Last week, his successor, Mohammad Nazemi-Ardekani, was quoted in the daily Ettela’at as saying the population was now 73.8 million, a loss of 900,000 people in four months. This has prompted considerable analyses. Some people say the rate of executions must be much higher than even the human rights groups have estimated! Others think the recent earthquakes have been more deadly than the government cares to admit. Then there are those dull and uninspired folk who think some of the people in the Statistics Center just have trouble keeping their numbers straight. And a few people suspect reporters can’t write numbers down correctly. Really, now!