Facts that interest me.

Post 580 - Here are some facts that interested me lately:

Nielsen reports teens sent or received 3,339 texts per month on average for the second quarter of 2010. Put another way, that's six texts on average for every waking hour. Teenage girls are even more active, sending 4,050 texts per month. The number of texts sent by teens in 2010 was up 8% from the year prior.

Hal Varian at Google reports that the average person online spends seventy seconds a day reading online news.

I read about someone who recently went to the Post Office to get a passport. After filling in an application, he wanted to pay for it by credit card but was told that the USPS doesn’t accept credit cards for payment of passport fees. He didn’t have any checks or enough cash with him, so he left that section of the Post Office, stood in line and bought a Postal Service money order, which he paid for with a credit card. He then took the money order back to the clerk and paid his passport fees. Is it any wonder that the Postal Service is losing money and wants to raise its prices as a result? Just another crippled giant that expects its customers to foot the bill for its inefficiencies.

CEOs in October were wary about the economy, but hopes for a better start to 2011 are rising. Chief Executive magazine's CEO Confidence Index, the nation's leading monthly CEO Confidence Index, remained flat in October, rising only 1.3 percent to 87.4. The Business Condition Index showed the largest percentage gain, rising 9.2 percent to 91.5. Gains in this component of the index are the result of a larger number of CEOs expecting to see the business environment and economy to show gradual improvement over the next quarter. While 50 percent of responding CEOs predict no change in the economy over the next quarter, 34.4 percent forecast gradual growth – an increase of more than 7 percent. The Current Confidence Index, a sub index that calculates CEO confidence in current employment, capital spending and economic conditions, fell to 56.2, a loss of 10.9 percent. In the survey, 76.8 percent of CEOs rate business conditions as "bad", 19.0 percent rated business conditions "normal" and only 4.3 percent rated current business conditions as "good."

The total net worth of the Walton family is $89.6 billion. All this wealth was created by a farm boy from Boone County, Missouri. Some people think this a very good thing, others view it as a very bad thing. I'm in the former group, as someone who emigrated here fifty years ago to benefit from this "land of opportunity." I'm curious to know where my readers stand and why. Any comments?