Population Growth
Word count: 1250
I was happily writing a new, more upbeat beginning to my NaNoNovel when I realized I needed to know how many people lived on my planet. Of course, I consulted Google, where I found a nice overview of human population growth. Slightly wackier and more interesting was the exponentialist homepage, which features the 6 Billion™ population game, extensive discussion of population growth models, an explanation of The Rule of 70, and some nice tables of actual population numbers for particular growth rates on this page.
The scariest link I found was to the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. Whatever you do, do not let these people near your top-secret frozen smallpox stores.
[P.S.] Jerie helped me with some amphitheater research. Did you know that the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is tied for biggest stadium in the world (by capacity)? I didn’t. It was built in 1909 and holds a quarter of a million people.