I learned something yesterday. Only 5% of the US donates blood. How pathetic is that? I mean really--we can do better than that. I try donating regularly, but man, I have the wrong body for it. Half the time my iron count is low. And the other half of the time is a struggle for finding a good vein. For Christmas, can I have the veins for donating plasma? That would be a miracle.
Some other statistics for you:
- There are more $100 bills in Russia than in the US (This one's for you Sarah.)
- The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000. (Mom's)
- More than 2500 left handed people are killed every year from using right handed products (Emily!)
- If you attempted to count to stars in a galaxy at a rate of one every second it would take around 3,000 years to count them all. (Melissa)
- 96% of people put the peanut butter on first when making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. (Nikki?)
- The Statue of Liberty is 151.1" tall and weighs 449,743 lbs. (Hope you saw the French connection, Dad!)
This brings me to another point. As the old sayings go, "Don't believe everything you hear," and "Take it with a grain of salt." I have this problem where I like to believe everything I hear. And I'm not sure what to do differently without going to the other extreme--not believing anything I hear. When someone quotes a general authority it has to be pretty outlandish before I'm going to dismiss it or look it up. When someone throws out a statistic I lap it up before I ever wonder how that data could have been collected. I guess I am just very willing to believe that most people know what they are talking about. I think I'm going to try and pay attention to this more.
