A per capita view of Olympic medals, and more

A per capita view of Olympic medals

The U.S. won 104 medals at the Olympic Games, the most of any country—but on a per capita basis, we ranked just 50th in the world, with one medal per 3.4 million residents. First was tiny Grenada, which won a medal for every 104,000 residents. Jamaica, with 12 medals, was second on a per capita basis.

New York Daily News

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The largest generation in history

More than 3 billion people on the planet are under the age of 25—the largest generation in human history. Even if these young people choose to have smaller families than their parents, the world’s population will still rise from 7 billion now to 9.3 billion by 2050—the equivalent of adding another India and China to the world.

Los Angeles Times

Romney campaign slights Palin

To the dismay of Tea Party activists, Sarah Palin will not speak at the Republican National Convention in Tampa. Palin felt insulted when the Romney campaign told her she could not speak during prime time, so she announced that she would not speak at all. With the choice of Paul Ryan as the vice presidential candidate, sources said, Romney’s aides “think they’ve got the Tea Party covered.”

RealClearPolitics.com

A cultural history of pronouns

A textual analysis of 1.2 million books published since 1900 found that the proportion of male pronouns to female pronouns fell from 4.5 to 1 in the 1950s to less than 2 to 1 in 2005. Researchers say the changing ratio reflects the higher status and visibility of women in our society.

TheAtlantic.com