Statistics: Say the Most with the Least...July 23, 1999

Statistics: Say the Most with the Least...July 23, 1999

I find video games highly captivating. There is something that about them that brings the kid out in me. Nevertheless, unlike an adolescent, I cannot stay up until 3:00am without suffering dire physical ramifications upon arising a few hours later. My nocturnal fascination with Golden Eye for N64 has rewarded me with a headache, lethargy, perpetual yawning, and general, overall crankiness.

I returned my overnight client from whence he came early this afternoon. Overall, it was not an unpleasant visit. He was of fairly well demeanour for the most part. I wish I had a solution for his clingyness. I worry about how he will cope when out on his own.

After dropping him off, returning his foster mother's peel out of my driveway yesterday, I began the hour or so drive back to the city. The cursedly hot weather has returned, and lacking the luxury of air conditioning, I drove with the windows down. Had I been able to manage the mechanics, I would have been driving while sitting on the roof. During one of the few gusts of wind that accompany such blistering days, some sand blew into my eyes. I almost went off the road, landing into a very deep ditch. I, along with Reekie and Moo, would have been road kill for sure.

After some moments of driving with one tear-filled eye while trying to get the grit out of the other, I began pondering the nature of sand. In and of itself, sand seems alarmingly mundane. Especially one grain.

Many grains of sand, however, while in appearance look identical from a distance, are actually multi-coloured, and vary in size, shape, and texture. Seemingly innocent in their dormancy, grains of sand hold great power in actuality. As evidenced in my travels today, they have the potential to take away three lives and cause utter destruction. Under a different force, they have the capacity to marvel us in the beauty of glass, especially stained. A metaphor for the human condition.

I received a very provocative email from my future Mother-in-law today:

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
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
97 would be heterosexual
3 would be homosexual
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
When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for both acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent

----Phillip M Harter, MD, FACEP Stanford University, School of Medicine.

And people mock me when I say I feel the world is a very scary place. Indeed.

...Blessed Be