Aging Gracefully (Unit 9)

The original article, Growing Old, Baby Boomer Style by Tom Valleo can be read online here at WebMD and here at CBS News. It was originally published in 2006. Some things have certainly changed since it was written, such as the predicted worker shortage of 2010.

[Click on the population pyramid on the left to see an animated projection of Japan's past and future population.]

In Japan, Seniors With an Edge was published in 2007 by the NYT. You may need to log in to the NYT to read it online, or read Google's cache of the page.

Read more at Japan's National Institute of Population and Social Security Research. Be sure to see the animated population pyramid for Japan. They have a full report of Japan's population statistics (pdf).

The demographic transition to a stable industrial population is a centuries-long process that is ongoing in much of the world now.

Note that there are about four million births in the United States annually–only slightly below the peak years of the 1946-1964 Baby Boom.

The U.S. Census Bureau has a database of population information about many other countries of the world, too.

What is the population of the world? Over 6.8 billion in 2010!

Geohive, CensusScope, and the Population Reference Bureau

The Population Reference Bureau is a great site for finding population and statistical information and displaying it. For example, you can find and display the senior fraction of the population, or see a map that displays the projected percentage change in population from 2008-2050. Try visiting the DataFinder part of the site and click on World>Population Trends or World>Economic.

CensusScope is a similar data tool, but it is focused on the United States. The U.S. Age Distribution (or Population Pyramid) i

s shown here. You can find maps of the geography of multiracialism or even where the elderly live.

Geohive is more global-minded than CensusScope, but doesn't have as many graphs, charts, and maps as DataFinder. It still has some unique displays. When will India's population growth push it past China? Around 2030, if the projections are correct. Which countries have the largest populations? Japan is still barely in the top 10, but not for long. Which countries have the largest land area?

"Blue Gold: World Water Wars" & "FLOW"

There is a documentary movie about water issues. It is called Blue Gold: World Water Wars. Here is the movie trailer.

Wars of the future will be fought over water as they are over oil today, as the source of human survival enters the global marketplace and political arena. Corporate giants, private investors, and corrupt governments vie for control of our dwindling supply, prompting protests, lawsuits, and revolutions from citizens fighting for the right to survive. Past civilizations have collapsed from poor water management. Can the human race survive?

Director Sam Bozzo

The movie was released in Japan in January 2010. You can order the DVD, or you could download the movie as a BitTorrent -- with the understanding of the director!

Another 2008 documentary, Flow: For the Love of Water, also discusses the same issues, focusing on the privatization of water. The film was on TV in Japan on November 1, 2009. DVDs are also available.

You can read more about the water crisis and water politics (also known as hydropolitics) in these Wikipedia articles, which give a useful overview.

We don't use water in only the obvious ways. It also takes a lot of water to make food and other things we use. If we consider this "virtual water," then Japan is one of the world's biggest water users, as this map shows. Here are some tips for saving water.

Cetacean culture?

Cetacean intelligence, sentience, and culture are in the news again.

Joseph E. Stiglitz

[Stiglitz's autobiography at nobelprize.org]
[His homepage at Columbia University]
[Wikipedia entry]

[2006 interview]

In this 2002 interview he criticizes the policies of the IMF and World Bank.

From GDP to Gross National Happiness

The current global economic crisis is causing a lot of reconsideration and re-examination of past practices and theories. French President Sarkozy fromed a commission including Nobel-Prize-winners Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz to consider new ways to measure growth. Their report was released September 2009.

www.france24.com

www.cfo.com

New York Times

Here is a related video from December 11, 2009: the Kenneth Arrow lecture by Amartya Sen, including a response by Joseph Stiglitz. It's very very very long, but it gives you an idea of how Amartya Sen speaks and looks.

Annual Kenneth Arrow Lecture Featuring Amartya Sen, Joseph Stiglitz, and Eric Maskin, Part 1 of 3 from Heyman Center for the Humanities on Vimeo.

Worldmapper

Worldmapper is an interesting site, especially for students, teachers, and people who are interested in the world. They have created about 700 maps which display information in a visual, map form. The sizes of countries are distorted to show various kinds of information in a proportional way. This map shows the number of elderly people in the country.

© Copyright 2006 SASI Group (University of Sheffield) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan).

Other maps show distribution patterns of food, goods, resources, work, income, wealth, health, education, poverty, violence, cause of death, age of death, communication, religion, language, and other measurable qualities. This site also allows you to download high-resolution images, PDFs, Excel or OpenDoc data spreadsheets, and other resources under a Creative Commons license.