Commentary - pcgazette.com

Commentary
pcgazette.com

Mail, e-mail can bring interesting, useless tidbits

By JIM SCHUH
of The Gazette
I get lots of mail - through the post office and via e-mail. There's a lot of trivia that comes my way, and since it's a shame it go to waste, I thought I'd share some of it with you. ("Share," by the way, is usually a euphemism for "shove it down your throat.")

I've already written at length about the credit card offers. They're still coming, and I save them all. I want to see how high the stack gets. It's now over three inches thick, and that's just from the past year. There's no need to revisit that topic today.

I have an old college friend who publishes some magazines in the Fox Valley. Marv Schuster sends me one that goes to insurance agents called the Wisconsin Broker.

I guess he needed to fill a page in his most recent issue, so he came up with "the 16 most irrelevant facts you need not know."

He tells us "the only 15-letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is "uncopyrightable." Or that "them most common name in the world is "Mohammed." I didn't know either of those facts until I read his magazine. I'm not sure how I managed to live a fulfilling life so far without that knowledge.

But I did know that there are no English words that rhyme with "month," "orange," "silver" or "purple." I also knew that "I am" is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

A few others - he says a "jiffy" is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second. I could not verify that immediately - I checked three reliable dictionaries, and while none gives that definition, all agree a "jiffy" is short.

Next to a picture of a sad-looking bovine in Marv's magazine, he notes that it takes 3,000 cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year's supply of footballs. That distresses me - knowing that Bossie is sacrificing her life and getting no credit for it - because they call the football "pigskin."

"A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why," Marv says.

A couple of Marv's musings are a bit more sobering and give pause for thought: "The Pentagon, in Arlington, Va., has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary. When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites." And Marv explains "35 percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married." Surprise!

I get a weekly e-mail from the Gallup folks - the ones who survey Americans about all sorts of things. Here are some recent items:
50 percent percent of Americans say they own a cellular phone. (I wind up driving behind many of them.)

74 percent of Americans think it's important to get a second opinion from a doctor for medical diagnoses, but only 20 percent say they always do.
You wouldn't know it by how much golf there is on TV every weekend, but just 7 percent of Americans play the game "regularly," while 13 percent play "occasionally," 67 percent never golf at all.

The Mayo Clinic sends me stuff a few times a week, and a recent e-mail dealt with information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mayo says people living in Wisconsin report drinking more alcohol and more frequent bouts of binge drinking (five or more drinks on a single occasion) than people living in any other state. Maryland had the lowest number of binge drinkers. Utah and Puerto Rico had the least alcohol use.

Mississippi has the highest number of obese people of any of the 50 states. I always thought it was Wisconsin in general and Milwaukee in particular, because they used to make seats in their public buses wider than in other cities.

Speaking of fat, my friend Marv Schuster notes, "pound for pound, hamburgers cost more than new cars." Maybe that's not surprising - hamburger contains lots of fat, while automakers have removed much of the fat from their cars so they get better gas mileage.

North Dakotans must think they're invincible - more than half say they don't wear seatbelts regularly, according to the CDC.

Editor & Publisher magazine reported a few weeks back that readership of daily papers has dipped again. It dropped from 56.9 percent of Americans last fall to 56.2 percent this spring - the fifth consecutive decline. That means only slightly more than half of us do any serious daily newspaper reading.

Lest the TV or radio folks seize those numbers for a competitive advantage, the average reach of a prime time TV show dipped from 38.5 percent last fall to 37.8 percent this spring. And average quarter hour morning radio listenership slipped from 24.5 percent in the fall to 23.4 percent this spring.

Looks as if we in the media have some work to do to regain people's interest.

You may reach Jim Schuh at the Gazette, or by e-mail at jpschuh@excite.com.



	Mail, e-mail can bring interesting, useless tidbits By JIM SCHUH of The Gazette I get lots of mail - through the post office and via e-mail. There's a lot of trivia that comes my way, and since it's a shame it go to waste, I thought I'd share some of it with you. ("Share," by the way, is usually a euphemism for "shove it down your throat.") I've already written at length about the credit card offers. They're still coming, and I save them all. I want to see how high the stack gets. It's now over three inches thick, and that's just from the past year. There's no need to revisit that topic today. I have an old college friend who publishes some magazines in the Fox Valley. Marv Schuster sends me one that goes to insurance agents called the Wisconsin Broker. I guess he needed to fill a page in his most recent issue, so he came up with "the 16 most irrelevant facts you need not know." He tells us "the only 15-letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is "uncopyrightable." Or that "them most common name in the world is "Mohammed." I didn't know either of those facts until I read his magazine. I'm not sure how I managed to live a fulfilling life so far without that knowledge. But I did know that there are no English words that rhyme with "month," "orange," "silver" or "purple." I also knew that "I am" is the shortest complete sentence in the English language. A few others - he says a "jiffy" is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second. I could not verify that immediately - I checked three reliable dictionaries, and while none gives that definition, all agree a "jiffy" is short. Next to a picture of a sad-looking bovine in Marv's magazine, he notes that it takes 3,000 cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year's supply of footballs. That distresses me - knowing that Bossie is sacrificing her life and getting no credit for it - because they call the football "pigskin." "A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why," Marv says. A couple of Marv's musings are a bit more sobering and give pause for thought: "The Pentagon, in Arlington, Va., has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary. When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites." And Marv explains "35 percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married." Surprise! I get a weekly e-mail from the Gallup folks - the ones who survey Americans about all sorts of things. Here are some recent items: 50 percent percent of Americans say they own a cellular phone. (I wind up driving behind many of them.) 74 percent of Americans think it's important to get a second opinion from a doctor for medical diagnoses, but only 20 percent say they always do. You wouldn't know it by how much golf there is on TV every weekend, but just 7 percent of Americans play the game "regularly," while 13 percent play "occasionally," 67 percent never golf at all. The Mayo Clinic sends me stuff a few times a week, and a recent e-mail dealt with information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mayo says people living in Wisconsin report drinking more alcohol and more frequent bouts of binge drinking (five or more drinks on a single occasion) than people living in any other state. Maryland had the lowest number of binge drinkers. Utah and Puerto Rico had the least alcohol use. Mississippi has the highest number of obese people of any of the 50 states. I always thought it was Wisconsin in general and Milwaukee in particular, because they used to make seats in their public buses wider than in other cities. Speaking of fat, my friend Marv Schuster notes, "pound for pound, hamburgers cost more than new cars." Maybe that's not surprising - hamburger contains lots of fat, while automakers have removed much of the fat from their cars so they get better gas mileage. North Dakotans must think they're invincible - more than half say they don't wear seatbelts regularly, according to the CDC. Editor & Publisher magazine reported a few weeks back that readership of daily papers has dipped again. It dropped from 56.9 percent of Americans last fall to 56.2 percent this spring - the fifth consecutive decline. That means only slightly more than half of us do any serious daily newspaper reading. Lest the TV or radio folks seize those numbers for a competitive advantage, the average reach of a prime time TV show dipped from 38.5 percent last fall to 37.8 percent this spring. And average quarter hour morning radio listenership slipped from 24.5 percent in the fall to 23.4 percent this spring. Looks as if we in the media have some work to do to regain people's interest. You may reach Jim Schuh at the Gazette, or by e-mail at jpschuh@excite.com.