As we sit in the comfort of our homes enjoying the luxuries that we so often take for granted, the world continues to turn and with every passing minute, somewhere, something significant is happening. Tempus fugit! The population rises, species become extinct, we produce more and more stuff and spam relentlessly assaults our in-bins!
According to what you are about to see, in one minute, these things happened on our planet:
- 262 births
- 116 deaths
- 775 people contracted malaria
- 25 hectares of forest were lost
- 10 million spam e-mails went out
- 1215 metric tons of milk was produced
I first saw this World Clock about 3 years ago and immediately found it to be very instructive. While I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the statistics, the authors provide a link to the sources of the data so you can check it out for yourselves. I suspect that the ratios are fairly close to reality, close enough to provoke some serious thinking.
By default, the World Clock cycles through the categories on the left hand side. If you click on a category, it will stop cycling.
It’s a fairly simple interface. Click on the now button and watch the numbers for a minute then click pause. Click on any category on the left hand side and then click on Yr., Mth., Wk., Day.
You need to have Flash Player 6 or later for the World Clock to work.
Most browsers already support this.
When I think about this data as a snap shot of what’s going on in our world, it makes me wonder about a great many things. For instance, look how fast the malaria, respiratory infections and childhood diseases rise compared to the rest of the stats. How about the number of bicycles produced vs. automobiles under the ‘more’ category? We think of war as a great taker of lives, but look how its numbers pale in comparison to so many other causes of death.
Where should we apply our resources? Where should our focus be? Perhaps this type of clock is something all of our leaders should look at more often than naught. I have no doubt that they could plug into this clock the most recent and most accurate indices!
World Clock courtesy – Poodwaddle.com
Poodwaddle has some other very cool clocks and counters.
© Gil Namur, 2009
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