trivia

I plotted a graph of Rome’s population through history [source]. Some points: the rise and fall of Ancient Rome was roughly symmetrical (compared to the rapid decline of societies such as Greenland in Jared Diamond’s ‘Collapse’); the population during the Renaissance was miniscule (yet it was still a global center), when Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel it was considerably smaller than a town like Palo Alto is today (60K); Rome at its nadir was about the size of Google (20K employees); the growth of Rome during the Industrial era is much greater than the rise of Ancient Rome.

I’m not sure what the population of Rome’s hinterland would have been in ancient times, but assuming that present day Rome is more sprawling, the 4 million inhabitants of greater Rome would perhaps show the post industrial city’s growth as being even more extreme than its ancient counterpart.

Not entirely facetiously, note that the extended period of decline and relative stagnation between 400 and 1500 roughly corresponds to Nicaean Councils of the 4th century and the Copernican revolution of the mid 16th, events which stake out what could reasonably be called the Christian period, (or partially, at least, the Muslim one, depending on your perspective).

Dr Fedoroff science and technology advisor to the US secretary of state since 2007 says that humans have exceeded the Earth’s “limits of sustainability.

The Current world population is 6.8bn. In Roman times, it was less than the population of the US. It is growing by 218,030 people per day.

To put this is perspective, this is the entire population of Iceland every day and a half.

Link

Given the riddle like title, Oasis’ obsession with the Beatles, the similarity of the scene depicted to the Abbey Road album cover and the the supposed symbology within Abbey Road, I am surprised that nobody has considered that “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory”, might be a riddle.

Not that I really care, but I do like riddles.

Baarle-Nassau is a piece of Belgium within the Netherlands, that contains pieces of the Netherlands within it. Pictured above is the swiss-cheese border situation between the two countries, within and around the town.

Thanks to Max Fawcett for this gem.

Georgia state: 8,560,310 in 2002.
Georgia the country: 4,646,003 in 2007.

According to Badastronomy the universe generates (or is that consumes?) half a trillion dollars of power per cubic light year per hour, not a quarter of a trillion as was thought until yesterday.