Marc: You seem to have a much better grasp of what entails the end of the world than I do. Why not craft a scientifically sound Doomsday widget?

D'Oh! continued...


Why not an analysis of major (American) city populations, cross-referenced with Flu/Pandemic indexes and transatlatic flight schedules, and you might have a better (or at least more interesting) basis.

How about a GNP to population index, showing world cash-flow per individual/country over time, and use that to show how the birth and death rates would have to change to adjust for how evil those nasty American consumers are. When you show that every person over "x…" years old needs to be put to death and every child needs to be aborted for the next "y"-years just to keep the evil Americans in cheese cake, you'll have an interesting (and equally flawed) basis.

Tie major city (American) crime rates to population density, average earnings (adjusted for metropolitan area), GNP, and trade deficits, and you can "prove", beyond a shadow of a delusional doubt, that America is the great Satan, or that China should be the new More

Another useless and un-interesting widget. We can tolerate Useless widgets... I have Comic widgets and color-pickers and random picture widgets and silly stuff... they aren't really NEEDED, but at least they're fun or interesting. We CANNOT bother with un-interesting widgets. This (EOW) widget is based on nothing substantive, the math isn't interesting or useful, the graphics - while not ugly - aren't special. There is no reason for this widget to exist in it's present fo…rm. Convert it to a count-down to the Mayan-predicted EOW, and at least it would be interesting. Give it some references, and at least it would serve a purpose. Find a better basis for the un-interesting math -- i.e., tie it to a more believable (yet still imaginary) "magic limit". There are hundreds - maybe thousands - of magic "population limits" or "carrying capacity" limits or consumption limits, etc.

Why not an analysis of major (American) city populat More

I just wanted to comment, briefly, that I had no intention of making this a serious widget. The base numbers are sketchy at best; in fact, every site I visited had different information on growth rate and current population. The number I used for available land had only two significant figures, so of course some extreme rounding occurred there. I realize now that I should have made it clear that this was really intended as a "My First Widget."

People have been predicting the End of the World since the beginning of the world, and to date, exactly ZERO of them have been correct. Toss this upon the ash heap with the rest of the doom-sayers.