Did You Know Page of Roger J. Wendell

www.RogerWendell.com
Roger J. Wendell
Defending 3.8 Billion Years of Organic Evolution^SM
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Did You Know?

Archive (from my main page):

"In the last 70 years, the global population has tripled and is now over 6.2 billion. The demand on water resources has grown at double that rate. Though our numbers continue to grow, renewable freshwater resources are finite. We consume 54 percent of Earth's annual available freshwater. If current consumption rates remain the same, this number could rise to 70 percent by 2025 due to population growth alone. If consumption rates grow globally to the current level of developed countries, senior researcher Stan Bernstein of the United Nations Population Fund estimates that up to 90 percent of our available water may be used every year."
Source: Population, health, and environment fellow Buffy Baumann at the Population Reference Bureau, August 2002
- 4th Quarter 2008

Agricultural and urban development, as well as dam building, have destroyed more than half the nation's original wetlands: More than 113 million acres of wetlands have been lost in the lower 48 states, and in some states wetland losses have been as high as 90 percent.
Source: Nature Conservancy, Summer 2008, p. 49
- 3rd Quarter 2008

The word "God" can not be found anywhere in our Constitution yet impeachment is mentioned six times!
Source: The United States Constitution
- 2nd Quarter 2008

Nearly six times as much water is held for storage behind dams and in reservoirs than runs in free-flowing rivers. And, humans have converted about 50 percent of the Earth's terrestrial surface to either pasture or cropland.
Source: Nature Conservancy, End of the Wild, Winter 2007, p. 13
- 1st Quarter 2008

American Debt:
- In 1957 Total American debt (defined as all debt from government, business and households) was $693 Billion - or about $4,000 for every man, woman and child in our country.
- Today's debt has grown to over $48 trillion - 63 times higer to an amount of over $161,000 for every man, woman and child.
- 72% ($35 trillion) of today's debt has been created since 1990.
- Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson recently asked Congress to increase the government debt ceiling by $850 billion from $8.965 trillion to $9.82 trillion, the fifth increase since Bush took office in 2001. It took this country 205 years (1776 to 1981) to accumulate $1 trillion in government debt. It has taken only 26 years to exceed $9 trillion, an 800 percent increase. At a 5 percent rate, the interest expense is $450 billion.
- 4th Quarter 2007

Although Rush Limbaugh was a very strong supporter of the Iraq invasion he, himself, never served in the military! Rush Limbaugh was able to avoid the Vietnam war through educational and medical deferments - even though he dropped out of college and never did admit to any serious physical ailments (except maybe his drug addiction at about age 50...)...
- 3rd Quarter 2007

John Wayne (born Marion Michael Morrison) was a strong supporter of the Vietnam war but never served in the military himself. Other actors like Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, and Clark Gable served during World War II, when John Wayne was of draft age, yet Wayne was able to obtain deferments to continue his movie career.
- 2nd Quarter 2007

Overweight Americans coast airlines an extra 350 million gallons in jet fuel! (The Centers for Disease Control said the average weight of Americans increased by 10 pounds during the 1990s, requiring an extra 350 million gallons of jet fuel to fly them around during 2000 - that's about 2.4 percent of the total volume of jet fuel used domestically that year, and it cost airlines an extra $275 million to transport what the CDC called "this additional adiposity.")
- 1st Quarter 2007

It is estimated that there are an average of 46,000 pieces of plastic debris floating on or near the surface of every square mile of ocean on Earth. Seventy percent of that litter will sink to the bottom while the rest will float indefinitely...
- United Nations Environmental Program report, June 2006
- 4th Quarter 2006

The Bible is the most ofen shoplifed book worldwide. This, according to "1001 Surprising things you should know about the Bible" as reported in O The Oprah Magazine "O-Zone" section, p. 37 - July, 2006 [Note: The 8th Old Testement Commandment states; "Thou Shalt Not Steal"]
- 3rd Quarter 2006

