Your Life on Earth: How you and the world have changed since you were born | Hacker News Reader

Your Life on Earth: How you and the world have changed since you were born

bbc.com

55 pointstswartz14 comments

I wonder why they decided not to ask for weight:

<!--<div class="form-segment weight-form-segment">

		    	<label for="weight" class="up white small">Weight</label>
		    	<div class="form-segment-input">
		    	
		    	<select class="form-input" name="weight" id="weight">
		    	
		    	</select>
		    	</div>			    
				<span class="form-display stat-detail-default detail-weight"></span>
		    
		    </div> !-->

You weigh as much as _1_ blue whale.

Craziest for me was that the population of the world has doubled since I was born.

Yeah, population had just surpassed 3 billion when I was born; now it's 7.2 billion. In my own lifetime. That's a lot of people. Lucky I like being around a lot of people.

At the dawn of civilization (about 6,000 years ago), you'd have to be 2,000 years old to say that.

Looks like a pretty neat idea. Would've been nicer if I could actually scroll the webpage..

I can only see the top 3 boxes in the results. Opened the iframe in a new window (http://www.bbc.com/earth/bespoke/your-life/), which suggests there's more, but still not loading.

I guess I forgot this part from elementary school, but craziest for me (42) was Saturn has only been around the sun once since I was born. And earth has added 3.4b people.

4.1 billion people added. Make room! Make room!

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And yet, some things never seem to change.

I was fascinated by what they reported. I liked the comparison between my height and other measurements the site gives, including movement of tectonic plates. But I was disappointed that the site didn't report anything about longevity trends in our lifetimes, because those have been some of the most striking and unexpected trends of all.

Many people posting here on Hacker News seem to think that health in general is declining around the world, but exactly the opposite is happening. Girls born since 2000 in the developed world are more likely than not to reach the age of 100, with boys likely to enjoy lifespans almost as long. The article "The Biodemography of Human Ageing" by James Vaupel,[1] originally published in the journal Nature in 2010, is a good current reference on the subject. Vaupel is one of the leading scholars on the demography of aging and how to adjust for time trends in life expectancy. His striking finding is "Humans are living longer than ever before. In fact, newborn children in high-income countries can expect to live to more than 100 years. Starting in the mid-1800s, human longevity has increased dramatically and life expectancy is increasing by an average of six hours a day."[2] If I remember correctly, there was a previous Hacker News submission of an article in a series on Slate, "Why Are You Not Dead Yet? Life expectancy doubled in past 150 years. Here’s why"[3] That article gives a lot of background information about why mortality and morbidity are going down, and thus life expectancy is increasing at all ages. Life expectancy at age 40, at age 60, and at even higher ages is still rising throughout the both developed countries and the still developing countries of the world.[4] It's not just newborns and young children who have better life expectancies than ever before, but everyone in most countries.

[1] http://www.demographic-challenge.com/files/downloads/2eb51e2...

[2] http://www.prb.org/Journalists/Webcasts/2010/humanlongevity....

[3] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_...

[4] http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/box...

And now bbc.com knows my gender and age. I'm excited to see all my new targeted ads!

BBC.com doesn't carry ads...

It does for those the site detects not visiting from the UK - http://www.advertising.bbcworldwide.com/home/advertisewithus...

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