769,230 royal penguins to arrive in New York, or equivalent

As our society grows, so must the space which we occupy. Population measures may soon be redundant as an offhand indicator to how big a city is (as with soft drink sizes, which relate to the eventual size of the drinker), if the news from New York is anything to go by – between 2002 and 2004, it is said that the population has collectively put on ten milllion pounds. Presuming these measures refer to the city itself, that’s 1.21 pounds per person. Doesn’t sound like much, but it is the equivalent of an extra 52,631 men or 61,349 average sized American women arriving in the city – or 833 male African elephants, or 153,846 sea otters, or 769,230 royal penguins. That’s quite a slice of immigration, or one very impressive zoo.

Such is the worrying familiarity of this manner of message, that city officials in Santa Ana, California, pledged that the populace must lose one million pounds collectively – given they total just over 350,000, that’s a bigger ask. In a news item typical of the type published in January, Oklahoma City pledged the same for 08. Will any of them make it? The intervening strain to our city’s systems doesn’t bear thinking about; making News Hour wonder if this is the secret to the rise of the Chinese dragon. The Chinese are typically smaller, with some noticeable extremes, understandable given the size of the population, and physical mass in no impediment to progress in the information age (look at Verne Troyer). No skyrocketing social, medical and transport costs to deal with. Genius.

Typically, Britain lags the US in its patterns of social change by around ten years, and the indicators are ripe that we may soon experience the same million dollar dieting. Recently, the Cheltenham Playhouse has expanded the size of its seats to accommodate today’s junk shovelling theatregoers’ ample behinds. There has also been talk of widening the gates in the Tube – imagine the indignity of having to ask for the door to be opened because you are too large to pass through the gates. What a strange world we teeter unsteadily above. Darwinism, one suspects, may come into play.