Posts Tagged ‘population’
“Babies are such a nice way to start people”*…
What do most newborn’s have in common? Their swaddling…
You’ve seen the [blanket], whether you’ve had a baby or not: it is mostly white, with thick blue and thinner pink stripes at the edges. If you’re on Facebook or Instagram, you’ve seen it tens, maybe hundreds of times.
The blanket is part of the Kuddle-Up line made by a Mundelein, Illinois-based healthcare supply company called Medline. The company was started in 1910 by A.L. Mills, an Arkansan who moved to Illinois and made his living creating butcher aprons for Chicago’s meat-packing industry. Eventually that led to work making surgical gowns—he was the first to shift them from light-reflecting white to the now ubiquitous light-absorbing jade green style. He did the same for hospital gowns: made them patterned instead of solid drab shades and switched the tie from the back to the side, for what Jim Abrams, Medline’s chief operating officer, called “a little more modesty.”
In the early 1950s, receiving blankets were usually made from dull beige cloth. Mills, ever the innovator, wanted to do for blankets what he had done for scrubs. “He asked the women in the office what they would do differently to spice it up a little bit,” says Abrams. They went through a number of iterations and finally settled on the blue- and pink-striped version because, as you might have suspected, it’s good for both girls and boys. The pattern is strangely appealing—before I knew that 99% of newborns are wrapped in identical blankets, I thought it was handsome. It never appears dated or cutesy or Disney. It is truly a classic.
Clearly, many people agree. Sixty years later, Medline sells 1.5 million Kuddle-Up blankets in Candy Stripe every year (the other patterns, with elephants or ducks, are less pervasive)…
“Why every newborn you see on Facebook is wrapped in the same baby blanket.”
* Don Herold
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As we reach for the rattle, we might send carefully-conceived birthday greetings to Kingsley Davis; he was born on this date in 1908. A renowned sociologist and demographer, Davis was an expert on population trends; he coined the terms “population explosion” and “zero population growth,” and promoted methods of encouraging the latter.
“The truth is, immigrants tend to be more American than people born here”*…
The United States of America is a country of immigrants. That’s the cliche we know, but don’t always take to heart. Especially, during this political season…
Helpful background at “Where Are All the People in the United States From?”
* Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
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As we ruminate on roots, we might recall that it was on this date in 1930 (though some sources locate it on March 7 of that year), that The New York Times revised its style sheet to normalize the capitalization of “Negro” in its pages, a change that it memorialized in a editorial…
The New York Times now joins many of the leading Southern newspapers as well as most of the Northern in according this recognition. In our “style book” “Negro” is now added to the list of words to be capitalized. It is not merely a typographical change; it is an act in recognition of racial self-respect for those who have been for generations in “the lower case.”
[More here]
Sociologist, historian, activist, and author W.E.B. Du Bois, who led the fight for capitalization
“Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion”*…
click here for larger, zoomable version
Nobody lives here: The nearly 5 million Census Blocks with zero population
A Block is the smallest area unit used by the U.S. Census Bureau for tabulating statistics. As of the 2010 census, the United States consists of 11,078,300 Census Blocks. Of them, 4,871,270 blocks totaling 4.61 million square kilometers were reported to have no population living inside them. Despite having a population of more than 310 million people, 47 percent of the USA remains unoccupied.
Green shading indicates unoccupied Census Blocks. A single inhabitant is enough to omit a block from shading.
More discussion of unoccupied America (and other nifty maps) at @nikfrrr‘s mapsbynik.com.
* Democritus
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As we search for signs of intelligent life, we might spare a thought for Pierre Teilhard de Chardin; he died on this date in 1955. A Jesuit theologian, philosopher, geologist, and paleontologist, he conceived the idea of the Omega Point (a maximum level of complexity and consciousness towards which he believed the universe was evolving) and developed Vladimir Vernadsky‘s concept of noosphere. Teilhard took part in the discovery of Peking Man, and wrote on the reconciliation of faith and evolutionary theory. His thinking on both these fronts was censored during his lifetime by the Catholic Church (in particular for its implications for “original sin”); but in 2009, they lifted their ban.
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time”*…
Benedikt Groß (designer of a cool typeface made up of satellite imagery, among many other nifty things) has created Population.io, a new site (still in Beta) that visualizes a user’s place in the world’s population in a series of elegant tables and charts… including one that estimates the time of the users death (at least loosely– that is, based on average life expectancy where he/she lives).
* Mark Twain
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As we settle into the global village, we might send speculative birthday greetings to Philip Kindred Dick; he was born on this date in 1928. A novelist, short story writer, essayist and philosopher, Dick published 44 novels and 121 short stories, nearly all in the Science Fiction genre. While he was recognized only within his field in his lifetime, and lived near poverty for much of his adult life, eleven popular films have been based on his work since his death in 1982 (including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, Screamers, The Adjustment Bureau, and Impostor). In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik one of the hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923; and in 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.
Equality for all!…
This speculative map imagines a world divided into 665 territories of approximately equal population (10-11 million people each). The logic of the map does not entirely discount existing ethnic or national boundaries, but neither is it beholden to them. The particular political rationale behind these divisions is not addressed – whether these are independent nation-states or provinces of a world government is left to the imagination of the viewer. The map is rather meant to provide a visual representative of the radically unequal distribution of the world’s population. For example, one New York City and Long Island = half of Karachi = one Russian Far East = one of every Pacific Island. What does this make you think about the current distribution of the world’s resources, the movement of populations and the arbitrariness of territorial divisions?
Explore this “geography thought experiment” at World of Equal Districts.
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As we ponder proximity, we might send hard-boiled birthday greetings to James Myers “Jim” Thompson; he was born on this date in 1906. Arguably the finest of all pulp-crime writers, Thompson began his career as a “traditional” author, publishing his first two novels, Now and on Earth and Heed the Thunder as hardbacks. After these books failed to find wide audiences, Thompson found his voice in crime fiction, grinding out hellish tales for paperback mills such as Lion Books and Gold Medal. While he was quite prolific– Thompson once produced 12 books in 2 years– his crime fiction wasn’t paying the bills; so he turned to screenwriting, working with Stanley Kubrick on The Killing and Paths of Glory, to writing for TV series (Mackenzie’s Raiders, Cain’s Hundred, and Convoy), and to penning novelizations (e.g., Ironside).
But through it all, Thompson wrote thrillers– noir nuggets that included The Killer Inside Me, Savage Night, A Hell of a Woman, and Pop. 1280. Thompson was convinced that recognition would come to him only after his death; and while two of his novels (The Killer Inside Me and The Getaway) were made into films during his lifetime, he was, sadly, largely right. Since his death in 1977, both those films have been remade (The Getaway, twice, if one counts the first half of the Rodriguez/Tarantino mash-up From Dusk ’til Dawn), and several others adapted: The Grifters (nominated for four Oscars), After Dark, My Sweet, and This World, Then the Fireworks, among others. More to the point, Thompson’s writing has increasingly been appreciated for the marvel that it is.
The guy was over the top. The guy was absolutely over the top. Big Jim didn’t know the meaning of the word stop. There are three brave lets inherent in the forgoing: he let himself see everything, he let himself write it down, then he let himself publish it.
– Stephen King
If Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett & Cornell Woolrich could have joined together in some ungodly union & produced a literary offspring, Jim Thompson would be it.
– Washington Post
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