It's only a number...
Find out exactly what is going on in the world... at a glance.
Gossip by any other name
Have a chat with the literary geniuses of our history... and find out all you ever wanted to know...
Photographic evidence
Hands up everyone who has a computer full of great photos that are becoming resigned to their digital destiny... we have the solution!
Mum's the word
A gift to all mums for Mother's Day... with no calories!
Wake up in style
If you could invent the perfect way to wake up, this may just be it...
Mischief Making
Want to throw a custard pie at your least favourite MP or celebrity? Be my guest...
Zzzzzzzzz...
Join me and indulge yourself in the best National Something Day ever!
What's the biggest number you can think of? A million? A trillion? What about a quintillion? Or a quindecillion?
If you are shouting out Googol or Googolplex, then please be silenced. Strictly speaking, these terms do not count because, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, they are not recognised as numbers 'in use in formal mathematics'. The Googol was invented by a nine-year old with the plex added only to describe an even bigger number that was 'one, followed by writing zeroes until you got tired'. This was deemed unscientific by the boy's uncle, the mathematician, Edward Kasner, and the definition was later amended but let's not go there because it matters not. These terms mean very little to us mere mortals who exist without the aid of pure mathematics.
We are bombarded with numbers everyday but I am guessing anything larger than a few million, or perhaps several million, just does not compute. Barclays Bank recently announced annual profits of £5.28 billion ($9.2 billion). That's a lot, isn't it? Mobil Exxon posted profits of £20 billion ($39.5 billion). That's definitely a lot. The gross domestic product of Luxembourg is in the region of £15.1 billion ($29.2 billion). Is that a lot?
Not being a lover of crowds, when it comes to people, I can barely imagine a group of a thousand so a billion is definitely beyond me. It's because of the numbers involved that it is sometimes difficult to comprehend the sheer scale of our world. We know that there are over 6 billion people populating it but understanding what that actually means is far more difficult.
And this should be a problem for this week's Web Watch feature but, for some reason, it's not. Worldometers.info is ultimately just a bunch of digits but, somewhat intriguingly, it manages to bring the numbers to life. You get to watch the figures in action. You will see the number of births taking place in the world. You will witness the number of deaths. You will watch as the current population increases at a seemingly frightening rate. Not a static number but an ever-changing one moving with the pace of the world. This site shows us how our world is transforming - right before our eyes.
Today, at the time of writing, there have been 135,453 deaths and 329,645 births; therefore, the world has grown by over 190,000. And all this has been happening while I have been showering, shopping and shying away from cleaning my oven.
The brainchild of Mike Parker, a man described as an intellectual with a keen interest in anthropology, the site bases its figures on those from 'the publications of the most prestigious institutions in the world'. I can't vouch for their accuracy but I can vouch for their thought-provoking power.
Did you know that we have over 180 million underweight kids in the world and, today, over 27,000 people have already died of hunger? That's just today. Tomorrow there will be another 27,000. Meanwhile, the US has spent 8,327 million dollars on dieting.
The global spend on healthcare is around 293,983 million dollars. The world spend on illegal drugs is in the region of 246,391 million dollars.
This site quietly makes its point. There is no preaching. No begging. And no judging. You are merely invited to watch the rapidly changing numbers. Some have obvious implications whilst others are just there for your entertainment. Or are they?
So far this year, there have been 233,132 book titles published and 129,000,194 newspapers circulated. During the same period, there have been over 3,131,754,749 movie visitors. Are these figures worthy of anthropological analysis?
I'll let you be the judge of that but while you are contemplating the options, if you decide to stay online to investigate further, remember that people have spent over 7,483,584,613 cumulative hours waiting for internet to download this year. It often feels like I am responsible for about half of those - I wonder who the other culprit is? Mike Parker, perhaps?
