So I just flipped to a random page in my Top 10 List of Everything book and landed on this one: Top 10 Countries with the Highest Prison Populations. I thought this might be an interesting one to blog about tonight. As usual, I’m going to make my guesses before looking at the answer. I’m going to say the United States, China and maybe Russia will be the top three. This might be an easy one to guess as it probably correlates pretty closely with the countries with the highest populations in general. But, that being the case, you might think India could be up there. But somehow I’m thinking India doesn’t have as many criminals as the U.S. or Russia. I could be wrong. So here’s the list ranked by total prisoners. The second number is prisoners per 100,000.

1. USA, 737, 2,193,798
2. China, 118, 1,548,498
3. Russia, 613, 871,693
4. Brazil, 203, 385,317
5. India, 30, 332,112
6. Mexico, 197, 214,452
7. Thailand, 256, 164,443
8. Ukraine 350, 162,602
9. South Africa, 336, 160,198
10. Iran, 214, 147,926

Wow, I was pretty close with getting the top three correct and indeed, India showed up in the top 5 after all. But take a look at the prisoners per 100,000 of population. A list ranked on this number would have India way down near the bottom with only 30 in 100k. Of course we would still lead in this ranking with a whooping 737 per 100k.

So what does this say about the United States? Do we proportionately have four times as many criminals as Mexico and seven times as many as China? Are we that bad or do we simply have a better judicial system that holds people more accountable? I guess that would be debatable, but I’d say it’s a combination of both.

Source: International Centre for Prison Studies. Posted by the science toy guy for the best selling toys of 2008.

1. USA, 3,995,643
2. India, 2,102,312
3. China, 1,162,374
4. Brazil, 1,088,560
5. Japan, 735,982
6. Canada, 647,655
7. France, 594,219
8. Russia, 541,214
9. Australia, 503,708
10. Spain, 414,014

Okay, so I got two of the top three but five other countries had more roads than Russia so my guess wasn’t too successful. I forgot all about India and who would have thought that Brazil or France had this many road miles? For the record, this assessment was reported by the CIA and it includes both paved and unpaved roads. An interesting note is that if you stretched out all the roads in the world, they would circle the earth more than 800 times at the equater.

Posted by mo for the science and educational best selling toys of 2008.

1. Scientific American, 1845
2. Town & Country, 1846
3. Harper’s, 1850
4. The Moravian, 1856
5. The Atlantic Monthly, 1857
6. Armed Forces Journal, 1863
7. The Nation, 1865
8. American Naturalist, 1867
9. Harper’s Bazaar, 1867
10. Animals, 1868

Well, none of my guesses were even in the top 10. And some of these I’ve never even heard of– particularly numbers 4 and 10… The Moravian and Animals? I’m going to have to do some quick research and find out just what the heck these are all about. Meanwhile, I think I’ll go look for some of the science and educational best selling toys of 2008.

I will not waste chalk
I will not skateboard in the halls
I will not burp in class
I will not instigate revolution
I will not draw naked ladies in class
I did not see Elvis
I will not call my teacher “Hot Cakes”
Garlic gum is not funny
They are laughing at me, not with me
I will not yell “Fire” in a crowded classroom
I will not encourage others to fly
I will not fake my way through life
Tar is not a plaything

(more…)

Okay, my guess for the top three without looking was: the New York Times, LA Times and Chicago Tribune. I had no idea that the WSJ and USA Today would be higher than all of these. The top 10, with their circulation in 2006 are:

1. USA Today, 2,528,437
2. The Wall Street Journal, 2,058,342
3. The New York Times, 1,683,855
4. Los Angeles Times, 1,231,318
5. The Washington Post, 960,684
6. Chicago Tribune, 957,212
7. New York Daily News, 795,153
8. The Philadelphia Inquirer, 705,965
9. Denver Post, 704,806
10. Houston Chronicle, 692,557

There you have it. I would have also expected to see the Atlanta Journal to show up in the top 10, at least higher than the papers in Philadelphia, Denver and Houston.

Posted by admin for the best selling toys of 2008.

