Day: October 31, 2011

Happy birthday, 7B!

/ SallyJBrz / 1 Comment

This morning, the seven billionth person on earth was born.  Our fixed-size planet, which was home to just 500 million people in 1500, now has 7 billion people living on its surface – and that number is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050.  With numbers like that, it’s time to ask some questions:

  • Where to you fit into the grand scheme of things?  Find your number here.  I am the 4,885,109,561st person alive on Earth and the 79,721,025,639th person to have lived since history began.  How much before or after me were you?
  • How exactly did we grow so quickly?  Check out this great video from the folks at NPR.
  • What is a typical person like, now that there are 7 billion of us?  See the National Geographic video below for some insight.

Music Monday: Pop-up Party

/ SallyJBrz / Leave a comment

Nothing brings me back to middle school dances like a pop-up video.  They were how I learned to tell the difference between the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC, where I finally understood who this Slim Shady character was, and where I finally got the appeal of popular music.  (I owe most of this to Jen Wall – Jen, if you’re reading, I’m bringing you my future kids to teach them about music some day!)

My education continued with the latest pop-up video from VH1 – Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA,” where I learned:

  • Miley = not really a fan of Jay-Z – he’s too “pop” for her
  • This song was designed to launch Miley’s Wal-Mart clothing line, not to be my summer jam
  • The confetti from this shoot took two weeks to clean up
  • Pop-up videos make everything better.

Check it out here.  What song would you love to see get the pop-up treatment?