If there were no surprises, human life would become rather dull. A combination of routines and surprises is what most folks seek throughout their lives. Even pets and animals in zoos seem to enjoy novelty. Doesn't your dog get excited about going outside to chase and retreive a ball?
Surprise is also the name of an Arizona city of 143,000, though back in 2000, its population was only 31,000. In the last 25 years, its population has grown at a really surprising rate.
Summer temperatures in Surprise hover well above 100F. But in December, the daytime reading can get as low as 66 F, actually feeling rather pleasant, and even down into the 40's F at night.
And, if you should decide to visit Surprise, be prepared for a few surprises.
has almost 23,000 students of all religious and ethnic backgrounds. Why am I now highlighting Syracuse U.? Well, because unexpectedly, it just popped up on my computer screen. Why?
Yes, why indeed? I have no idea. That was just a total surprise!
Another surprise was this recent deplorable event.
There has also been a surprising downturn in US hiring, but Donald Trump had a ready answer.
“Last weeks Job’s Report was RIGGED,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Why and who might be doing the rigging was never explained by Mr. Trump. Any information he doesn't like is automatically declared to be "rigged."
The dictionary defines the verb form of "rig" as
"to manipulate or control usually by deceptive or dishonest means."
Actually, Donald Trump himself is the main guy now doing the rigging.
Trump moves Obama, Bush portraits to hidden stairwell
Now White House visitors will no longer see those portraits. Mr. Trump is spending time on such knitpicking and petty details.
The Hill, Musk Says Trump Is Named in Epstein files.
Assuming that Musk is a reliable source, Trump really doesn't want those files to be opened.
Trump's tariffs are pummeling top automakers. The hit is $11.7 billion — and climbing
The nation's capital waits for Trump's next move as a takeover threat looms | AP News https://apnews.com/article/
Renaissance fairs around the US are now in full swing.
Israeli forces have been wantonly injuring and killing Gazans seeking aid. Nonetheless, Mr. Trump seems to still be supporting Israel without conditions. The young man above was injured by Israeli fire when seeking food, which has become increasingly scarce in Gaza. Aren't these attacks actually war crimes? Trump apparently has refused to hold back aid to Israel or to sanction Israel in any way. To the contrary, he is providing Israel with the means to carry out such atrocities. Both Israel and the US deserve world condemnation for war crimes. If Trump should actually be given the Nobel Peace Prize, an award he seems to be coveting, then the value of that prize will plummet to well below zero.
NY Times, Netanyahu Doubles Down on Gaza Offensive After Global Backlash
The more that Netanyahu is criticized, the meaner he gets.
While many countries are now offering incentives for the birth of children, most such incentives seem to be having little effect. Yet because more children are surviving to adulthood, when they may produce their own offspring, world populaton has continued to grow.
The world's population reached 8 billion on November 15, 2022, according to the United Nations. This milestone was reached due to a combination of increased life expectancy and continued high fertility rates in some regions.
The United Nations Population Division also projects that the world will reach 9 billion people in 2037 and 10 billion by 2058. That is not a growth rate that would have concerned Malthus, but not something trivial either. Maintaining a steady world population, neither shrinking nor growing, not top-heavy with old people and with most people still modestly reproducing, is considered most desirable, but how to achieve and maintain it is another matter.
At age 87 now in 2025, I am unlikely to be among the 9 or 10 billion humans still living on earth in future years when the population reaches that milestone. As already mentioned on these pages, countries facing shrinking populations and low birthrates have mostly tried and failed to incentivize the growth of larger families; this despite offering generous family leave and financial support. Only a few African countries are keeping world population steady or rising modestly. I have mentioned visiting South Sudan myself, the nation now with the highest number of births per woman.
| 1. South Sudan | 4.65 | |
| 2 | Niger | 3.66 |
| 3 | Angola | 3.33 |
| 4 | Benin | 3.29 |
Japan’s population is actually projected to lose 18.7 million people between 2024 and 2050, shrinking from 123.8 million to 105.1 million, a 15.1% decline. The Japanese population has been falling ever since 2011 due to low fertility (only 1.42 births per woman) and an aging population.
South Korea now has the lowest birth rate in the world. In 2023, their total fertility rate (TFR) fell to a record low of 0.72.
China's birthrate has also been declining, with a current average of only 1 birth per woman. Now China is offering subsidies for families with children under age 3, despite the long history of the "one-child" policy, which resulted in forced sterilizations and fines for those having more than one child.
Many Chinese baby girls, considered unimportant, were adopted in the US and western Europe at that time. During that bygone era, I wrote in the US press about the unique chance this afforded single women here to become mothers. Some single women I knew had 2 Chinese adopted daughters.
Now a few countries, including Norway and Finland, have actually seen a modest uptick in births after offering generous subsidies.
The U.S. birth rate is currently below replacement level and has been declining already for several decades, reaching a historic low in 2023. In 2023, the provisional number of U.S. births was 3,591,328, a 2% decrease from 2022. The total fertility rate was 1,616.5 births per 1,000 women, a 2% decline from the previous year.
Despite concerns about a falling human population in some countries, and perhaps even eventually in the world, how did our species, homo sapiens, ever become so dominate to begin with?
Let's go back to around 100,000 years ago, when according to Wikipedia,
there were apparently several different species of humans on earth, and now we, homo sapiens, are the only ones left. But why? "I think luck is definitely part of it," suggests Christ Stringer, a palaeoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London. He hypothesizes that our cumulative advantages, such as our lighter-built skeleton and the development of a complex culture and language enabled homo sapiens to outlive all other humans or humanoids.
This next item shows up as a strange column when I never posted it that way, resisting correction. (Those darn blog gods are interfering again!)
Both homo sapiens and Neanderthals once lived in small, family-based hunter-gatherer groups. While physically and genetically similar to modern humans, their culture in those early times was much simpler. Human populations back then were relatively small, with estimates suggesting fewer than a million people overall.
development of human habits and culture. These pre-humans did not survive as a
distinct species, as only homo sapiens have endured to become the humans now populating the
earth today.
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