What is the World's Deadliest Animal to Humans? Depends on How and Who You Count

Bill Gates released a chart showing the deadliest animals to humans.

Diseases spread by mosquitoes such as dengue, malaria, Rift Valley fever, yellow fever, and West Nile make this flying insect a plague to many.

The chart on the surface looks good.  It cites the World Health Organization and other reputable sources.  It shows just how deadly mosquitoes are compared to the stereotype killers such snakes, sharks, and other killing animals.  However, the 475,000 homicides by fellow humans is too low when you count abortions.  There are up to 42 million abortions a year.  When one factors in abortion the 3 mosquito-caused deaths for every 2 homicides changes to 1 mosquito-caused death for every 58 homicides.  Quite a dramatic changed. as we remain our own worst enemy. 

Twenty School Lunches Around the World Photo Essay

In the same spirit as the Daily Mail's global food and food price gap photo essay, the San Francisco Gate has a photo essay on school lunches around the world.  At first I was appreciating all the unique cultural dishes until I noticed the African children getting as little as cups of soup.

Geographical Facts about Cocaine

I recently acquired the latest copy of "Cocaine Smuggling" (2011) by the Office of National Drug Control Policy from my local library.  According to ONDCP, cocaine's scourge is primarily fueled by users in the United States.  The United States has the most users of the drug with Europe and the rest of the Americas splitting the rest.  The top five users are:

United States: 5.33 million users

Mexico: 1.7 million

United Kingdom 1.04 million

Brazil: 954,338

Italy: 884,827

Spain 823,515

The data on how cocaine gets to the United States was surprising.  The old stereotype of airplanes and speedboats going to Florida swamps is dead.  Ninety-five percent of all the cocaine headed towards to the United States goes through Mexico/Central America.  Only five percent goes through Hispaniola and other Caribbean islands.

The Central American route is complex but Honduras is the linchpin of the cartels operations.  132 metric tons reach Honduras overland while an additional 150 metric tons reach the country from the Caribbean.  Only 117 metric tons bypass Honduras by going directly from South America to Mexico, Belize, or El Salvador.

The Face of the Average Woman Around the World

From 9gag.com

Maps of Abortion Policies Worldwide Post-14 and 24 Weeks of Gestation

The United States is in rare company.

The only countries that allow abortion after fourteen weeks of gestation are the United States, Canada, Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Sweden, the People's Republic of China, North Korea, Singapore, and Vietnam.

The nine after fourteen weeks.  Click to enlarge.

The only countries that allow on-demand abortion after twenty-four weeks of gestation are the United States, Canada, the People's Republic of China, and North Korea.

The four after twenty-four weeks. Click to enlarge.

Liam Fox's Ten Global Trends to Watch Out For

Former British Secretary of State for Defense Liam Fox has published the book Rising Tides about global threats against the West and the world in general.  The top ten threats are

Pakistan: A fractured rogue state artificially held from Collapse, thus only prolonging the decay, by international aid.

Water Scarcity and Wars Derived from It: In the end water is worth more than oil.  Egypt and Ethiopia already play a dangerous game over the flow of the Nile.

Dirty Bombs: Deadly, long-term impact terrorism made easy

The Downfall of the Euro:  Last time Europe's economy failed the dream of globalization died for 75 years and there were two world wars.

National Debt:  First international strength dies, then national strength, and then everyone suffers.

Demographic Graying:  A nation of old people cannot have a welfare system nor can it be a player on the world stage.

Unfettered Immigration: Eventually non-assimilated immigrants can take over a graying country and bring all the problems they tried to escape over with them to their new home.

International Jihadi Terrorism:  From New York to London to Africa to Syria to the Far East, militant Islamists are fighting a war against the world.

Nuclear Iran:  The world will become an even more dangerous state.  Eventually someone will use a nuclear weapon again.

Collapse of Political Will in the West: So many Westerners are afraid to confront other culture's problems.  The West has some major problems (selective killing of young), but no one dares confront the problems which cause so much death and suffering across the world.  Sometimes other's choices are not "different", they are wrong.

