Smallville is not a small town?

Smallville, KS, is the town where Clark Kent grew up with his adoptive parents, Jonathan and Martha Kent. Superman's adult hometown of "Metropolis" is never placed in a specific state in the comics and movies, though in the previous Lois & Clark TV series, it was pretty clearly on the northeast coast of the United States, like New York. Smallville, however, has always been identified as being in Kansas. (In the current series, Smallville is described as a "three-hour drive" from Metropolis. In Lois & Clark, Clark's parents had to buy airplane tickets to get to Metropolis from Smallville.)

Smallville is obviously a small town. It's surrounded by farms, apparently only has one coffee shop (the Talon), and has little of what a "city" is supposed to offer. There's never been a mention of a Smallville Mall, for example, and there is apparently only one high school in the town, Smallville High. Having grown up in a small town about 30 minutes from a big city (and about four hours from Dallas, a really big city), it felt about right.

Then, in one of the third-season episodes, Clark was trying in vain to describe a bad guy to the sheriff, but he didn't have enough details to make it work, so the sheriff said, "In a town of 45,000 people, Mr. Kent, that's not much to go on."

45,000 people?? The linked review for season 1 gives the same figure:

Even in strong "freak of the week" episodes, however, there remains one major flaw in the show's logic. Smallville has a relatively small population of 45,001, but no one in town seems to find it suspicious that two or three teens and other townspeople die each week under strange circumstances. Sure, Chloe keeps track of things on her "Wall of Weird," but even she doesn't seem to acknowledge the extent of Smallville's decreasing population.

That's not the biggest problem. If Smallville had 45,000 people in it, it would be the eighth-largest city in the state of Kansas, barely behind Salina and its estimated 2003 population of 45,833. It would have more people than Manhattan, home to Kansas State University, a Big XII school. It would be at least Mediumville.

Any town with more than about 40,000 people needs more than one high school, and certainly wouldn't be based around a single main street like Smallville is on TV. Such a large population would explain why kids keep arriving and vanishing without too many people noticing, even though at other times, everyone seems to know everyone else. Still, when the producers came up with that figure as a "reasonable size" for a small town that would support their story lines, did any of them bother to look at census data and figure out that it would be close to the seventh-largest city in the state?

I know that in dealing with a teenager from another planet with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal teens, the producers already have enough suspension of disbelief going, but we buy the Superman story. Smallville was supposed to be about life in a small town, and they try to make it look that way - until it's too much of a constraint, when they tripled the size of the town while keeping everything else sized for 15,000 people.

Ironically, Smallville would also be the eighth-largest city in Oklahoma, falling between Enid and Moore on the list. So it's not just that Kansas is full of people - it's that "Smallville," in the eyes of producers who live in large cities, isn't really that small at all.

See also : Superman - The Man of Steel | Smallville episode guide

History of the Sahara

British explorers Dixon Denham (1786-1828), Hugh Clapperton (1788-1827), and Walter Oudney (1790-1824) were the first Europeans to cross the Sahara successfully from north to south. They started from Tripoli, Libya, in 1822 and reached Kano, Nigeria in 1823.

Only now are the mineral resources of the Sahara being developed. Salt and coal are mined successfully. In 1956 the French discovered huge oil, gas, and coal reserves. There are also deposits of copper, lead, zinc, and phosphates. Trucks can cross the Sahara on four major roads equipped with refueling stations. Oases have been expanded by tapping deep-lying sources of water.

See also : Africa explorer | All about Africa | Desert travel tips

Life in the Sahara

Even though the Sahara is so vast, few people live there. The only densely settled part is Egypt's Nile Valley. The inhabitants of the rest of the Sahara are mostly Arab and Berber tribesmen. Some live on oases; others are nomads, who wander from one oasis to the next with their camels and goats. The best-known nomads are the Tuaregs, a Berber group who have controlled the caravan routes for years. Islam is the chief religion.

Although large areas of the desert are empty, well watered oases can support several thousand people. Dates are the most important crop, but cereal grains, fruits, and vegetables also are grown where there is enough water to support additional crops. Wandering herdsmen stop at the oases for food and drink. Camel caravans deliver news, exchange goods, and carry export date crops to port cities.

See also : Date and Health