Morbid question but?

[paul skinner]

I wonder how many people (since the appearance of homo homo sapiens) have lived and died. I read somewhere recently that there's close to 1 billion mummies in Egypt alone....It had me wondering how many people have existed.

[cudabean]

Don't know if this is really true or not, but I once read that there are more people alive right now than have ever died. So that would mean that there's been somewhat less than 12 billion people.

Anyone having support for or against this, it would be interesting to hear from them.

cudabean

[Ray(in England)]

Cuda,
I used to believe that more ppl. are alive now, but I heard it from an authoritative sourse on tv that more ppl. r in fact dead than alive,which surprised me.
Ray.

Don't know if this is really true or not, but I once read that there are more people alive right now than have ever died. So that would mean that there's been somewhat less than 12 billion people.

Anyone having support for or against this, it would be interesting to hear from them.

cudabean

[Bruno Ogorelec]

Arthur Clarke has the answer in one of his old short stories and in the foreword he wrote to '2001, A Space Odyssey':

"Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred billion human beings have walked the planet Earth.
Now this is an interesting number, for by a curious coincidence there are approximately a hundred billion stars in our local universe, the Milky Way. So for every man who has ever lived, in this universe, there shines a star."

Bruno

[Mark]

Arthur Clarke has the answer in one of his old short stories and in the foreword he wrote to '2001, A Space Odyssey':

"Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred billion human beings have walked the planet Earth.
Now this is an interesting number, for by a curious coincidence there are approximately a hundred billion stars in our local universe, the Milky Way. So for every man who has ever lived, in this universe, there shines a star."

Bruno

That's a lot of boinking no matter, the grand scheme of things repeats itself, it lives and we die.
Mark

[Bruno Ogorelec]

I guess that by "a lot of boinking" you mean "a lot of bull". Yes, I agree, but it does sound nice.

Also, I'm not sure the grand scheme repeats itself. I can see damned few things in the grand scheme that are cyclic. I think cyclic behavior only exists on the micro-level. OK, a lot of things _look_ cyclic but need not really be. It's like chaos. It looks chaotic but usually isn't.

Back to beer.

Bruno

[Ray(in England)]

In UK bonking is slang 4 fucking.
Ray

I guess that by "a lot of boinking" you mean "a lot of bull". Yes, I agree, but it does sound nice.

Also, I'm not sure the grand scheme repeats itself. I can see damned few things in the grand scheme that are cyclic. I think cyclic behavior only exists on the micro-level. OK, a lot of things _look_ cyclic but need not really be. It's like chaos. It looks chaotic but usually isn't.

Back to beer.

Bruno

[Mike Kirney]

I believe that life is cyclic, but not like a 4-stroke motor where every cycle is more or less identical to the last. Populations increase, decrease, assimilate and migrate. Cultures are born, they mature, they become overly comlicated and then they fade away. There is no one culture on this earth that has remained unchanged throughout its lifetime. Like an old Ford truck exposed to the sun and rain, one by one details are worn away and new ones are etched on until, after a few decades, it becomes almost unrecognizable, although its unpolished elemental essence remains intact, although not necessarily serviceable. Although the circumstances surrounding human existence change as time passes, basic themes and patterns of action stretch through the ages. Brewing and is one in particular. Sex is another. Whether it comes in a wooden keg, a leather jug, a glass bottle or an aluminum can, most beer and wine drank today is quite similar to what people were drinking 500 years ago. Likewise, the same strange acts are performed by men and women of all cultures and in all eras, regardless of whether they are flinging away a grass or buckskin skirt, dropping a toga, unbuckling stiff metal armour, slipping out of a burqua, or shucking off a pair of Calvin Klein's.

[Mark]

[quote="Ray(in England)"]In UK bonking is slang 4 fucking.
Ray


[quote="brunoogorelec"]I guess that by "a lot of boinking" you mean "a lot of bull". Yes, I agree, but it does sound nice.

It means the same in England as does here, yes, yet it is a softer, gentler, phraseology. When watching those nature shows of the Galapagos turtles mating or some stick insects, or whatever creature, it just strikes me as if there are gods up above with marrionette magnetic tractor beams directing the show that is as old as time itself, there's really no choice in the matter for the most part, no matter how quirky the creature is shaped, these credited behaviors are you and yet not you.
I've seen there is another remake of Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde coming out at the movies. I'd like to discover some potion that goes the other way and transmogrifies barbarians into doctors. I guess that theme was sort of played out full circle in Flowers for Algernon.
Mark

[Bruno Ogorelec]

basic themes and patterns of action stretch through the ages. Brewing and is one in particular. Sex is another.

Yeah, some patterns are durable and seemingly universal, but 'cyclic' implies moving through repeated phases. I don't really see that in history. You can see what look like cycles only at the primary-school level history. As soon as you get a better resolution, all those seeming cycles dissolve.

Look at pulsejets. As pretty and simple a cycle as you can imagine -- seemingly uniformly repeated a couple of hundred times a second. Yet, you look at it closely and each brief little cycle is unique, different from the one before it and different from the one that will come after it.

As Tolstoy wrote; all happy families look the same; the unhappy ones are so different from each other. So goes history. Much of it is unhappiness and it presents itself in so many different facets...

But, that is all in the eye of the observer. Everything I see looks like music, each score uniquely composed (if perhaps of similar ingredients). someone else sees repeating cycles.

Bruno