40 Maps that Explain the World

The Washington Post has a very nice mix of maps entitled "40 maps that explain the world."  The maps cover environmental, religious, cultural, agricultural, economic, and more.  This effort by the Washington Post represents presenting geography in a format all in enjoy and understand.  These maps greatly help one see spatial trends and even better understand why some countries and people do what they do.

Below are Post authors Max Fisher, Simon Denyer, and William Wan discusing the forty maps.

Map of True Discoveries by Europeans

Radical Cartography has a fascinating map of lands unknown to humanity prior to European discovery.  Of note, the Cayman Islands have no known human presence prior to Christopher Columbus' arrival.  Turns out the Admiral of the Ocean Sea actually really did discover new lands.

Click to enlarge

The map breaks down discovery by country.  The Russian Empire and the Netherlands discovered the most new land with Spain, the conquer of the New World, having only slightly more discovered land than the United States.

The Sun Still Does Not Set on the British Empire

The British Empire of the late 1800s including the home isles, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, India, much of Africa, and much more.  At least one part of the empire had direct sunlight due to the empire's global expanse.  With the fall of the Empire many people probably believe the sun has set upon the remaining British rump realm.  This is not the case, however, according to Xkcd.

The blog has discovered the small possession of Pitcairn Islands, inhabited by the mixture of HMS Bounty and Polynesians, gets sun light long enough to act as a solar bridge between the Cayman Islands and the  British Indian Ocean Territory.

The Empire is no more but Britannia holds enough global outposts to keep the sun's shine at all times.

Countries Which Discovered the Element on the Periodic Table of Elements

Click to enlarge

The above was sent to me by a friend though we cannot find the original source.  It shows which countries, including "ancient discoveries", discovered each element on the periodic table.

Several conclusions can be drawn from the above.

• The Greater European Cultural Realm, Europe+North America, dominate several realms of science.  All of the modern discoveries were done by this European realm aka Europa.
• 80% of all modern discoveries were done by scientists in a Germanic country.
• The non-Europa parts of the world sadly lack in science whether due to lack of infrastructure or anti-scientific cultures.
• For example, Jews, mostly in Europa, have won at least 20% of all Nobel Prizes.  Meanwhile, nine Muslims have won Nobel Prizes, while only two of these prizes were in a scientific category and one of these went to Abdus Salam, who was educated in Europa and belonged to a sect commonly thought of as non-Muslim.
• China has yet to make a discovery.  This is in part due to its scientific efforts being focused on exploiting existing discoveries.

The Half (Ignored/Overlooked) Circle of the World

From i09:

About half the world's population live in this circle. Most of the world's Buddhist population and over 40 percent of all Muslims live within the circle as well.  Yet most world history books, while rightly giving detailed attention on the rises, advances, and falls of the Western and Mediterranean civilizations, usually only pay passing reference to Indian and Chinese history.

Global Food and Food Price Gap Photo Essay

The British Daily Mail has a neat photo essay showing weekly family food consumption and pricing from around the world. It's fascinating to see the gap in prices, quantity  and quality of food worldwide.  Personally, the Polish's family weekly food seems to be a good amount with at a very reasonable level.

Abortion in the United States and the World

Tuesday was 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade which stated the Constitutional right to privacy, which the Constitution does not declare, allows for abortion.  As a federal-level originalist and practicing Catholic no reader of this blog should be surprised that I oppose this ruling. I will be extremely tired today as I am volunteering to support the March for Life.   I wish to offer some statistics on the devastation caused by abortion to explain my opinion and actions.

According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute (a special affiliate to Planned Parenthood), the 2009 to 2011 average for abortions in the United States was 1,212,400 per year.  That equates to 3,322 per day, 138.4 an hour, 2.3 a minute, or one baby aborted every 26 seconds.  This number actually reflects a slight decline in abortions in the United States.  1990 was the high point for abortions in the United States with 1.61 million.  That equates to 4,410 a day, 183 an hour, 3 a minute, or one baby every 20 seconds.

