pt1a5.706
pt1b5.706
Weekly_August_02.txt
***The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, August 02, 2006 PT1*
*******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971********
*
HEADLINE NEWS
Project Gutenberg of Australia reached a grand total of 1,000 eBooks,
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Please see revised counting format below, comments requested.
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This is my first attempt at a Newsletter on a new system, so please bear with
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For now I am leaving PT1a and PT1b combined, as John Mark Ockerbloom, et. al,
who requested the shorter file sizes, have not seen fit to include the short
file format they requested. Given that splitting the Newsletter into files,
even only two, is not trivial, I will continue this way for the moment, but
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matters little to anyone, we will stay with the single file format, and the
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Editor's comments appear in [brackets].
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
[Search for "*eBook" or "*Intro". . .to jump to that section, etc.]
*eBook Milestones
*Introduction
*Hot Requests, New Sites and Announcements
*Continuing Requests and Announcements
*Progress Report
*Distributed Proofreaders Collection Report
*Project Gutenberg Consortia Center Report
*Permanent Requests For Assistance:
*Donation Information
*Access To The Project Gutenberg Collections
*Mirror Site Information
*Instant Access To Our Latest eBooks
*Have We Given Away A Trillion Yet?
*Flashback
*Weekly eBook update:
This is now in PT2 of the Weekly Newsletter
Also collected in the Monthly Newsletter
Corrections in separate section
*Headline News from Edupage, etc.
*Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists
***
*eBook Milestones*
20,619 eBooks As Of Today At These Four PG Sites
18,921 Project Gutenberg US [+ 51] [NOT Including PG Australia]
1,000 Australian eBooks [+ 91] [NOT Included in above line]
330 Gutenberg Europe [+ 0] [NOT Included in above lines]
368 PG PrePrint Site [+ 0] [NOT Inclucded in above lines]
20,619 Grand Total [+146]
20,619 [I fudged today to make them reconcile]
[via our automated program, versus by hand]
[Please note we have several counting methods,
and they often differ by several book that we
have to hunt down by hand to reconcile.]
[Pleast note there is some duplication between
these various collections. voluntgeers needed
to take these duplications into account.]
~6% of the way from 20,000 to 30,000
75,000+ eBooks at the PG Consortia Center
http://www.gutenberg.cc
[Please note that the four collections totals are eBooks that originated
as created, edited, proofread, formatted, etc., by Project Gutenberg and
its 50,000 volunteers, while the Project Gutenberg Consortia Center with
75,000+ eBooks contains entire eBook collections from other sources, all
the production statistics given here are for some 20,000+ eBooks created
by the various teams of Project Gutenberg volunteers, for which we share
the responsibility of maintaining. The Consortia Center eBooks were and
are the responsibility of the donating eLibraries, and we would be happy
to forward any suggestions for correction to those eLibraries, but those
eBooks must be editing by the donating parties, as per their requests.]
*
***588 eBooks Averaged Per Year Since July 4, 1971***
17,551 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001
That's ~262 eBooks per Month for ~66.75 Months
2,471 New eBooks in 2006 at These Four Sites
xx New eBooks From Distributed Proofreaders
8,838 total from Distributed Proofreaders
Since October, 2000 [Details in PT1B]
[Currently over 36,000 DP volunteers]
[Note, PGDP mostly included in US eBooks]
[Note, PGEU has its own Distributed Proofreaders
whose total closely matches their grand total]
We Averaged ~339 eBooks Per Month In 2004
We Averaged ~248 eBooks Per Month In 2005
[Including PG Australia]
We Are Averaging ~366 eBooks Per Month This Year!!!
