National Geographic January 2011

POPULATION 7 BILLION
How your world will change

> twice as many people on the planet as in 1960
> by 2045, 9 billion
> 1677, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (model for Johannes Vermeer's The Astronomer and The Geographer)
>analyzing human semen, Leeuwenhoek observed, "sometimes more than a thousand in the size of a grain of sand"
> after some calculations, he concluded triumphantly that the world had 13.385 billion people
> Joel Cohen, "How many people can the earth support?"
> Paul Ehrlich, "The Population Bomb" 1968
> Ehrlich made many claims, most of his bombs went dud
> "hundreds of millions will starve to death"
> "the cancer of population growth must be cut out by compulsion if voluntary methods fail"
> 1952 to 2010, life expectancy in India 38 to 64; China 41 to 73
> "I have understood the population explosion intellectually for a long time. I came to understand it emotionally one stinking hot night in Delhi a couple of years ago. [1964] The temperature was well over 100, and the air was a haze of dust and smoke. The streets seemed alive with people. People eating, people washing, people sleeping. People visiting, arguing, and screaming. People thrusting their hands through the taxi window, begging. People defecating and urinating. People clinging to buses. People herding animals. People, people, people."
Paul Ehrlich's synapses on encountering Delhi for the first time.
> What Paul missed was "an overwhelming sense of energy, of striving, of aspiration."
etc.

other 4:

phoenix island rise (wanna be story)

telltale scribes (timbuktu)

Worlds Largest Cave System in Vietnam

Cahokia, Notrh america's biggest big bang city