{"id":826,"date":"2008-05-14T20:37:37","date_gmt":"2008-05-15T00:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/?p=826"},"modified":"2008-05-14T20:39:04","modified_gmt":"2008-05-15T00:39:04","slug":"making-the-numbers-mean-something","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/2008\/05\/14\/making-the-numbers-mean-something\/","title":{"rendered":"Making the Numbers Mean Something"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been thinking a lot about big numbers, lately.  The 6,000 that accompanied the first reports of the cyclone in Burma was something I could sort of wrap my head around.  I could picture 6,000 people.  I could understand that 6,000 &#8211; coming from the military government running the place &#8211; probably meant that it was a lot more.  But I wasn&#8217;t sure how many more.  It seems to be rising exponentially.  The Red Cross&#8217; <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/asia-pacific\/7401572.stm\">warning of 128,000<\/a> just surpassed my imagination.<\/p>\n<p>And then the earthquake in China hit, and I first heard 10,000.  We&#8217;re used to big numbers in everything from China, but it was still clearly a massive event.  And as that number was rising today, I was trying to fathom it.  How did it compare to the events in Burma?  What would it be like if it happened here in the US?<\/p>\n<p>Turns out, I was reaching for the wrong end of this.  All I needed to do was understand a very small number.  In this case, it was just 3.  How so?  Listen to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/story\/story.php?storyId=90447603\">this short NPR audio report<\/a> from the ground in Sichuan, in which Melissa Block accompanies two parents looking for their two year old son.   Don&#8217;t read, don&#8217;t look.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/story\/story.php?storyId=90447603\">Just listen<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been thinking a lot about big numbers, lately. The 6,000 that accompanied the first reports of the cyclone in Burma was something I could sort of wrap my head around. I could picture 6,000 people. I could understand that 6,000 &#8211; coming from the military government running the place &#8211; probably meant that it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-society"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}