[Including PGAu, PGEu and PrePrints]
All Four Sites Combined Are Averaging 82 eBooks Per Week In 2006
142 This Week
507 This Month [Jun]
It took ~32 years, from 1971 to 2003 to do our 1st 10,000 eBooks
It took ~12.5 years from Jan. 1994 to Jun. 2006 to go from 100 to 20,100
It took ~32 months, from 2003 to 2006 for our last 10,000 eBooks
It took ~10 years from 1993 to 2003 to grow from 100 eBooks to 10,100
It took ~2.8 years from Oct. 2003 to Jun. 2006 from 10,000 to 20,000
Not counting the addition of The Project Gutenberg Consortia Center
*
[Daily PrePrints stats at http://preprints.readingroo.ms/]
Please note that sometimes it takes a few weeks for entire
collections to fully appear in the PrePrints Section, thus
the count sometimes jumps by a large number when the files
are eventually completed and added in. Also note that the
PrePrint files are just that, PrePrints, and thus may move
later to other locations, including the main collection or
The Project Gutenberg Consortia Center, etc. For example,
on June 14, 200 WAP compatible cell phone eBooks appeared,
and will likely be moved to other collection points later.
The entire process of working out the details just to send
them to the PrePrints Section took well over a month.
Even with the speeded up process of the PrePrints Section,
it still takes a certain amount of time to collect and put
such a large collection online in a proper manner.
*
***Introduction
[Ignore for the moment]
[The Newsletter is now being sent in two sections, so you can directly
go to the portions you find most interesting: 1. Founder's Comments,
News, Notes & Queries, and 2. Weekly eBook Update Listing. Note bene
that PT1 is now being sent as PT1A and PT1B.
[Since we are between Newsletter editors, these 2 parts may undergo a
few changes while we are finding a new Newsletter editor. Email us:
hart@pobox.com and gbnewby@pglaf.org if you would like to volunteer.]
This is Michael Hart's "Founder's Comments" section of the Newsletter
FREE INTERNET REFERENCE SITE
LivingInternet.com provides a 700-odd page reference about the Internet
"to provide living context and perspective to this most technological
of human inventions", and has received input from many people that helped
build the Internet. It currently receives about 3 thousand visitors a day,
many from educational institutions. Now in its 7th year of operation.
http://www.livinginternet.com/
TEXT TO SPEECH
Dolphin Producer is a new software package which will convert a text
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EaseReader software player - which is included in Dolphin Producer.
The DTB can also be played back on any other DAISY DTB software or
hardware player, as well as any MP3 player - The choice is yours.
http://www.dolphinuk.co.uk or http://www.dolphinusa.com
***BREAK FOR PT1A AND PT1B***
pt1a2.606
pt1b2.606
Weekly_June_21.txt
***The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, June 21, 2006 PT1***
*******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971********
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***Continuing Requests New Sites and Announcements
General Catalog of Old Books and Authors
http://www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/ngcoba/ngcoba.htm
which now indexes 24,000 books available free online, including all
PG(US) & PG(Aus)'s books, along with some basic date information
about them and their authors where you can find more.
Plus many books not available on line, a good place to search
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<webmaster AT kingkong.demon.co.uk>
*
We have been invited to peruse the various eBook collections
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Many Thanks To Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive!
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***Progress Report, including Distributed Proofreaders
In the first 06.75 months of this year, PG produced 2,471 new eBooks.
It took us from Jul 1971 to Aug 2000 to produce our first 2,271 eBooks!
That's 30 WEEKS as Compared to ~29 Years!!!
142 New eBooks This Week
xxx New eBooks Last Week
507 New eBooks This Month [Jul]
366 Average Per Month in 2006
266 Average Per Month in 2005 Counting 216 PGEu
248 Average Per Month in 2005 Not Counting PGEu
336 Average Per Month in 2004
355 Average Per Month in 2003
203 Average Per Month in 2002
103 Average Per Month in 2001
2471 New eBooks in 2006
3186 New eBooks in 2005 Counting 216 PGeu
> 2970 New eBooks in 2005 Not Counting PGEu
4049 New eBooks in 2004
4164 New eBooks in 2003
2441 New eBooks in 2002
1240 New eBooks in 2001
====
17,551 New eBooks Since Start Of 2001
That's Only 65.75 Months!
~267 books per month!
