Thursday, February 9, 2012

7 Things I've Learned Since Monday



----- There are more than 280 lakes hidden deep beneath the ice of the Antarctic. (How many icy lakes are hidden in the hearts of men?)

----- Some 382,000 Americans are relying upon some form of dialysis to keep them alive. (Some have been on dialysis for decades.)

----- There are 91 million head of cattle in the US. (That's the lowest number of cattle here since 1958. Should I start hoarding them?)

----- A ticket to the first Super Bowl in 1967 cost $9. The average price of a ticket to this year's Super Bowl was $3800. (The only thing I'd pay $3800 to see is tomorrow - and then I'd probably be disappointed enough to demand a refund.)

----- About 18% of adult Americans have an anxiety disorder. That's about 40 million people. (But what if calmness is the real disorder?)

----- Americans legally gamble away about $160 billion a year now. It's estimated that they illegally gamble away ten times as much. (Can that be possible? How much would you bet on it?)

----- Movie attendance in 2011 hit a 16-year low. DVD sales are dropping, too. (Is it a coincidence that Donald Pleasence died 16 years ago?)

5 comments:

  1. I heard a Canadian doctor predict that, unless dietary trends change, eventually half the North American population would be on dialysis and the other half would be dialysis nurses.
    He didn't say who would make the dialysis machines. Perhaps people living in countries with no fast food.

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  2. Happy Darwin's Birthday!

    The captcha prompt says, "Please prove you are not a robot."

    How long will that be possible when the machines are evolving faster than we are? I wonder if there will eventually be robots who argue they were created and didn't evolve. Oh. They'd be right. That's why we don't stand a chance against them: They really did have intelligent designers.

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  3. Accordion to this map and an accompanying article I saw, Global Warming has edged most of the state of Ohio into a warmer Plant Hardiness zone:
    http://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/PHZMWeb/
    I guess your bunnies are grateful for that.
    One thing the article shows is Global Warming has picked up in concert with the Denier effort. I suspect all the hot air from the deniers is causing more evidence to deny.

    Whoa, I guess blogsnot finally agreed with me the Captchas were too easy. Mine this time is "I86 fuxtro" or so I am hoping. It might be huxtro. Or anything really.
    ... No that wasn't it--they rejected me. The second one's easier, tho: "cases tricop" I'm pretty sure.

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  4. Happy Birthday to you.
    You belong in the zoo.
    With your SO
    and the Bonobos
    And your camera there too.

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  5. Well, wanna know what I learned since you last posted? NOTHING! (Well, nothing of importance, anyway. Or worth blogging about.) So, c'mon, old bean, howsabout a teensy weensy post, at least, eh? Meanwhile, what I want to know is, how the heck do they survey for anxiety disorders? Do they expect truly anxious people to just pick up the phone and answer a stranger's question? Also, if they know about the buried subterranean lakes in the Antartic, it doesn't seem like they could very well be hidden, does it? (Do they leave telltale damp spots on their roof?

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