My Old Blog

The headline at msnbc.com reads “Deadly November”. Something about 135 soldiers being killed in Iraq this month….the most since the beginning of the war.

I am sure that is true. However, about 6,500 (not 135) died on D-Day (not month) on the beaches of Normandy in 1945. I couldn’t find a count for the entire month.

If you think that is bad, in about 3 days 51,000 (not 6,500) Americans died at the Battle of Gettysburg …although that isn’t a totally fair comparison since we were on both sides of that battle.

I’m not trivializing death….I’m just saying look on the bright side.

I also looked at CNN.com, just to see I could find ONE positive story. There are about 40 headlines with links on their frontpage and I found just one with a fairly positive message: “Wal-Mart slashing prices”

Actually, I just read the article. The full headline is “Wal-Mart to cut prices after poor sales”. So that isn’t really so positive either.

How about this imaginary press release from a fictional Wal-Mart spokesperson: “Wal-Mart is going to cut prices just because we’re feeling nice…..no reason in particular. We’re currently the 12th most profitable company on the planet with about 9 billion dollars in profit in 2003. I mean, come one, 9 billion dollars?? We’re like fucking Richy Rich!! I wipe my ass with hundred dollar bills.”

That’ll be the day….

On a side note, I am not really Wal-Mart bashing. Wal-Mart isn’t the most profitable company in the world, but it does have most revenue: 263 billion dollars. To put that in perspective, that’d make Wal-Mart just about on par with Belgium…..the 25th largest economy (not company) in the world.

What I am bashing is MCI. Remember they declared bancruptcy in an accounting scandal arguably as large as Enron’s a few years ago. Last year THEY were the most profitable company on the planet according to Fortune magazine with 22 billion dollars in profits on 27 billion dollars of revenue. Even drugs don’t have a profit margin like that. Maybe I should declare bancruptcy?? I’d certainly be willing to engage in an accounting scandal….if only I had some money to account for.

I looked on Foxnews.com too. I couldn’t even find one seemingly positive headline there.

And you wonder why people like to talk about sports and the weather. Life is stressful. Why bother?

But look on the bright side, no matter how many people die in Iraq, no matter how bad the economy is, or how poorly the average man is faring, no matter how many people pull out in front of you on the way home….no matter how much your wife bitches: at least we don’t die in droves of the Bubonic Plague from lack of basic sanitation, living in our own squalor, like we did in the Middle Ages.

The Plague killed about 137 million people in its illustrious history. During one 5 year period in the 14th century, it killed one third of Europe’s population: 25 million people.

So that certainly takes the cake for devastation per capita, far beyond any wars….especially Iraq, but that isn’t the largest death toll in a year: That prize goes to the lowly Flu virus.

WWI killed 9 million men (and women) in 4 years, ending in 1918. In 1919 the plain old flu, albeit a particular virulent strain, killed 25 million people in one year. Phwhoo. In 1919 I bet people were longing for the good ol’ days…..when they were at war!!

Think that’s bad?? We haven’t even scratched the surface!!!

Humans appeared about 50 to 60,000 years ago. Since then about 112 billion people have been born. Of those, about 6 billion stragglers (us) are alive on this planet today (some of those of questionable usefulness). That means that approximately 94% of everyone that has ever lived IS DEAD.

And I’ll be completely honest with you: Our odds don’t look so good either. In about a hundred years….we’ll all be dead too, all six billion of us….wars, epidemics and global warming aside.

I think what I’m really saying here is: The Sky is Definitely Falling. Count your blessings….before they are killed in Iraq, die of the flu, are stolen away from you in an accounting scandal, or are underpriced by Wal-Mart.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 30th, 2004 at 11:24 pm and is filed under Interesting Facts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.