Word: numbering
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...same time launched public-information campaigns to teach people the value of using it. A recent series of ads aimed at men makes the powerful point that there is more machismo in clothing and feeding offspring than in conceiving and leaving them. In the past 30 years, the average number of children born to a Mexican woman has plunged from seven to just 2.5. Many developing nations are starting to recognize the importance of educating women and letting them--not just their husbands--have a say in how many children they will have...
...some of its effectiveness as mortality rates also fall. At the same time Mexico reduced its children-per-mother figure, for example, it also boosted its average life expectancy from 50 years to 72--a wonderful accomplishment, but one that offsets part of the gain achieved by reducing the number of births...
...massive environmental catastrophe is predicted, but help arrives in the form of new and utterly unexpected technology. America in the 21st century? No, London in the 19th. Some apocryphal Victorian, so the story goes, looked at the rate at which the number of horses on city streets was increasing and assured his peers that their capital would soon be knee-deep in horse manure. He got it wrong, largely because he failed to predict the imminent rise of the automobile. That brought its own problems, of course, but the point was that Victorians were blindsided by the future--which...
Then there's all that waste from real-world stores, which need heating and lighting. Online retailers that employ nothing but warehouses have about eight times the number of sales per square foot of space used. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Internet could make 12.5% of retail space superfluous. That would save around $5 billion worth of energy every year. For everything you buy with a point and a click, the planet thanks...
Patience, I believe, is a core competency of a healthy civilization. I propose that it is useful and realistic to think of a civilization as operating at a number of different paces at the same time. Fashion and commerce change quickly, as they should. Nature and culture change slowly, as they should. Infrastructure and governance move along at middling rates of change...