By the time you read this the Alan Guttmacher Institute estimates there will have been about 55,900,000 abortions in the Untied States since 1973.

Other ways to think about that sum are

• California's population is only 37.7 million and New York state's population is 19.5 million.
• 55.9 million would be worth about 77 electoral votes (one more than the battleground states of Nevada, Wisconsin, Ohio, Virginia, and Florida put together).

Number of abortions per year according to the Planned Parenthood-aligned Alan Guttmacher Institute

Around the world the estimated average of abortions is about 45 million a year.  That equates to 123,287.7 a year, 5,137 a day, 85.6 a minute, or one baby aborted every .7 seconds.

Poodlewaddle created a world clock with data of various categories.  Click "Deaths" and then "Now" and watch abortion easily become a plurality of all deaths in the world.




Using Alan Guttmacher Institute numbers, the pro-life/anti-abortion website abortion counters states there have been over 1.28 billion abortions in the world since 1980.  This is 18% of the world's current total population.  That is a death rate of nearly one in five children.

From Flickr

Current Hot and Cold Weather Extremes

2012 was the hottest year on record beating out the old recognized record setter 1998 (this title is disputed between 1998 and 1934), according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  The organization's press release stated "2012 marked the warmest year on record for the contiguous United States with the year consisting of a record warm spring, second warmest summer, fourth warmest winter and a warmer-than-average autumn. The average temperature for 2012 was 55.3°F, 3.2°F above the 20th century average, and 1.0°F above 1998, the previous warmest year."  Of interesting note there was a notable drop in the number of hurricanes.

NOAA's map below does a good job showing how new heat records, along with drought, was pretty much widespread over the United States.

Down under in Australia the Australian Bureau of Meteorology made a new color in order to display temperature forecasted between 54 and 56 degrees Celsius (129 to 133 Fahrenheit).

So hot it went from black death to somesort of deep cosmic purple

Meanwhile other places are experiencing extreme cold.  Asia is currently going through extreme winter weather.  The Levant saw a major snowstorm which brought up to eight inches of snow in Israel, covered Jerusalem, and froze Syrian refugees to death.  India and China's temperatures have broken or matched record cold.  Hundreds if not more have frozen to death in these populace lands.

Interestingly enough, despite record annual warm temperatures, the snow extent in North America for December was the largest ever recorded.  This despite global warming/climate change models which predicted less snow.

Cars Deadlier than Guns... Except for Parts of Latin America and Swaziland

I decided to take a look at deaths rate by gun crime and motor vehicles per 100,000 people.  According to a variety sources collected together on Wikipedia, the people in the below countries have a higher rate of being killed by a gun than via a motor vehicle.

Country              Deaths by Gun Crime                       Deaths by Motor Vehicle
El Salvador          50.36                                                  12.6
Jamaica                47.44                                                  12.3
Honduras             46.7                                                    13.5
Guatemala           38.52                                                  14.7
Swaziland            37.16                                                  26.3
Colombia            27.1                                                     11.7
Panama               12.92                                                  12.7

With the exception of Swaziland, all these countries are in Latin America.  Sadly a combination of the international drug trade combined with a rough culture have lead to fast and loose gun player.  Other Latin American countries like Mexico and Brazil have high gun deaths as well but are out done by even higher motor vehicle deaths.

Healthiest and Deadliest Gun Cultures Around the World

Latin America has the deadliest gun culture while Western Europe has the healthiest.  Interestingly enough the United States is almost right in the center (which is not that bad when one considers it has the largest amount of guns per capita in the world).

With all the discussion about gun violence in the news I decided to compare number of gun homicides to number of guns.  The results are below

Of note I found it fascinating that number of guns and gun homicides seem to have no positive correlation.  In fact, most of the countries with the healthiest gun cultures have more guns, not less.

