One Human Minute Book

If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.

"Every minute, 34.2 million men and women copulate. Only 5.7 percent of all intercourse results in fertilization, but the combined ejaculate, at a volume of forty-five thousand litters a minute, contains 1,990 billion (with deviations in the last decimal place) living spermatozoa. The same number of female eggs could be fertilized sixty times an hour with a minimal ratio of one spermatozoon to one egg, in which impossible case three million children would be conceived per second. But this, too, is only a statistical manipulation."


In "One Human Minute" by Stanislaw Lem


Lem never fails to disappoint. This is one of those long-forgotten Lem books no one remembers anymore. I read it more than 20 years ago, and it still packs quite a punch. My love with book reviewing started around the time I read this three-essay-volume ("One Human Minute", "The Upside Down Evolution", and "The World as Cataclysm") comprising reviews of non-existent books… As always, when a book is this good my mind goes on a tangent…


Boss: "Will this work?"

Statistician: "Probability of success is 90% so..."

Boss: "Let's do it."

(Later)

Boss: "It didn't work. You're fired."


Hopefully the statistician will use his period of unemployment to get better at his job. If you're offered a wager where there is a 90% chance that you will win 5 euros and a 10% chance you will be shot dead then you have to be a very poor statistician to think "the probability of success is 90% so I'll take it".


If you're into SF, read on.