Love and the Apocalypse: Solutions We Love
- The Page That Counts: Summer 2013
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The Page That Counts: Summer 2013
Years it took for the human population to grow from 1 billion to 2 billion: 123. Years it took to grow from 6 billion to 7 billion: 12
Percentage of religious people in five Arab countries who believe women should have the right to initiate divorce: 69
Percentage of nonreligious people in those countries who believe women should have the right to initiate divorce: 46 [1]
Number of the top 250 Internet Movie Database movies that pass the “Bechdel Test” by including at least two named female characters who talk to each other about something other than men: 66
Number that have fewer than two named female characters: 47 [2]
Points scored for “quixotry,” the highest scoring word in Scrabble history: 365 [3]
Total firearm homicides in the U.S. in 2010: 11,078
Total firearm suicides in the U.S. in 2010: 19,392 [4]
Percentage of e-book readers who have not borrowed an e-book from a library: 90
Percentage of those who were not aware they could do so: 52 [5]
Total hours U.S. adults spent watching TV in 2008: 200 billion
Total estimated hours contributors spent creating all the entries in Wikipedia as of 2008: 0.1 billion [6]
Years it took for the human population to grow from 1 billion to 2 billion: 123 [7]
Years it took to grow from 6 billion to 7 billion: 12 [8]
Number of wild American bald eagle breeding pairs in the lower 48 states in 1963: 487
Number in 2006: 9,789
Year the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided there were too many bald eagles to be worth counting anymore: 2006 [9]
Number of construction jobs TransCanada estimates the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline will create: 9,000 [10]
Number the U.S. Department of State estimates it will create: 3,500
Number of permanent jobs the U.S. Department of State estimates it will create: 35 [11]
Pounds of toilet paper the average Chinese used in 2008: 0.5
Pounds the average European used: 17
Pounds the average American used: 50
Sheets of toilet paper the average American used per day: 57 [12]
1. Gallup. June 2012
2. ,” BechdelTest.com, 2010.
3. “” Scrabble News, December, 2010.
4. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, April 1, 2010.
5. ,” Pew Research Center, October 23, 2012.
6. “” A talk by Clay Shirky, Edge: The Third Culture, 2008. Also personal communication, March 1, 2013.
7. “.” Worldometers.info. 2013.
8. “” Population Reference Bureau. October 2011.
9. “ US Fish and Wildlife Service. Oct. 2012
10. “Jobs and Economic Benefit.” TransCanada. 2012.
11. “.” US Department of State. March 2013
12. ., 2008, as cited in Noelle Robbins, “,” Earth Island Journal, Autumn 2010.