Bugs In The Sky (In Sensationalist Units)

Let me be clear: I do not wish to make the Turdlog a journal of everything dull or dimwitted that comes out of NPR. I have a day job, and there simply isn't enough time.

But every so often one something is broadcast that warrants public disdain. In a story run this morning Robert Krulwich talks to some scientists about how many bugs are floating around in the sky at any given time. The number, we are told, is "staggering" and "ten times the population of the United States." That is, three billion.

Of course, I am 1.8 million microns tall, so let's have some perspective. This is NPR, so the details are fuzzy, but that's three billion bugs through a "column a mile wide that goes way up into the sky," per month. What on Earth does that mean? Let us assume Krulwich means a plane of some height that is a mile wide. That height could mean up to probably 7 miles or so, where presumably bugs could live, but let's be generous and use the greatest height they quote, which is six thousand feet (for ladybugs, incidentally). Or hell, let's be even more generous and call it a mile. Three billion per month through a given vertical square mile translates to three and a half bugs per day through a given vertical square foot (a unit much easier for your faithful 'Dlogger to visualize).

Awful.