47% of all parents say they are likely to consider purchasing a bulletproof backpack for their child. 42% say they are not likely to consider the same. [Morning Consult 9/8/19]
In 1969, the winner of the U.S. Open Men’s Singles tennis tournament, Rod Laver took home the “huge” prize of $16,000. If you simply multiply that by cumulative inflation thru 2019, or 599.1%, it has a present-day value of $111,850.90.
In fact, the winner of the Men’s Singles title this year received $3,850,000, 34 times the present-day value of Laver’s $16,000.
The winner of the U.S. Open Women’s Singles title this year also received $3,850,000. The male and female singles title winners have received the same amount since 1973. [WW was not able to find the amount that the Woman’s singles title winner, Margaret Court, took home in 1969.]
This past Thursday, an eight-day palindrome, ended. It began on 9/10/19 and continued 9/11/19, 9/12/19, 9/13/19, 9/14/19, 9/15/19, 9/16/19, 9/17/19, 9/18/19 and ended on 9/19/19. This particular palindrome will only happen twice in this century.
In case you, like WW, have/had no idea what a palindrome is, it is “a word, phrase, or sequence that reads the same backward as forward”.
The longest palindromic word in the Oxford English Dictionary is “tattarrattat” which was coined by James Joyce in Ulysses for a knock on the door. The Guinness Book of Records gives the title to “detartrated”.
Twitter, Twitter on your phone
Who has the most followers of all?
(As of August 2019)
Sen. Mitt Romney – 2,002,325
Sen. Rand Paul – 2,579,025
Rep. Nancy Pelosi – 3,091,552
Sen. Kamala Harris – 3,912,269
Sen. Marco Rubio – 3,964,383
Sen. Cory Booker – 4,471,011
Sen. Ted Cruz – 4,678,854
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – 5,296,801
Sen. Elizabeth Warren – 8,237,615
Sen. Bernie Sanders – 18,054,502
[WP Magazine 9/1/19]
Twitter has become the language of announcement in politics. Increasingly, when an organization, a country or an individual want to announce something, support something or deny something…Twitter is the medium of choice. From there, anyone of note can be assured that other forms of media will pick up their announcement. [WW]
76% say that climate change is a crisis (38%) or a major problem but not a crisis (38%). 37% say global warming and climate change will require ordinary Americans to make major sacrifices while 48% say they will require minor sacrifices. 43% of Americans are “very certain” human activity is causing climate change – this includes 20% of Republicans, 43% of Independents and 59% of Democrats. [WP/Kaiser Family Foundation 7/9-8/5/19]
The average student debt of graduates in Medicine is $170,440; Law is $119,250; International relations is $65,468; Public Health is $56,964; Social Work is $50,102; Nursing is $49,821; Urban Planning is $48,612; Journalism is $45,047; Information Science is $43, 217; Anthropology is $43,208; Education is $30,417.
[WSJ 9/14-15/19]
Coca Cola is WW’s favorite soft drink. The following is the total number of single-serve, non-alcoholic beverages consumed per person in 2018.
Mexico – 623
U.S. – 523
Britain – 330
Spain – 307
France – 180
Russia – 122
Nigeria – 53
[Source: Coca-Cola Hellenic/WSJ 8/24/19]
Amazon has increasingly been taking control of the actual delivery of their parcels. At the beginning of 2017 the U.S. Postal Service delivered 61% of Amazon parcels. UPS handled 20.8% and Amazon itself handled 12.8%.
Currently, Amazon and its last-mile carriers deliver 48.4% of their packages compared to 30.9% for USPS and 18.1% for UPS. [WSJ]
Publicly traded U.S. retailers have announced closures of 8,558 store locations so far this year. That comes on top of 5,844 closures in 2018 for a total of 14,402 closures. During this same period there have been 6,704 store openings. [Numlock News 9/16/19]