[Edu-sig] re: computational literacy calcsheet

[Jason Cunliffe]

> "Did you know that there is a woman somewhere giving birth every 12
> seconds?"
>
> And the near obvious punchline:
>
> "I think we need to find that women and stop her."

Well it seems she had daughters and  grand daughters who all grew up since
Red Skelton cracked that one.

86,000,000 more people per year =  2.7 babies per second in 2003

How does one take these big numbers and relate to them in social and in
personal terms ?
Can anyone think straight when the numbers get really large?
Science is full of much larger mind-bending scale ranges.


$400 billion year is what those lame-brained elected members of Congress
voted to spend on this year's  Pentagon budget. By all accounts they are
borrowing from their/our children and grand children to pay the bill. While
the money stays more or less in the economy, people and businesses do
benefit, get educations etc, but most of the material product is useless and
irretrievable.

Even dumb-ass Hollywood BIG-budget movies are profitable from time to time,
and the good ones have considerable shelf life.

Maybe it's stupid crazy to ask such questions like mine, but not nearly as
crazy as what  is actually happening now in terms of massive resources.


We are not supposed to talk or think about this stuff.
Let's go back to cool tricks with attributes and dictionaries..
Think I 'll go outside and look at Mars again. Lucky it happened on a new
moon :-)

- Jason