American Foreign Aid Throughout the World

The State Department has created ForeignAssistance.gov, a website showing where American foreign aid and assistance is spent abroad.  Israel leads the way at $3.1 billion followed by Afghanistan at $2.5 billion, Pakistan at $2.2 billion, and Iraq at $2 billion.  Dictatorship-to-quick democracy-back-to-dictatorship Egypt rounds up the billions with $1.5 billion.  Interestingly, $7.3 million in democracy promotion and health is spent in the People's Republic of China.  Additionally, twelve European Union states receive American foreign aid including one western European country, Portugal, which is given $100,000 for "peace and security".

BBC Poll of Obama versus Romney

A BBC poll of whether people in 21 countries favor President Barack Obama or former Governor Mitt Romney found that, to no surprise, the vast majority of the world supports Obama's reelection efforts.

When looking at the above chart I cannot but help to think about why some of the countries are the way they are

Kenya:  Romney gets his most support in Kenya, where Obama's father was a native Luo.  I assume that Romney's support is based on a combination of some anti-Luo feeling among other tribes but probably more due to the fact Obama partially hurt his popularity in Kenya by massively cutting anti-AIDS programs started by President George W Bush.

Poland:  The legacy of Republican-Polish relations from the Cold War still continues but Obama's policy still resonate well in a country that, while rejecting hard socialism, still is skeptical towards capitalism.

Pakistan:  The only country Romney actually wins.  Pakistanis really, truly, utterly hate the CIA drone program to the point Romney's 15-some points floats him to the top.  Obama's 12 percent is probably the size of what is left of Pakistan's liberal population.

France and Spain:  These two countries' population are truly upset at anything relating to fiscal restraint and it shows.

Comparison of Economic Freedoms around the World

What do these countries all have in common

The Communist-hypercapitalist autonomous city of Hong Kong
The national conservative capitalist state of Singapore
Torn between Laborism and Neoliberalism New Zealand
Federalist Switzerland
Mixed with various economic ideologies on all sides Australia
The captalistic klepocracy of Bahrain (though I doubt this should truly be on the list)

Give up?  They all are economically freer than the United States according to Fraser Institute's Free the World. From the 1980s to early 2000s the United States usually ranked third but it has fallen to 18th due to the increases in eminent domain (ab)use, increases in the role of government in the economy, and other factors.

While the United States has fallen a bit, it has not suffered the most in the last ten years.  Populist socialist Venezuela, soft national socialist Argentina, and neoliberal turned old school social democratic Iceland have initiated the worst falls from economic freedom in the last decade.

The writers at Online Business Degree (usually a site I ignore due to spam reasons) created an actual enjoyable/interesting infographic on the economic freedom around the world. 

I personally doubt that Hong Kong's success will last as the Chinese Communist Party slowly starts to implement its socialistic reforms in the region with help of its growing political base inside the city.

Economic freedoms are important.  While economic freedoms do not automatically equal personal freedoms, there is a strong relationship between restricting economic freedoms and losing personal freedoms.  There are also positive realtionships between quality of life, income equality, and economic freedom.











 

Geography of Breat Sizes Different From Men's Geography

As a follow-up to the geography of penis sizes, a geographer wondered if the geography of women's breast sizes would co-relate to that of the male reproductive organ.  The answer seems to be: mostly not.

The German website Blid.de (English language link) made a map claiming to show women's breast sizes on a cup scale by country.

From Blid.de

The one strong co-relation between the two is that East Asia has the smallest of both.  Africa, while leading in the men's category, is universally in the small category for women.  Russians, Finns, and Viking Germanics lead overall with other Germanics coming in second throughout the world.  Most Slavs, however, though do not have as nearly as large of breast as those of their Russian kin.  Interestingly, countries which once were part of the original Muslim expansion ranging from Portugal to India are almost all B-cup.  It would be eat to see if this is a genetic import from Peninsula Arabs or something else.

All this depends on the accuracy of the data and my theories ignore the extent of plastic surgery.