{"id":316250,"date":"2017-07-07T14:22:45","date_gmt":"2017-07-07T13:22:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/a-few-things-everybody-should-know\/"},"modified":"2017-07-07T14:22:45","modified_gmt":"2017-07-07T13:22:45","slug":"a-few-things-everybody-should-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/a-few-things-everybody-should-know\/","title":{"rendered":"A Few Things Everybody Should Know"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>With yesterday being the Fourth of July, I once again used the occasion to remind my young grandchildren of some of the things they need to know if they wish to consider themselves \u201cinformed citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Actually, me giving this lecture has become something of a family tradition.\u00a0 Excruciatingly tedious and self-righteous in many regards, but a tradition nonetheless.\u00a0 Grandpa talks, and the kids listen (or respectfully pretend to listen).\u00a0 I like to think that we\u2019re all working off the premise that it\u2019s never too early to begin an education.<\/p>\n<p>Here are some of the things I\u2019ve long insisted are important to know.\u00a0 Granted, the list consists solely of my own choosing, and is, therefore, wildly subjective, but the case can be made that all of it is worth knowing.<\/p>\n<p>We should all know the approximate population of the earth.\u00a0 It\u2019s our world.\u00a0\u00a0 Shouldn\u2019t we know how many people live in it?\u00a0 The earth\u2019s population is approximately 7.5 billion.\u00a0 So if my grandkids happen to be on the playground one day, and a little girl casually says, \u201cHey, I wonder how many people live on the earth,\u201d they can tell her.<\/p>\n<p>Another thing kids need to know is how many countries there are.\u00a0 There are just a shade fewer than 200 countries in the world.\u00a0 The top three most populous are China (with roughly 1.38 billion), India (with 1.34 billion), and the U.S. (with 326 million).\u00a0 It\u2019s estimated that India will blow by China within a decade.<\/p>\n<p>The three largest&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/2017\/07\/a-few-things-everybody-should-know\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With yesterday being the Fourth of July, I once again used the occasion to remind my young grandchildren of some of the things they need to know if they wish to consider themselves \u201cinformed citizens.\u201d Actually, me giving this lecture has become something of a family tradition.\u00a0 Excruciatingly tedious and self-righteous in many regards, but [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2525,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-316250","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2525"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}