20,619 Total Project Gutenberg eBooks
16,842 eBooks This Week Last Year
====
3,777 New eBooks In Last 12 Months
[Incl. PGAu, PGEu & PrePrints]
1,000 eBooks From Project Gutenberg of Australia
[This does NOT include PGAu eBooks posted
at the U.S. site: www.gutenberg.org ]
330 eBooks From Project Gutenberg of Europe
368 Items in Project Gutenberg PrePrints
~75,000+ Project Gutenberg Consortia Center
http://www.gutenberg.cc
You may also want to look at Project Runeberg [Scandinavian]
http://runeberg.org
*
Project Gutenberg began operation on July 4, 1971
Project Runeberg began operation on December 13, 1992
Distributed Proofreaders began October 22, 2000
[Became an official PG-US site in 2002]
Project Gutenberg of Australia began in August, 2001
The Project Gutenberg Consortia Center started in 1997]
[Became an official PG-US site in 2003]
Project Gutenberg of Europe started January 12, 2004
[Posted first books February 26, when we met in Brussels
to address people at the European Union Parliament.
Project Gutenberg PrePrints Started January 25, 2006
http://preprints.readingroo.ms
*
PROJECT GUTENBERG DISTRIBUTED PROOFREADERS UPDATE:
Since starting production in October 2000,
Distributed Proofreaders has contributed
8,649 Books to Project Gutenberg.
42 added this week.
For more complete DP statistics, visit:
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*
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*Project Gutenberg Consortia Center Report
The PGCC collection at http://www.gutenberg.cc has doubled
in size from the listings below, but we don't have exactly
matching collection sizes yet for a new breakdown.
The number of individual eBooks now exceeds 75,000.
*
PGCC's current eBook and eDocument Collections listings
of 18 collections. . .with this week's listing as:
[This list is being updated as the moment, you can get
the entire list on the collections pages at gutenberg.cc]
Alex-Wire Tap Collection, 2,036 HTML eBook Files
Black Mask Collection, 12,000 HTML eBook Files
The Coradella Bookshelf Collection, 141 eBook Files
DjVu Collection, 272 PDF and DJVU eBook Files
eBooks@Adelaide Collection, 27,709 eBook Files
Himalayan Academy, 3,400 HTML eBook Files
Internet Archive ~30,000 eBook Files [In Progress] <<<
Literal Systems Collection, 68 MP3 eBook Files
Logos Group Collection, ~34,000 TXT eBook Files
Poet's Corner Poetry Collection, 6,700 Poetry Files
Project Gutenberg Collection, 15,035 eBook Files
PGCC Chinese eBook Collection ~300 eBook files <<< Note Name Change
Renascence Editions Collection, 561 HTML eBook Files
Swami Center Collection, 78 HTML eBook Files
Tony Kline Collection, 223 HTML eBook Files
Widger Library, 2,600 HTML eBook Files
CIA's Electronic Reading Room, 2,019 Reference Files
=======Grand Total Files=========~137,142 Total Files=====
Average Size of the Collections 8,067.18 Total Files
These eBooks are catalogued as per the instructions of
their donors: some are one file per book; some have a
file for each chapter; and some even have a file for a
single page or poem. . .or are overcounted for reasons
I have not mentioned. . .each of which could cause the
overcounting or duplication of numbers.
If we presume 2 out of 3 of these files are overcounts,
that leaves a unique book total of
~45,714 Unique eBooks
If we presume 3 out of 4 of these files are overcounts,
that leaves a unique book total of
~34,286 Unique eBooks
*
The new overall collection size, which has reduced the
need to account for duplications and eBooks with files
for each chapter, etc.
75,000+ Unique eBooks
***
Please also note that over 25,000 eBooks are listed via
The Online Books Page, of which over 5,700 are from PG.
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/
In addition: The Internet Public Library had a similar
listing which is now in limbo. If anyone knows what is
happening with the IPL, please let us know. Inquiries,
made months ago, and again recently, have not turned up
any current information.
You can try a new IPL service at:
http://www.ipl.org/div/subject/browse/hum60.60.00/
It would appear that The Internet Public Library ended
its first incarnation with about 22,284 entries, which
has now been surpassed by the Online Books Page.
Still looking for more Internet Public Library info.
