It Was Machine Over Man In Jeopardy Computer Contest

If you were watching Jeopardy this week you got to see perhaps a preview of what is to come for mankind and his inevitable decline into second place when it comes to the war between man and machine. The show this week featured the two best Jeopardy players in the games history, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, pitted against an IBM computer named "Watson" to see who could end up on top. By the end of the first day of the three day competition it was not a blowout yet. "Watson" had a lead but not an overwhelming one. On the second day "Watson" started to blow the humans away. The computer dominated game two from the start and never let up. By the end of day two the computer had a $30,000 lead over his human rivals. The second day was basically just "Watson" answering all the questions that Alex Trebek put out there while it left the humans in the dust, that's how dominant it was. On the third and final day "Watson" basically kept it up but stumbled a couple of times with wrong answers and that allowed Jennings and Rutter to beef up their totals a little bit but it was still not even close. The final winnings were "Watson" $77,147, Ken Jennings $24,000, and Brad Rutter $21,100. The beat down of the humans was so total that contestant Ken Jennings at one point in the third day scribbled on his computer screen a quote that read: "I for one welcome our new computer overlords." The funniest line that I heard about the show came from late night host Jimmy Kimmel who said of the competition that: "Watson" crushed both guys, gave both of them wedgies, and took away their girlfriends."

U.S. Population Breakdown

The 2010 Census has been taken and the Bureau came up with an official number for the U.S. population of 309,745,538. Here is a closer look at how that number breaks down:

• 155.5 million Americans are male and 151.4 million are female.


• 102.5 million are minorities


• 27% of U.S. population is under 20 years of age.


• 13% are 65 or older.


• Median age is 36.8 years.


• U.S. consists of 4.5% of the entire World population.


• There are twice as many females as males that are aged 85 or older.

The World's 10 Largest Armies

In a dangerous world it is seen by many to be a necessity to have a large army if you are to protect your nation from foreign foes. Some countries take this much farther than others and have expanded their military forces way beyond what any rational observer would consider necessary. The largest army in the world today is the Chinese Army at over 2.3 million active troops. The U.S. is a distant second at 1.6 million. India is third at 1.3 million. Then you have North Korea at 1.1 million, Russia at 1 million, South Korea at 700,000, Pakistan at 620,000, Iran with 520,000, Turkey at 510,000 And last on the list of the top ten is Egypt with just under 470,000. Please note that this list only considered active army troops and did not count any Naval or Air Forces of the countries listed. Even if you were to count those additional forces including their reserves China would still have a big lead at just about 3.5 million total. The U.S. would be at about 2.5 million. Relative to population size however the U.S. army is much larger considering that the U.S. total population is at about 309 million while the Chinese population is north of 1.5 billion.