{"id":235,"date":"2010-04-13T14:15:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-13T14:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.boopidy.com\/aj\/blog\/2010\/04\/13\/stars-and-wishes\/"},"modified":"2010-12-09T05:44:18","modified_gmt":"2010-12-09T05:44:18","slug":"stars-and-wishes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.boopidy.com\/aj\/blog\/2010\/04\/13\/stars-and-wishes\/","title":{"rendered":"Stars and Wishes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Harper Simon&#8217;s charming eponymous 2009 album there&#8217;s a song called &#8220;Wishes and Stars&#8221; in which the last lines are &#8220;There are more wishes than stars\/More wishes than stars&#8221;.<br \/>\n<script type='text\/javascript' src='\/mp\/swfobject.js'><\/script><\/p>\n<div id='8f4aafe0de72309ff9bd6a68c8ff08a6'><a href=\"http:\/\/www.macromedia.com\/go\/getflashplayer\">Get the Flash Player<\/a> to see this player.<\/div>\n<p><script type='text\/javascript'>\n    var so = new SWFObject('\/mp\/player.swf','mpl','470','84','9');\n    so.addParam('allowfullscreen','true');\n    so.addParam('allowscriptaccess','always');\n    so.addParam('wmode','opaque');\n    so.addVariable('playlistfile','https:\/\/www.boopidy.com\/aj\/lj\/4-13-2010\/9a717bb895be313f86503ba1d3a5609a.xml');\n    so.addVariable('playlistsize','60');\n    so.addVariable('playlist','bottom');\n    so.addVariable('plugins', 'googlytics-1');\n    so.write('8f4aafe0de72309ff9bd6a68c8ff08a6');\n    <\/script><\/p>\n<p>Now, Harper&#8217;s no astrophysicist, and besides there&#8217;s some poetic license involved there, but the claim piqued my interest.<\/p>\n<p>How many wishes are there? Well, apparently about 100B people <a href=\"http:\/\/www.prb.org\/Articles\/2002\/HowManyPeopleHaveEverLivedonEarth.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">have ever lived<\/a> on Earth. Conservatively overestimating, each person <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&amp;met=sp_dyn_le00_in&amp;tdim=true&amp;dl=en&amp;hl=en&amp;q=average+life+expectancy+world\" target=\"_blank\">lived about 50 years<\/a> (the data from 1960, and a pretty high estimate since people living now haven&#8217;t gotten all their wishes in yet. Historically, over the course of human history, the average life expectancy is likely much lower.)<\/p>\n<p>How many wishes does the average person make? Let&#8217;s be very generous here. If we assume the average person makes a wish every 10 minutes of every waking hour of every day (yes&#8230; we&#8217;re whiners), we get<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">6 wishes\/hour * 16 hours\/day * 365 days\/year * 50 years\/life * 100B lives<br \/>\n= approx 175 quadrillion wishes.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Wow, that&#8217;s a lot of wishes. Not bad, Harper.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">But, as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=2pfwY2TNehw\" target=\"_blank\">Carl Sagan reminds us<\/a>, and as <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Technology_in_The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Total_Perspective_Vortex\" target=\"_blank\">Douglas Adams points out to amusing effect<\/a>, the Universe is a big place. Our own galaxy alone has about 100 billion stars. It looks like there may be <a href=\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/esaSC\/SEM75BS1VED_index_0.html\" target=\"_blank\">between 10 sextillion and 1 septillion stars<\/a> in the Universe, or about a million stars for every wish. So go ahead and wish upon a star; there&#8217;s plenty left.<\/p>\n<p>By the way, the album is quite good, catchy folk with a tinge of country. Here&#8217;s another star-oriented song:<\/p>\n<div id='c48d5568de5362bd88d2ea1ed70085ac'><a href=\"http:\/\/www.macromedia.com\/go\/getflashplayer\">Get the Flash Player<\/a> to see this player.<\/div>\n<p><script type='text\/javascript'>\n    var so = new SWFObject('\/mp\/player.swf','mpl','470','84','9');\n    so.addParam('allowfullscreen','true');\n    so.addParam('allowscriptaccess','always');\n    so.addParam('wmode','opaque');\n    so.addVariable('playlistfile','https:\/\/www.boopidy.com\/aj\/lj\/4-13-2010\/dc33b94fb36bbcf30980df03a9c2bf8c.xml');\n    so.addVariable('playlistsize','60');\n    so.addVariable('playlist','bottom');\n    so.addVariable('plugins', 'googlytics-1');\n    so.write('c48d5568de5362bd88d2ea1ed70085ac');\n    <\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Harper Simon&#8217;s charming eponymous 2009 album there&#8217;s a song called &#8220;Wishes and Stars&#8221; in which the last lines are &#8220;There are more wishes than stars\/More wishes than stars&#8221;. Get the Flash Player to see this player. Now, Harper&#8217;s no &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.boopidy.com\/aj\/blog\/2010\/04\/13\/stars-and-wishes\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1c91x-3N","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boopidy.com\/aj\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boopidy.com\/aj\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boopidy.com\/aj\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boopidy.com\/aj\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boopidy.com\/aj\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.boopidy.com\/aj\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boopidy.com\/aj\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boopidy.com\/aj\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boopidy.com\/aj\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}