***
Today Is Day #210 of 2006
This Completes Week #30 and Month #06.75 [364 days this year]
154 Days/22 Weeks To Go [We get 52 Wednesdays this year]
9,381 Books To Go To #30,000
[Our production year begins/ends
1st Wednesday of the month/year]
82 Weekly Average in 2006
61 Weekly Average in 2005 [Counting 216 PGEu]
57 Weekly Average in 2005 [Not Counting PGEu]
78 Weekly Average in 2004
79 Weekly Average in 2003
47 Weekly Average in 2002
24 Weekly Average in 2001
44 Only ~45 Numbers Left On Our Reserved Numbers List
[Used to be well over 100]
[This listing usually from the previous week]
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***
Statistical Review
In the 30 weeks of this year, we have produced 2271 new eBooks.
It took us from 07/71 to 08/00 to produce our FIRST 2271 eBooks!!!
That's 30 WEEKS as Compared to ~29 YEARS!!!
FLASHBACK!
Here's a sample of what books we were doing around eBook #1954
Mon Year Title and Author [filename.ext] ###
A "C" Following The eText # Indicates That This eText Is Under Copyright
[Note: books without month and year entries are now in new catalog format
Aug 2000 He Fell In Love With His Wife, by Edward P. Roe [inlhwxxx.xxx] 2271
Jul 2000 The Complete Shakespeare's First Folio [35 Plays] [00ws1xxx.xxx] 2270
Jul 2000 Cymbeline, by Wm. Shakespeare [First Folio]=[FF] [0ws39xxx.xxx] 2269
. . .
Jul 2000 The Tempest, by William Shakespeare [FF] [0ws41xxx.xxx] 2235
*
Have We Given Away A Trillion Books/Dollars Yet?
If our average eBook has reached just 1% of the world population of
6,532,165,604 that would be 20,619 x 65,321,656 = ~1.35 Trillion !!!
With 20,619 eBooks online as of August 02, 2006 it now takes an average
of ~1% of the world gaining a nominal value of ~$.74 from each book.
[1% world population x #eBooks] 65,321,656 x 20,619 x $.74 = ~$1 Trillion
[Google "world population" "popclock" to get the most current figures.]
[By the way, the US "popclock" is about to turn to 300 million people.]
[Just turned 299.3 million this week!]
*
A Trillion Dollars Given Away At Just $.49 Value Per Book To 100 Million
With 20,619 eBooks online as of August 02, 2006 it now takes an average
of 100,000,000 readers gaining a nominal value of $0.49 from each book.
This "cost" is down from about $.59 when we had 16,842 eBooks a year ago.
Our Target Audience Is 1.5% Of The World Population = ~100,000,000 people.
At 20,619 eBooks in 35 Years and 00.75 Months We Averaged
588 Per Year
49 Per Month
1.61 Per Day
At 2471 eBooks Done In The 210 Days Of 2006 We Averaged
11.8 Per Day
82 per Week
366 Per Month
If you are interested in the population of the world or of the U.S.
you might want to know that these numbers, official as they appear,
are just just estimates, and perhaps not as accurate as we hope.
However, for those keeping track of how quickly the U.S. reaches a
300 million population level, and who noticed the passing of 298M,
just two weeks ago. . .the U.S. is already 1/6 the way to 299M, so
it will probably be 10 more weeks to 299M and 22 more to 300M.
Recently the U.S. Congress, pertaining to district reapportionment,
who gets to vote for which Congresspeople, decided that many of the
districts were undercounted by 5%, perhaps then later deciding that
all districts had been undercounted by 5% [can't recall details].
*
The production statistics are calculated based on full weeks'
production; each production-week starts/ends Wednesday noon,
starts with the first Wednesday of January. January 4th was
the first Wednesday of 2006, and thus ended PG's production
year of 2005 and began the production year of 2006 at noon.
This year there will be 52 Wednesdays, thus no extra week.
***BREAK FOR PT1A AND PT1B***
*Headline News from Edupage
[PG Editor's Comments In Brackets]
CANADIAN PROJECT AIMS TO COORDINATE DISPARATE EFFORTS
A new initiative called AlouetteCanada is designed to bring together
disparate digitization efforts from around Canada into a single online
location. Many universities and museums in the country maintain
small-scale digitization efforts of material relevant to the history
and culture of Canada. Much of this content is inaccessible to most
people, however, according to Carole Moore, chief librarian of the
University of Toronto, one of the universities participating in
AlouetteCanada. The University of Alberta and the University of
Brunswick are also part of the project, and Moore said hundreds of
other organizations could conceivably contribute material. Ernie
Ingles, chief librarian at the University of Alberta, said
AlouetteCanada is, in some ways, the antithesis of Google's
book-scanning project. Although Google is making content available
publicly, he said, "it is making that content available in a commercial
way." Ingles questioned whether Google would be around forever to make
that content available.
