Factoids:

How you’ll spend your final days: It’s a prospect that no one relishes, said Atul Gawande, but “your most likely final address” will be a nursing home. About half of us wind up spending our final days in one of these institutions- not because they’re pleasant places, but because they’re often the only alternative for people who can no longer take care of themselves. Though most nursing homes are clean and safe, they are ghettoes of the old and the infirm. There’s no privacy, little contact with younger people, and every meal and activity is rigidly schedules. A resident’s social life” consists of bingo and movies. “Surveys of nursing home residents reveal chronic boredom, loneliness, and lack of meaning-results not fundamentally different from prisoners.” A small band of “nursing home abolitionists” has a better idea. They are establishing group homes for the elderly, where life revolves around the kitchen and living room, “not a nurse’s station.” Residents have private bedrooms and help one another with cooking and other chores. They’re real communities, where older people are interdependent but still live as autonomous, respected individuals. For your sake and mine, let’s hope the movement spreads. Old age and death are inevitable, but loneliness, boredom, and hopelessness need not be. The New York Times June 8, 2007.

Natalie Angier has made a study of scientific illiteracy, said Gregg Sapp in Library Journal. By her calculations, “six out of every 6.0025” Americans claim to have flunked high school chemistry. The numbers might be amusing if all that ignorance concerned a subject of less import-like baseball, say, or American Idol. “In this casual proclamation of utter failure,” she says, “people just as casually shrug off the entire scientific enterprise and their capacity or desire to claim it as their own.” Angier, a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times writer, thinks that’s a shame. Having a minimal grasp of the “hard sciences,” she says, can greatly enrich one’s life. Her new book, The Canon, is meant to help all those shruggers out there shake off their indifference and join the fun. The Week 2007

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have created a shortage of bullets, affecting police departments across the nation, which are cutting back on live-fire training. U.S. Soldiers are now firing 1 billion bullets per year. Associated Press, September 2007

In 1968, the average length of a candidate’s sound bite on TV newscasts was 42 seconds, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs. Now it is only eight seconds. Time 2007

If China’s growth continues at its current pace, its consumer market will be the world’s second largest by 2015. The Chinese already eat 32 percent of the world’s rice, use 47 percent of the cement, and smoke one out of every three cigarettes. Associated Press 2007

Maryland was the wealthiest state in the union in 2006, with an annual household income of $65,144. Mississippi had the lowest, $34,473. Associated Press 2007

Almost one-third of recently foreclosed homes are investment, properties whose owners live elsewhere. The Wall Street Journal 2007

U.S. workers produce an average $63,885 of wealth per person per year; making them the world’s most productive. Longer hours are part of the reason. Americans work an average of 1,804 hours a year, compared to 1,564 for the French, and 1,407 for Norwegians. CNNmoney.com 2007

In a study by American Association on University Women, the pay differential between men and woman increase with time. Following graduation women make 80% of men’s pay. Ten years later women only make 69% of what men make. Associated Press 2007

The Wall Street Journal reports that India’s economic boom has contributed to 3,404 being killed in 2006. Just commuting to work in the crowed city of Mumbai. Falling off of commuter trains or being jostled and falling off train platforms are common occurrences. Wall Street Journal 2007

A real estate agent showing a house to a couple had his hopes of a commission dashed when the clients found a dead boy in one of the bedrooms. The Week 2007

40 percent of Amsterdam’s commuters get to work by bicycle. Wall Street Journal 2007

In a story in the International Herald Tribune, approximately 350 million Asians speak English which is about the same number in the U.S., Great Britain, and Canada combined. International Herald Tribune, 2007 http://www.perfectlaborstorm.com/facts.html

According to researchers at University of Bath the length of a kid’s finger can predict his SAT scores. Measuring the ring and index finger of 75 children (hardly a large sample) they compared the ratios to their SAT scores on math and verbal scores. Longer index finger than ring fingers did better on verbal; longer ring fingers did better in math. Difference due to hormones they were exposed to in womb-----Testosterone lengthens ring fingers and estrogen lengthens index fingers------both hormones related to math and verbal abilities, respectively. Reported by The Week June 8, 2007 from Livescience.com http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6680737.stm

According to the Wall Street Journal parents are spending big dollars and ringing their hand on the names for their children. Hiring professional baby-name consultants who use statistical data, phonetic analysis, and market resources to find names that align with parents taste and ambitions for the child. Wall Street Journal (The Week July, 2007)

In LiveScience.com, Jeanina Brynon reports firefighter, clergy, physical therapist, authors and other whose jobs involve helping people are among the most satisfied with their work. The University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. They found least satisfied were clothing salespersons, packagers, food prepares and roofers.
http://www.livescience.com/health/070417_job_satisfaction.html

For the fall class of 2007, Harvard accepted 2,058 out of 22,955 applicants for a 9% admission rate—lowest in college’s history. Boston Globe 2007

San Francisco has about 120,000 dogs but only 93,000 children under the age of 14. San Francisco Chronicle, 2007

The mean home size for CEO’s or Fortune 500 Companies is 6,145 square feet. CEO living in homes large than the average saw the shares of their companies return about 3.4% less than CEO’s who lived in smaller than average homes. Slate.com 2007

About 20% of the U.S. workforce is functionally illiterate compared to 5%-10% in Sweden and Germany. Slate.com 2007

A woman fired by a New York Law Firm is suing for $33 million because she wasn’t given a desk by a window. She suffers from seasonal affective disorder; the desk was three feet from a window was not satisfactory. The Week June 8, 2007
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/2007/05/26/2007-05-26_no_window_desk_thatll_cost_you_33m_she_s.html

U.S. taxpayers are liable for a total U.S. debt of $59 trillion (includes promises for Medicare, Social Security, and Federal Retirement earnings) which average $516,000 for households. USA Today 2007
http://www.worthynews.com/news/usatoday-com-news-washington-2007-05-28-federal-budget_N-htm/

The $180,000 diploma. Millions of high school seniors are now figuring out where they’ll be going to school this fall, while their parents are trying to figure out how they’ll pay for it. Why does college cost so much? The Week 2007
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thecheckout/2007/01/how_many_gs_for_that_diploma.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/26/AR2007012602023.html