Steve Sundberg wrote:
> On 4 Sep 2003 21:40:42 -0700, Brett Robson <jet_boy@deja.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>>On Fri, 05 Sep 2003 04:32:18 GMT, Steve Sundberg  ...
>>
>>>For 40,000 couples to have 80,000 children every year, they'd have to
>>>give birth to twins each and every year. Very doubtful.
>>
>>Try again Steve. It's 40,000 marriages a year, 80,000 births a year.
> 
> 
> Unless I'm going completely nuts, that's what I mean.
> 
> Each one of those marriages is expected to produce 2 babies per year.
> 
> Look again at how the original paragraph (and your paraphrase) was
> written.
> 

What's written is 40,000 marriages each year.  If that means there are 40,000
new "internanational" marriages each year.

Year 1:  40,000
Year 2:  80,000
Year 3: 120,000
  .
  .
  .
Year 10: 400,000 internatational marriages (total)

400,000 x 2 sprogs per marriage equals 800,000.

Seems like a pretty impressive growth rate.

On a separate topic, does Debito include his marriage as "international"?
After all, he *is* Japanese, right?  Isn't his kid therefore 100% Japanese
and not one of those "international" kids he says will be invading the
home islands in 10 years' time?

-Jim