WORLD PARTY! everyone's coming... bring your green hat.

National Geographic Magazine just ran a fascinating article about Earth's 7 BILLION person population.  What do 7 billion people look like if you squished them all together? I was surprised.  I thought that standing shoulder to shoulder, 7 billion people might fill up the entire state of Alaska, or some other vast geographic expanse, but surprisingly it would only take 500 square miles--an area about the size of Los Angeles.

That being said, if I was throwing a party and inviting everyone in the whole world I wouldn't want to have it in L.A.  We should have it somewhere REALLY cool... like the Hang Son Doong Caves they just discovered in Vietnam. You have probably seen the pictures floating around the internet, but if you haven't you should check them out... they are incredible.  Here are a few photos taken by Carsten Peter:

Of course, we couldn't fit the whole world party in there, but we could take turns.

Seriously though.  Can you imagine all 7 billion of Earth's human inhabitants coming together for a party?

All the cultures, religions, races, languages

All the colors of skin, hair and eyes, all the shapes and sizes

All the hatred, all the love.

All the hopes dreams and fears

All the life experiences and the unfinished plans...

I can barely wrap my head around it.  Even though it is logistically impossible for such a party to exist, I find my imagination kind of wishing it would--just so I could experience the overwhelming humanity of it.  Maybe in 50 years or so we will get it all figured out.  By then there will probably be a couple billion more of us to come to the party.

But for now, happy 2011 citizens of the world. 

"If each man or woman could understand that every other human life is as full of sorrows, or joys, or base temptations, of heartaches and of remorse as his own... how much kinder, how much gentler we would be."

-William Allen White