Chronicle of Higher Education, 21 June 2006 (sub. req'd)
http://chronicle.com/daily/2006/06/2006062101t.htm
RESEARCHERS CLAIM FASTEST SILICON CHIP
A team of academic and industry researchers has demonstrated a speed
of 500 gigahertz for a silicon-based computer chip they developed.
The team included individuals from the Georgia Institute of Technology,
Korea University in South Korea, and IBM. To reach 500 gigahertz, which
is about 250 times faster than many chips used today, the researchers
conducted the test in an environment 451 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit);
at room temperature, the chip reportedly still reaches speeds of around
350 gigahertz. Technology consultant Dan Olds said the announcement
indicates that "we're not coming anywhere near the end in what
processors are capable of." IBM's Bernard Meyerson said the chips,
which might be available in consumer devices within two years,
could lead to significant leaps in the capabilities of computing devices.
New York Times, 20 June 2006 (registration req'd)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/20/technology/20chip.html
ETHICAL HACKING PROGRAM TO REQUIRE BACKGROUND CHECK
Students who want to take part in an ethical hacking program at the
University of Abertay in Scotland will be required to pass a background
check to weed out those who might apply the skills learned in the
program to malicious ends. University officials will work with the Home
Office and a Scottish disclosure service to screen applicants, looking
for anyone with a criminal background. The program, called Ethical
Hacking and Countermeasures, is a four-year degree intended to teach
hacking skills to students who will then work with businesses to
prevent hackers from doing damage to computer systems and data.
It is the first program of its kind in the United Kingdom.
Responding to concerns that the program will simply create more hackers,
Lachlan McKinnon, a professor in the program, said the university will
do all it can to ensure students use their skills in a positive manner.
He added, however, that there are no guarantees. "Harold Shipman
qualified as a doctor, after all," he said, "before deciding
to become a murderer."
The Register, 19 June 2006
http://www.theregister.com/2006/06/19/hackers_background/
GOOGLE DEBUTS SHAKESPEARE SITE
Google has launched a new Web site specifically for the works of
William Shakespeare and related resources. At the site, users have
access to the full texts of Shakespeare's 37 plays and can search
those texts for words or phrases. The site also has links to academic
resources concerning the plays, online groups that focus on
Shakespeare, and videos of stage productions of Shakespeare's plays.
The site also points users toward Google Earth, which coordinates maps
of the globe with Internet searching. With Google Earth, users can
locate the Globe Theatre in London and find other resources with
information about the site. The site was introduced as part of
Google's sponsoring of New York's "Shakespeare in the Park."
USA Today, 14 June 2006
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-06-14-shakespeare-google_x.htm
WIKIPEDIA ADJUSTS EDITING POLICY
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia based on the model that anyone can
contribute to or edit any entry, has placed new restrictions on
editing. Certain entries in any reference work are bound to be
contentious, and with Wikipedia, disagreements can escalate to a
"revert war," in which competing factions simply change an entry back
and forth to reflect their opinions. Such disputes have resulted in a
status of "protected" for 82 entries, meaning they cannot be changed at
all, and a status of "semi-protected" for another 179 entries.
Semi-protected entries can only be changed by someone who has been a
registered user for more than four days, the idea being that such a
"cooling off" period will avoid most of the problems resulting from
disagreements. Despite the steps Wikipedia has taken away from the
ideal of "anyone can edit," founder Jimmy Wales says the resource works
and is valuable. Most entries are only protected for a short period of
time, he said, and they represent a fraction of the 1.2 million entries
in the English-language version.
New York Times, 17 June 2006 (registration req'd)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/17/technology/17wiki.html
DOE CONTRACTS FOR PETAFLOP SUPERCOMPUTER
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has ordered the first petaflop
supercomputing system and an upgrade of its Blue Gene system from Cray.
DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory announced the $200 million
arrangement last week, with plans for completion of the new
supercomputer in 2008. The new system reportedly will attain 1,000
trillion floating-point operations per second (teraflops), or one
petaflop. Oak Ridge scientists plan to use the system to tackle
problems in energy, biology, and nanotechnology. The lab also expects
to offer computing time to other researchers through a program that
grants supercomputer access to academic and corporate institutions.
Federal Computer Week, 26 June 2006
http://www.fcw.com/article95010-06-26-06-Web
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*HEADLINE NEWS AVOIDED BY MOST OF THE MAJOR U.S. MEDIA
*DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK
"We follow the law."
This reply was repeatedly thrown in the face of Senator Arlen Specter
in recent hearings, to determine the scope of the release of national
telephone users' information to the intelligence communities, by AT&T
CEO Edward Whitacre, as he time and again refused to answer questions
directing him to inform the Senate whether AT&T had or had not sent a
plethora of information for intelligence gathering operations.
In the wake of the revelations by The New York Times that such a data
mining opportunity was being given to the NSA, CIA, FBI, etc., many a
Senator and Congressperson has raised the same question.
Harsh criticism of The New York Times ensued, even though they sat on
the story for a year before publishing it, and only published it when
it became obvious it was going to be published elsewhere.
[Note that The Washington Post got scooped on the "Ivy Bells" story--
mentioned in last week's Newsletter, when President Reagan convinced,
in a personal phone call to their publisher, them not to run it for a
few days, but then someone leaked it to NBC. Whether this was in the
way of retaliation for The Washington Post forcing President Nixon to
resign over The Watergate Affairs no one is actually saying aloud.]
Here are the direct quotations from the current hearings:
Specter: Does AT&T provide customer information to any law enforcement agency?
Whitacre: We follow the law, senator.
Specter: That is not an answer Mr. Whitacre, you know that.
Whitacre: That's all I'm gonnna say, is we follow the law. It is an answer.
I'm telling you we don't violate the law, we follow the law.
Specter: Now, that's a legal conclusion, Mr. Whitacre. You may be
right or you may be wrong, but I'm asking you for a factual matter --
does your company provide information to the federal government or any
law enforcement agency, information about customers?
Whitacre: If it's legal and we're requested to do so, of course we do.
Specter: Have you?
Whitacre: All I'm going to say is we follow the law.
Specter: That's not an answer, it's not an answer, it's an evasion.
Whitacre: It's an answer.
Specter: If you're under instructions by the federal government...
Whitacre: We follow the law, senator.
Specter: You've said that. I don't care to hear it again.
Whitacre: I don't care to repeat it again, but we do.
Specter: Well then, don't. If you're under instructions by the federal
government as a matter of state secrecy not to talk, say so.
Whitacre: Senator, we follow the law.
Specter: Well, I think that answer is contemptuous of this committee.
Specter finally forced Whitacre to admit that any response by him
would violate what he had been instructed was "classified information."
Source: ABC
MORE DOUBLESPEAK
The Senate refused to repeal 100% of the estate tax that had been
vilified as "The Death Tax," by embattled White House guru Karl Rove,
but in the end it will cost the real taxpayers just as much, as the
deal is being engineered by repealing what may be all timber company
taxes to win over Senate votes from timber rich Washington State.
All in all The Estate Tax is being repealed for all but the richest
1% or less in the country, and it should be mentioned that that 1%
owns half of everything that can be owned in the United States.
Source: The Washington Post
[I wonder how rest of the country would react to all this if that 1%
actually lived on their blocks, and owned half the land, half the cars,
half the stocks, bonds, cash, boats, etc. while the next 2% owned half
of what was left, and the next 4% owned half of that, etc. . .leaving
only a few percent to be earned by 90% of the block's residents???]
*QUOTES OF THE WEEK
"We follow the law."
*PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK
It will eventually be determined that there has been an overall
pattern of divulging the personal information of U.S. citizens.
*ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK
72% of troops in Iraq say we should get out by the end of 2006.
21% say out now.
Source: Zogby, and various sources that quoted the polls also
done by Le Moyne College.
[As a result, only 6 Senators voted to end the war by year end
this week]
Americans Lose Touch, Report Fewer Close Friends
In the last 20 years the number of close friends reported
by Americans has dropped from about 3 to 2.
