Believe it or not, that kind of information is important in developing countries where it's estimated that at least 25% of the population is infected with HIV. It has huge implications on public health care that those infected people will definitely use. The majority of HIV infected people in third world countries live below the breadline and are amongst the poorest of the poor. The cost of anti-retrovirals and such, for the treatment of secondary infections related to HIV, are astronomical and have to be budgeted for.

But I do understand your gripe. The author is long winded and verbose.

i don't think you understand what Brad was talking about ... it referred to the rest of the population as those "at risk of dying". he's mad that the author could have just said "the rest of the population" (who are, naturally, all at risk of dying) rather than being pretentious and inane. and to tell you the truth, i agree with him... if the author's gonna make a joke, at least it could be funny...

Precisely.

Wnen you live with this reality daily, it's not a joke.

Thanks!

I must have missed that one. (I do watch that community!)

You've got to at least give dictionary.com some credit for all those wonderful words SOMEWHERE on wordoftheday's journal. I too subscribe to their word of the day mailing list. Great idea to post them in a journal, but come on....they deserve some props :-)

I know. :(

I don't own the journal, so I can't change any settings.
Someday I'm sure dictionary.com will find out and then they'll be displeased.
But then I could just switch to a free word of the day service...

There is a link in the userinfo, I think?

Come on now. OBVIOUSLY it's important to say "at risk of dying" instead of "remaing population"

Say you've got a population of 100 people...and let's say 50 of them have super powers and shit....and can't ever die, ever.

10 members of your population die in set "period"
Using "at risk of dying" you'll get mortality rate = 1:5
Using "remaing population" you'll get mortality rate = 1:10

That's a HUGE difference and one that can't be ignored. Where the author said "population" he should have said "population (at risk of dying)", this I'm sure would have cleared your angst.

That said, It's extremely important to pay very close attention to these two different values when dealing with populations of nymphs, fairies, vampires, superheroes and other immortal creatures not listed here. You'll learn about it next week, trust me :-)

wait, how do zombies figure into the equation? in their case, they're already dead, and yet are also a part of the population. do you count them in as part of the remaining population when figuring mortality rate? if so, do you figure them into the "at risk of dying" category? the way I see it, you'd have to individualize the equation for each region, possibly even for each type of zombie. is there a zombie hunter in the region? if so, i'd think that increases their risk of dying. if not, then what threatens their existence? are they docile zombies or rabid "Night of the Living Dead" zombies?

obviously, the writer of this text book is either holding out on a lot of information for later in the text or he's a nincompoop who hasn't done thorough enough study...

But "at risk of dying during a specific period" is different from Balance of the Population. Sure - everyone CAN die. But the people who are "at risk of dying during a specific period" are those who are old, and afflicted with diseases.

As a young white male, you are not "at risk of dying during a specific period", PER SE. Now, if you are in the illegal Seattle Street Racing Scene - then things change.

Sure, if that's what the author meant, but he didn't.... later in the paragraph he makes it very clear that just population size is what he's talking about.

The reason he used that wording is that it paralleled his sentence structure in the preceeding paragraph, not because it said anything.