In a 1980 study in Boston, researchers measured the IQs of vegetarian children. Some of the children were following a macrobiotic diet, a few were Seventh-day Adventists (many of whom follow a plant-based diet), and the rest were from families that had simply decided to go vegetarian. On intelligence testing, the kids were considerably above average, with a mean IQ of 116. Now, the diet may have had nothing to do with their intelligence. Rather, these vegetarian families were better educated than the average meat-eating family, and it is probably the parental education, rather than a dietary effect, that was reflected in their children's measured intelligence. However, this study should reassure vegetarian parents who wonder whether animal products contain something necessary for brain development. Clearly, they do not. - Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
- 2nd Quarter 2006

Domestic cats kill, across the United States, hundreds of millions of birds and more than a billion small mammals (rabbits, chipmunks, squirrels, and shrews - not to mention endagered species along with countless reptiles and insects) each year. Cats are not natural to North America and continue to kill wildlife even if well fed or wearing bells.
- 1st Quarter 2006

The chemicals indole and skatole, which help to account for the particular smell of human feces, are used as ingredients in perfume.
- 4th Quarter 2005

"All the ants on the planet, taken together, have a biomass greater than that of humans."
Source: WIlliam McDonough, architect and designer - Sierra, p. 76 July/August 2005
- 3rd Quarter 2005

"The total amount of energy from outside the solar system ever received by all the radio telescopes on the planet Earth is less than the enrgy of a single snowflake striking the ground."
Source: Dr. Carl Sagan - Cosmos, p. 261
- 2nd Quarter 2005

Total U.S. aid to Israel is approximately one-third of the American foreign-aid budget, even though Israel comprises just .001 percent of the world's population and already has one of the world's higher per capita incomes.
Source: Dr.Stephen Zunes - The Strategic Functions of U.S. Aid to Israel (Washington Report on Middle East Affairs)
- 1st Quarter 2005

The world has used 24 billion barrels of oil a year, since 1995, but has found an average of only 9.6 billion barrles of new oil annually.
Source: Paul Roberts in his book, The End of Oil p. 51
- 4th Quarter 2004

Each year humans dump eight billion metric tons of carbon into the Earth's atmosphere
Source: National Geographic - February, 2004 page 89.
- 3rd Quarter 2004

95% of America's original forests were logged during the past 200 years!
Source: (Save America's Forests)
- 2nd Quarter 2004

During the Inquisition the Church (with the assistance of civil authorities) burned over 100,000 women, at the stake, for being "Witches," "Pagans," and "Servants of the Devil."
Source: (Burning Times)
- 1st Quarter 2004

Between 5,000 and 10,000 Iraqi civillians died during this year's invasion of their country...
Source: (Christian Science Monitor) May 22, 2003
- 4th Quarter 2003

The income of the 400 wealthiest taxpayers grew steadily in the years 1992 to 2000, while their tax burden plummeted!
Source: Today's Headlines: (New York Times) Thursday, June 26, 2003
- 3rd Quarter 2003

The United States spends more on its military than the next 12 nations combined!!
Source: Weekly Defense Monitor, Volume 5, Issue No. 11, center for Defense Information, March 15, 2001
- 2nd Quarter 2003

3.7 Pounds of fossil fuel and chemicals are needed to create a single 2-gram microchip.
Source: Environmental Science & Technology, a journal of the American Chemical Society.
- 1st Quarter 2003

260 Million acres of United States forest have been cleared to create crop-land to produce a meat-centered diet.
Source: John Robbins, Diet for a New America.
- 4th Quarter 2002

In the year 2000, 9,713 million (9.713 Billion) animals were killed for food in the United States.
Source: United Poultry Concerns, Inc.
- 3rd Quarter 2002

It takes 23 gallons of water to produce a pound of lettuce and 5,200 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef.
- 2nd Quarter 2002

Los Angeles's full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula" and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size, "L.A."
- 1st Quarter 2002

Cézanne told his female sitters to do their best to look like apples!
- 4th Quarter 2001

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