The population explosion: visualised

[August]

You probably have all heard the story about the lily pad growing at a rate that it will take 30 days until it covers the whole pond … on the 28th day, only one quarter is covered, but on the 29th day, it is half covered, while on the 30th day, it has reached its limit of covering the whole pond. Earlier on, everything seemed to be O.K., but towards the end, things got covered over at a rapidly crazy rate.

[forfi]

Thats a lovely story,did the lily pond have frogs and things when it was finished ?

[Andrea]

Hi August, good to see you How have you been?

[August]

Hm. I’m dreaming. ‘Cause the fact are clear and simple. We are heading for a future of either mass death due to the fact that we are soon reaching all sorts of tipping points, or to continued population growth which will take us to the opoint when we reach the 9 billion mark or more. My little piece of maths really says it all:

Maths don't matter?

The most interesting thing is what is happening at the bottom of the page (when the population explosion takes off for real). here I am counting generations from a thought-up starting point of 500.000 people. After 16 generations of three childbirts per woman on average, the population has reached 1 billion. After 20 generations the population has reached 5 billion. We have now reached the point when the population explosion really takes off. In a matter of three generations more, the population has reached 17 billion. It is now heading for thirty billion in no time.

16. — 1.039.998.104
17. -- 1.559.997.000
18. — 2.339.000.000
19. — 3.500.000.000
20. — 5.300.000.000
21. — 7.900.000.000
22. — 11.800.000.000
23. — 17.800.000.000

[August]

Andrea,

If I were to say to you that I'm alright and nothing in particular is up with me, I'd be telling you a white lie. I hate to feel that I'm constantly telling people white lies. As it is: I once signed an honesty pact with my inner self, but now it seems that both people and systems are poised at using all my honest versions of the truth against me. So I'm fucked. And the truth is, as a matter of fact, dark blue and bordering to pitch black. Now, my next problem is: should I talk and write openly about the evil things that the Norwegian state keeps doing to me, or should I lower my head in defeat and stay silent 'till the end of days? -- I just don't know what will be the smart thing to do. But okay: it may actually seem as if there is a fine line between smartness and insanity.

If you're interested in knowing the basics of what things people are willing to do to other people, so long as some leader or administrator requires of them to do so, please read:

The Perils of Obedience - Stanley Milgram

Thanks.

[Wobs]

Well after the floods last year, the earthquake last night, beloved was hoping for a plague of frogs, as she likes frogs.

[Wobs]

BTW, in case you two haven't met, Forfi, meet August. He's kind of a moaning machine.
August, meet Forfi, he's kind of a comedic relief, but keeps his mother's remains in the basement, and talks to her as if she's alive.

We haven't had the heart to tell him yet that she pegged it months ago. Just hope we don't run out of air freshner.

[August]

Yes. I'm a moaning machine. I know that. It is actually one of the reasons why I stopped posting on this forum. Everybody hates a moaner. Now, forfi; you can also think of me as some little David wrestling with Goliath after having lost his little catapult in the previous fight; now doomed to fail miserably.

[forfi]

August, you did not loose your catapult,it was stolen from you in the dark of night by an intruder from a Scandinavian country which begins with F. I can say no more now as it would put my life a risk.

[August]

Whooah! Who the fuck are you?! You know: a policeman talking behind my back sometime in 2005, informed me that "God lives in Finland." And a Swedish social worker, working and living in little Oslo, came to inform me, back in 2005, that "we can't help you; you'd better read up on Michel Foucault (noted for his "History of Madness") who once wrote that the system is fascist and works only to protect and preserve itself." That was, I think, to say that I was to be seen as some kind of an intruder and not at all just a simple person finding a hard time figuring out what and how to write in order to become an author of novels, plays, poems and political essays. I was merely thinking that it was not as if Norway hadn't produced a writer like Jens Bjørneboe (noted for his "History of Bestiality") before. Although it is true to say that Bjørneboe had a cosier family background than I have.

A Norwegian doctor of medicine, working and living in little Haugesund, informed me last summer that "if I thought Swedish doctors where out to get me, I would probably not be mistaken."

But how?!

And why?!

The truth is, I guess, that in a world consisting of about 7 billion people with individual destinies, no one is required to give a damn about whatever happens to one person. And I also guess it is true to say that it is exceptionally easy for people in a little country like this one to prove capable of hating a person simply for the things the country has done to him, and that this hate can last forever. Now, I know it is true to say that freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. And I've lost my whole family in the face of a truth which they can't believe is anything other than the products of my own delusions. I can do no more than just wait until I'm being kicked out of this hospital, after which I must act like a Mafioso and do the honourable thing.