According to data compiled by the
Center for Disease Control (CDC), the current world population
is just over 6.3 billion people. Although this figure
seems low when compared with the number of spam e-mails we get
each week, the CDC claims they have an actual photograph of
these people with all
6.3 billion names
written on the back (although you personally cannot be
recognized because of some lady with big hair standing
right in front of you).
CDC figures also show that the U.S.
birthrate is now two children per each female in
the population. The birth-rate was four children per
each female as recently as 1957, but scientists are quick to
point out that in 1957 only one person in seven had a
television set.
Putting aside the
question of why the CDC is
studying birth rates instead of disease, SandBagger Institute
scientists have determined the real age of the human
race.
Start with two people. They have
two children. Those children find mates and, following
current CDC guidelines, each of them has two children.
Thus the population doubles every generation, which according
to other CDC data is about twenty years.
SandBagger Institute spokesperson
professor William (Pecos Bill) Putaansuu was miffed when asked
where the first children would find mates, "We are a
serious scientific organization . . . and bowling team . .
. We are not a dating service for early hominids!"
Two children become four, then
eight, then sixteen, then thirty-two, and so on, until the
world population reaches 7 billion in just 35
generations.
"It only takes 700 years,"
Putaansuu said. "If humans had really
been around for 5.8 million years there would be a lot more of
us. If the National Science Foundation is so smart, let
them tell us where all those extra people are! Are they
hiding in our homes during the day while we are at
work? Of course not. Although this could explain
the people who always seem to be ahead of us in the
grocery checkout line," Putaansuu said.
"The only other possibility is that the human race
started with way less than two
people."
The SandBagger Institute
expects some readers to quibble over these figures, and
invites those readers to do the math in dog years. "Even
then, it only takes 2,400 years to get to 6.3 billion people,
not 5.8 million years," Putaansuu said. "The National
Science Foundation must be putting us on."
obvious question about how
often a guy has to floss to make his teeth last 5.8 million
years, scientists are also wondering how far back the human
race actually goes. Prior to the Ethiopian discovery the
oldest known hominids were the 4.4 million-year-old
Ardipithecus Ramidus, together with his close friends Herb
Hadley and Skip Piper. 