Okay, so I told myself I’m going to flip to a random page of my top 10 list book and write about the first one I see. Unfortunately, tonight I landed on top 10 cosmetic surgeries. Here’s my process… first I look at the title of the list and then try to think what the top couple of spots might be. For this one, I could only think of about three cosmetic surgery procedures, so I picked the following as my guesses: 1) nose job, 2) liposuction and 3) breast implants. Not knowing anything about any of these, I think I did a nice job of guessing. These three were in the top 4, but what the heck is cosmetic eyelid surgery? And who would ever need that?? Anyway, here are the top 10 cosmetic surgeries performed in the United States. (The numbers represent procedures performed in 2006).

1. Liposuction, 403,000
2. Breast augmentation, 384,000
3. Cosmetic eyelid surgery, 210,000
4. Nose reshaping, 142,000
5. Tummy tuck, 172,000
6. Breast reduction (women), 146,000
7. Facelift, 138,000
8. Breast lift, 126,000
9. Forehead lift, 54,000
10. Breast reduction (men), 24,000

Worth mentioning is that Americans spent $7.6 Billion on these procedures. Throw in non-surgical cosmetic procedures such as botox injections and the total is $12.2 Billion. this is amazing. And I think speaks a lot either about our level of disposable income or maybe our vainness. Posted by admin for the educational best selling toys of 2008 at Atomic Elephant Toy.

The following are the top 10 largest cities in the world, based on “urban agglomerations” as defined by the United Nations. This method of counting disregards administrative boundaries of the more extensive areas that stretch across densely populated suburbs.

Rank, City, County, Population (in millions)

1. Tokyo, Japan, 33.4
2. Seoul, South Korea, 23.1
3. Mexico City, Mexico, 22.0
4. New York, US, 21.8
5. Mumbai (Bombay), India, 21.1
6. Delhi, India, 20.8
7. Sao Paulo, Brazil, 20.3
8. Shanghai, China, 18.6
9. Los Angeles, US, 17.9
10. Jakarta, Indonesia, 16.9

These are the populations recorded in 2006. Source: http://www.citypopulation.de. Find the best educational toys here.

Okay, this Top 10 list is of the world’s religions with the most adherents. The list is sourced from a book called “The Top 10 of Everything 2008.” I found the book in the bargain bin at Barnes and Noble and since I’m always on my quest to beat my wife at Jeopardy, I thought it would be a good source. Some of the below I would have expected until we get to numbers 4, 6 and 10. Chinese folk religions? And Spiritists? What the heck are those? The list shows the religion and number of adherents.

1. Christianity, 2,135,000,000
2. Islam, 1,314,000,000
3. Hinduism, 870,000,000
4. Chinese folk religions, 405,000,000
5. Buddhism, 379,000,000
6. Ethnic Religions, 256,000,000
7. New religions, 108,000,000
8. Sikhism, 25,000,000
9. Judaism, 15,000,000
10. Spiritists, 13,000,000
11. West Virginia Rattlesnake Worshippers, 132

Okay, so I just added the last one but it makes about as much sense to me as some of the others. I’m sure anyone reading this list is probably also looking for some great educational toys so check out my store’s list of best selling toys here. Thanks!

While studying the physics behind the classic drinking bird can be a challenging task, as far as science toys go this little guy can’t be beat. This thermodynamic toy (sometimes called a dippy bird) has been around for at least five decades. If you’ve never seen one in action, do a quick search on youtube and you’ll find a few video clips. The Wikipedia page has a few references where it can be seen in popular culture. One memorable reference was when Homer Simpson used it to click a key on his keyboard over and over at the nuclear reactor where he works. And an even more interesting cultural reference was from a Tom and Jerry cartoon from sometime in the 1950s.

I’ve had one of these drinking birds on my office desk for the last several months and all he needs to keep dipping is for me to top off his water cup every couple of days. If you’re looking for an interesting demo for a physics classroom this is a nice choice. You can explain various physical properties such as capillary action, thermodynamics, Boyle’s Law, the ideal gas law and a few more. You can pick one of these up wherever science kits are sold and if you don’t know where that might be, just click on the link in this sentence.

Plus, they have an interesting article on the physics behind the gyroscope. You don’t need to go into all of that though, unless you’re a complete nerd. Just pick up a gyroscope and start playing. Don’t over think it; just have fun.