In 1985 2.94 friends a person could discuss the important
issues of their lives with were reported.
In 2004 that had dropped to 2.08, a drop of .043 per year
for those 20 years which would be down to about 2 friends
by now, in mid-2006.
Not only do Americans have fewer persons they can discuss
important matters with, but those they do have are family
rather than the traditional friends we tend to think of.
"This change indicates something that's not good for our society,"
said Lynn Smith-Lovin, Professor of Sociology at Duke University.
The study appears in the June American Sociological Review.
[This supports the growing realization that millions of people in
the United States know Oprah Winfrey better than their neighbors]
Source: LiveScience.com
[Perhaps this is why MySpace has 87 million subscribers!]
*
The Big 10 Opens Its Own Television Channel
In an effort to bring in more money from collegiate sport events
The Big 10 has opted to create its very own source of income for
their sporting events for the next 20 years, and should reap the
amount of an extra $7.5 million per year as a result.
The only trouble is that right now you will have to subscribe to
DirecTV to get it.
For at least the first 10 years of this, there should be some of
the normal television coverage of the past, as The Big 10 is now
also reported to have inked lucrative deals with Disney's sports
coverage, from their ESPN and ABC television subsidiaries.
Viewers will have to subcribe to The Big 10 Channel [BTC] via an
opt-in selection to DirecTV's Total Choice package, available to
just over 15 million households.
This isn't the first collegiate sports collective to do this and
it certainly won't be the last. Believe it or not, The Big 10's
action on this was taken from some little known Western Mountain
college conference.
[Just one more step on the way to "pay per everything." Whether
you pay per month, week, day, or per event, it's still pay per.]
DirecTV's Total Choice package costs $41.99 per month.
Source: TV Week, Various Big 10 press releases.
and www.usdirect.com/programming/total_choice.php
*
The "Tahiti" oil well is going down further beneath sea level than
Mt. Everest goes above sea level.
*
By the way, for those interested, the official U.S. population
estimates just passed 298 million, though many say estimations
of this nature leave out as much as 5% of the population, with
the obvious exclusion of the 11-12 million immigrant workers
now being mentioned so much in the news.
Still hoping for more statistical updates and additional entries.
[This one is getting a little out of date, as the US population
is obviously no longer 6% of the world. In fact, rounding to the
nearest percent, the US will soon fall from 5% to 4%.]
"If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely
100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same,
it would look something like the following. There would be:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both North and South America
8 Africans
52 would be female
48 would be male
70 would be non-white
30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian
6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth
and all 6 would be from the United States
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education
1 would own a computer [I think this is now much greater]
1 would be 79 years old or more.
Of those born today, the life expectancy is only 63 years,
but no country any longer issues copyrights that are sure
to expire within that 63 year period.
I would like to bring some of these figures more up to date,
as obviously if only 1% of 6 billion people owned a computer
then there would be only 60 million people in the world who
owned a computer, yet we hear that 3/4 + of the United States
households have computers, out of over 100 million households.
Thus obviously that is over 1% of the world population, just in
the United States.
I just called our local reference librarian and got the number
of US households from the 2004-5 U.S. Statistical Abstract at:
111,278,000 as per data from 2003 U.S Census Bureau reports.
If we presume the saturation level of U.S. computer households
is now around 6/7, or 86%, that is a total of 95.4 million,
and that's counting just one computer per household, and not
counting households with more than one, schools, businesses, etc.
I also found some figures that might challenge the literacy rate
given above, and would like some help researching these and other
such figures, if anyone is interested.
BTW, while I was doing this research, I came across a statistic
that said only 10% of the world's population is 60+ years old.
This means that basically 90% of the world's population would
never benefit from Social Security, even if the wealthy nations
offered it to them free of charge. Then I realized that the US
population has the same kind of age disparity, in which the rich
live so much longer than the poor, the whites live so much longer
than the non-whites. Thus Social Security is paid by all, but is
distributed more to the upper class whites, not just because they
can receive more per year, but because they will live more years
to receive Social Security. The average poor non-white may never
receive a dime of Social Security, no matter how much they pay in.
*
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