Final Push to the Seventh Billion Person

Halloween is the day that the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has designated to be the day we turn the population clock over to 7 billion. This is somewhat arbitrary, to be sure, but it makes good press even if, as one of my students noted, it's a little ghoulish (pun intended) to have this "celebration" the day before the famous Mexican "Day of the Dead" holiday. 


Last week UNFPA released its "State of World Population 2011" and that has stimulated a round of commentary about world population in the New York Times.


Without question, though, the best of the last-minute responses to 7 billion is the free (for a limited time) iPad app just released by the National Geographic Society. You should have this...[although it's only for the iPad, not the iPhone].