never took it that seriously," Woo says of his place in the annals of American trivia. "To me it seemed very random."

Back in 1967, the Census Bureau projected that the 200 millionth American would arrive between 10:58 and 11:02 a.m. the Monday before Thanksgiving. Life, then America's iconic photo magazine and today a weekend newspaper supplement, dispatched 23 photographer-reporter teams to hospitals in 22 cities, ready to capture the birth that came closest to the appointed time.

In Miami, a physician pleaded with his patient, "Push harder -- and you'll be in Life magazine." In Boston, a doctor arranged to deliver a baby by Caesarean section precisely at 11. But census officials stopped the clock for three minutes so President Johnson would be at the ceremony when it hit 200,000,000. Sally Woo awoke after delivery to snapping photographers. [Link]

Points to Ponder

• Today at 7:16 p.m. (Eastern Standard Time) the population of Earth will hit 6.5 billion.

• About one of every five people on Earth is Chinese.
• I have two parents and two siblings, and not one of us is Chinese.
• 4.4 babies are born every second.
• 396 women give birth every time I microwave popcorn.
• Four times as many people live now as lived in 1900.
• Most of the people alive in 1900 are no longer contributing members of society.
• People in poor countries have more children than people in rich countries.
• People in rich countries have more edible underwear than people in poor countries.
• If every person on Earth jumped up at precisely the same moment, I'd be very surprised.