HUMANITY
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STYLE OF LIFE
Sources: All population data are based on estimates by the UN Population Division and all calculations provided by the UN Population Fund . The remaining data are from other sections of the UN, the Global Footprint Network and the International Telecommunications Union . Want to find out more? Visit the UN Population Fund's detailed population calculator, 7 billion and me. Notes on the data: Only birth dates after 1910 can be accommodated and only countries with populations of more than 100,000 people are included.
BBC News - 7 billion people and you: What's your number?
Robot solves Rubik’s cube in 5 seconds, sets world record [video] | SmartPlanet
Actually, the solution to the rubix cube is itself an algorithm. There is a formula, a series of turns, that will solve the cube no matter what it's current configuration. Those who solve the cube fast don't need to examine it, unless those who accomplish it in seconds are finding faster formulas.
Community. Wisdom of Crowds. Collective Intelligence.
Creating Passionate Users: The "Dumbness of Crowds"
I was struck by a graph I saw of homicide rates in British towns and cities going back to the 14th century. The rates had plummeted by between 30 and 100-fold. That stuck with me, because you tend to have an image of medieval times with happy peasants coexisting in close-knit communities, whereas we think of the present as filled with school shootings and mugging and terrorist attacks. Then in Lawrence Keeley's 1996 book War Before Civilization I read that modern states at their worst, such as Germany in the 20th century or France in the 19th century, had rates of death in warfare that were dwarfed by those of hunter-gatherer and hunter-horticultural societies. That too, is of profound significance in terms of our understanding of the costs and benefits of civilisation.
Steven Pinker: Humans are less violent than ever - science-in-society - 21 October 2011 - New Scientist
The 20 worst things people have done to each other - Embedded code - New Scientist
The 20 worst things people have done to each other The 20 deadliest events in human history, from Matthew White's website necrometrics.com . For more, see White's new book, The Great Big Book of Horrible Things . White's numbers are scary enough, but in his book The Better Angels of our Nature , Steven Pinker has extrapolated them to today's population. This was done by finding the per-capita death rate at the midpoint of the event's range of years, based on population estimates from McEvedy and Jones .