Factoids

I’ve been away for a few days — but on the way back to D.C. this afternoon, this factoid from the IRS’s national taxpayer advocate screamed out at me from the pages of USA Today: “Federal tax-filing requirements have become so complex that they eat up 7.6 billion work hours a year, making the overall […]

Between January 1969 and January 1970, Pablo Picasso completed 167 paintings.He was 87 years old. (Source: Kreeger Museum)

“The combined equity valuations of Chrysler, Ford and G.M. total less than $6 billion, which is not even a fifth the valuation of Honda and only about a twentieth that of Toyota.”(Source: NYT, 11/25/08) 

India has a population of 1.1 billion — and three in four of those citizens are under 35.In other words, our flattened, hyperlinked planet now has more than twice as many young Indians as it has Americans. (Source: This Washington Post article, about the alarming fact that homosexuality is illegal in India.) 

New Hampshire’s State Senate has become the first legislature in U.S. history with a female majority. After Tuesday’s election, the legislative body consists of 13 women and 11 men.(Source: WSJ and NPR via NCSL) 

Over at the Fast Company blog, my pal Charles Fishman (of The Wal-Mart Effect fame) offers up two truly startling factoids.The first is yet another indicator of how weak the economy is. Last quarter, Fishman reports, Whole Foods posted a profit of $1.5 million.  According to Fishman, that means the average profit at each store was $64

“Compared to France, U.S. Internet access is twice as expensive and one-fourth as quick. Since 2000, the United States has gone from fifth in the world to twenty-second in broadband penetration. We have become a nation of buffering YouTube videos.”(Source: Nick Thompson’s new Washington Monthly piece on the tech policies of the two presidential candidates.)  

“The worldwide economic value of the pollination service provided by insect pollinators, bees mainly, was €153 billion in 2005 for the main crops that feed the world. This figure amounted to 9.5% of the total value of the world agricultural food production.”(Source: Ecological Economics) 

“A $700 billion expenditure on distressed mortgage-related assets would roughly be what the country has spent so far in direct costs on the Iraq war and more than the Pentagon’s total yearly budget appropriation. Divided across the population, it would amount to more than $2,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States.”(Source: NY