One interesting exhibit I saw in Cork used grains of rice to demonstrate population statistics (1 grain = 1 person). The fascination lay in the choice of comparisons (e.g., the pile of rice illustrating the number of prisoners in the world looked about the same size as the pile illustrating the number of millionaires in the world). Some were chosen, clearly, to make various political statements and provoke various thoughts.
By way of example, the large pile of rice in this picture illustrates the number of people who own The Da Vinci Code. The much smaller pile in the front-middle piece of paper shows the number of people in Opus Dei. The paper front-left, which looks empty, actually contains one grain of rice, representing Dan Brown. (Cute, eh?) (The paper front-right, which is even smaller than the number of Opus Dei members, is labeled "people who own a copy of 'Us' published by Today FM 2005". Apparently, Us "is a pictorial record of a day in the life of [Ireland]," for which the radio station solicited photographs from the people of Ireland. So it does not have a direct connection with Opus Dei, Dan Brown or The Da Vinci Code, but was instead included as a subtle dig.)
These piles compare the negligible number of "people working full time in the Irish apple growing industry" (around 50, by the looks of it) with the number of "employees of Apple Computer in Ireland". Ha, ha. Very funny.
In a similar vein, we see here that the employees of Nokia could not be replaced by the population of Nokia, Finland.
They also showed historical progressions of population for various cities and nations, but I didn't take a picture of everything. I also didn't write down the title of the exhibit or who was behind it, and haven't found it on google. But it was in Cork, Ireland on July 1, 2006, if anyone can provide more info.Ireland Trip Navigation: [first post]; [prior post]; [next post]; [final post].
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