"Monotremes give birth to dead young"
Yes, its test time again in my world. I had two versions of the above as a response to the difference between monotremes and placental mammals, which made me giggle, well actually guffaw.
In other class news, I have totally been busted. Once again this semester I asked my students to make a list of pressing environmental concerns. I apparently used the same phrasing that I used in the spring when I asked you for your opinions in this post. It turns out that when you google that particular phrase (top 5 and facing being part of it) the GBKD is the first thing that pops up. I'm frankly amazed. I think my student only suspected it was me until I announced the family f---- format of the future discussions, then she felt certain. Ack. I have no idea how many of them stopped by our blog, but their answers do seem to be more sensible this year.
On the list of what's disturbing me this week: I checked the population clock in preparation for my population lecture this year and learned that the current world population is 6.7 some billion. Which is not that big of a deal, except I had the exact figure from April 22 on my slide (6.6 some billion). 73 million people have been added to the planet between April 22 and Nov. 11. That's 40 times the entire population of my state in 6 months.
On the list of irrational behavior: despite the above I am still hoping to have children.
4 comments:
Hi SpSq,
I think you may mean 6.7 billion people, instead of 3.7?
I find the way online population clocks scroll forward every half second, adding two or three people to the total, to be pretty scary. Those clocks certainly make a statement, though.
Thanks for the giggles associated with monotremes, and the enjoyment of revisiting a very interesting previous post!
Thanks Jenny, the correction has been made. 3.6 billion, 6.6 billion, what's 3 billion people?
(The first year teaching I had a comparison question of 5 billion to the number of people on the planet. One student argued that they were approximately equal. That difference of 1 thousand five hundred millions should matter, however.)
I'm wondering if it were money instead of people, would they still think it was so equal?
Well, the way the government talks about billions in bailouts, it certainly seems that the difference between 5 and 6.6 billion is very slight.
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