Cold and people and kiwi boxes

I have three small things I want to talk about today.

1. Cold
So, as you probably know better than I do, this winter has been cold in northern US, while it has been raining in places like Finland and Alaska. Yes, it actually rained from mid-December until about a week and a half ago.
And then the cold hit. I mean, it's still not cold cold, the temperature during the days is between -10 and -20 degrees C, so it could be worse. However, the last time it was this cold I was in Australia, where it was not cold, so I went a little over 11 months without being somewhere where there is this cold. So now I'm freezing.
The outside isn't actually too bad. -14 C is a surprisingly nice temperature once you get used to it and have enough clothes on. The worse bit is the inside cold and the fact that everything feels like you've rubbed a balloon against it. And of those two, the inside cold is worse. My apartment is very cold in the winter (well, probably still better than American homes) which does it that you don't really want to get up in the morning. Or have a shower. Or do anything else that would require contact with air with less than two layers of clothes on. Which is a little weird, because if the temperature outside was the same as it is now inside, you would only need one thin layer of clothes on outside.

The point is, the cold finally came up here to Finland too. It's also dark, but that's ok. I used to really hate dark when I was a kid, but I actually learned to quite like it a few years back, and have started to like it more since. It was a sign of growing up, when the dark made no more difference to you than the day. In a way.

2. Population of the world
These thoughts are nothing new or mind-blowing, but I just started to think about it when I read Patrick Rothfuss' blog post about why he wants to do so much charity. Basically the point is that if he has four cakes and someone else has none, it's nice to give some cake to the other person too. Yes, he actually uses a cake metaphor.
Anyway, that got me thinking, that (and this is a horrible thing to say) if we save all the people that are right now starving to death in Africa, the population of the Earth will explode. Well, it already has, but it will get worse. So, really, isn't it really better for the world if we don't help the people there, because more people really seems to be bad for everything else living on this planet. And to the people living here, too. Then, of course, I told myself that when there are less people dying there are less people born (unless you can't change the culture of having ten kids at the same rate as those ten kids keep living) since you don't have to make extra kids to ensure some of them living to be adults. And when there are less people born, there is more food for the ones who did. So really, if people in third-world countries just stopped having so many kids, maybe they'd have enough food and meds for those who exist.
Yes, I know it doesn't work like that. And it's a horrible thing to say. But it kinda is true. And I'm getting off topic.
The point is, that, I thought to myself, because things are getting better and no less babies are born, the population increases faster in those countries than the ones where people are already used to not having to have ten kids in order for a few of them to make it to adulthood, so the developing countries are the biggest reason to the population growth in the world. And once I had that thought, I wanted to check whether or how much it was true.
According to this page, we have 7 207 874 950 people in the world (at the time I was writing this. wow, that is a lot of people really fast...).
And then I googled some more, and found this map on Wikipedia:

I assume the numbers are percent per year.

How great would it be, if the whole world was purple? Pretty great.

But the thing I started off to find out was how much more the population in developing countries grows more than the population in first-world countries. I also found some other, more accurate statistics (that are of course based on estimates) of population growth rate per country. Here.

3. Kiwi box

This is actually a very tiny thing, I'm just still confused about it. Yesterday I got some stuff that I had left to our parents' place over Christmas, cause I couldn't get everything home then. Among them, a small box designed for carrying kiwis around that our little sister (who has never read our blog) gave me for Christmas.

Yes. A box for carrying kiwis.

It's a thing.

See?

I still don't understand why that is a thing. The red arc is for cutting the kiwi. You just put the it on the other side and push the lit closed. And the other red thing is a spoon.

This got to be the weirdest thing ever.

I guess that's all for today.

~matu

PS. Oh my god, did you see last night's How I Met Your Mother?