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A virus of the mind: with NO apologies to Richard Dawkins

I actually saw this first about a year ago, was impressed, and then lost the file.

Serendipity is a wonderful thing.

While I was looking for an Indian Libertarian, I stumbled across it again.

In this incarnation it's called Glimpse of the Future. The post itself does not have a unique URL, so you will have to scroll pretty far down the page to find it.

The intro says, "The following is a text excerpt from an educational slide show, which—due to its fascinating content—meanwhile has gone viral on the Internet." That would make it, at least from some perspectives, a virus of the mind.

[Richard Dawkins, noted evolutionary biologist, notorious atheist, and purveyor of the (I sincerely believe) soon-to-be-discredited serious theory of memes, once wrote an article in an anthology praising Dennis Dennett, where he likened religion to a virus of the mind. The article was not worth reading, and barely worth stealing from.]

But this is good stuff:

Did you know?

Sometimes size does matter.

If you’re one in a million in China, there are 1,300 people just like you.
In India, there are 1,100 people just like you.

The 25% of the population in China with the highest IQs is greater than the total population of North America.

In India, it’s the top 28%.

Translation for teachers: they have more honors kids than we have kids.

China will soon become the number one English-speaking country in the world.

If you took every single job in the U.S. today and shipped it to China, it still would have a labor surplus.

[In the next five minutes]
60 babies will be born in the U.S.
244 babies will be born in China.
351 babies will be born in India.


And this:

1 of every 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met online.

There are over 106 million registered users of MySpace (as of September 2006).

If MySpace were a country, it would be the 11th largest in the world (between Japan and Mexico).

The average MySpace page is visited 30 times a day.

Did you know?

We are living in exponential times.

There are over 2.7 billion searches performed on Google each month.

To whom were these questions addressed B.G. (before Google)?

The number of text messages sent and received every day exceeds the population of the planet.

There are about 540,000 words in the English language, about 5 times as many as during Shakespeare’s time.

More than 3,000 new books are published—daily.

It is estimated that a week’s worth of New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century.

It is estimated that 1.5 exabytes (1.5 x 1018) of unique new information will be generated worldwide this year.

That’s estimated to be more than in the previous 5,000 years.

The amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 years.

For students starting a four-year technical or college degree, this means that half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study.

It is predicted to double every 72 hours by 2010.


I can vouch for the accuracy of only a few of these statements, but those I know are accurate.

The perspective is simultaneously daunting and exciting.

There's more; it's worth the few minutes it will take you to read it.

Unfortunately, if you give it serious thought it will take quite a bit more time out of your day.

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