Statistics!

Twitter (from http://sampadswain.com/2009/03/interesting-twitter-statistics-facts/)

• 1,382% year-over-year growth in February 2009.
• Total unique visitors grew from 475,000 in February 2008 to  seven million 80,00,000 (Eight million) last month.
• Twitter is the fastest growing member community site for the month of February.
• Zimbio (240%) and Facebook (228%) were the second and third-fastest growing online communities.
• Twitter is not just for kids: In February 2009, adults ages 35-49 had the largest representation on Twitter – almost 3 million unique visitors from this age group (almost 42% of the entire audience).
• 62% of the audience access Twitter from work only, while only 35% access it only from home.
• It’s all about mobile: In January 2009, 735,000 unique visitors accessed Twitter via their mobile device.
• The average unique visitor went to Twitter 14 times during the month.
• They spent an average of 7 minutes on the site.
• In Q4 2008, 812,000 unique users sent or received Twitter text messages (viaAT&T or Verizon cell phones).
• The average tweet per person for the quarter was nearly 240.

 

Market Share (from http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/credit-card-industry-facts-personal-debt-statistics-1276.php)

Top 15 U.S. general purpose card issuers based on outstandings as of June 30, 2009
1.  Chase – $165.87 bil.
2.  Bank of America – $150.82 bil.
3.  Citi – $102.54 bil.
4.  American Express – $78.16 bil.
5.  Capital One – $55.46 bil.
6.  Discover – $48.90 bil.
7.  Wells Fargo – $30.89 bil.
8.  HSBC – $26.09 bil.
9.  U.S. Bank – $20.17 bil.
10. USAA Savings – $12.96 bil.
11. Barclays – $10.67 bil.
12. Target – $7.78 bil.
13. GE Money – $7.17 bil.
14. PNC Bank – $5.08 bil.
15. First Nat’l Nebraska – $4.32 bil.
(Source: Nilson Report, August 2009)

Cool Facts

 

76% of American commuters drive to work alone. – The Week Magazine, 6/6/08

* 55% of all deaths caused by firearms in the United States are suicides. – San Diego Union, 7/1/08

* 2.4% of all Americans are in the criminal justice system somehow. 7,200,000 Americans are now either behind bars, on probation, or on parole. – The Week Magazine, 6/27/08

* Americans throw out 27% of the 350,000,000 pounds of food they buy each year. – New York Times, 5/18/08

* 70% of all trees cut for use as Christmas trees are whisked to departing trucks by helicopter. – The Week Magazine, 12/28/07

* 23% of all the psychiatrists in the country are in the New York City metro area. – The Week Magazine, 5/19/06

* 30% of Americans don’t know what year the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington took place. – Yahoo! News, 8/9/06

More Facts

• There are 318,979,564,000 ways of playing the first four turns in a game of chess. There are 169,518,829,100,544,000,000,000,000,000 ways of playing the first ten turns of a game of chess
• In the year 10,000 B.C., there were only 5 million people on earth. In 8,000 B.C., this figure had risen to only 8 million.
• Currently there are more than 6,000,000,000 people on earth. Around 1900 there were only 1,600,000,000 people.
• The average American spends 18% of his or her income on transportation, and only 13% on food
• The total number of different bridge hands possible is roughly 54,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
• The typical person breathes 370,000 cubic metres of air in their lifetime.
• Thirteen percent of the world’s population lives in deserts, which account for about one-third of the Earth’s land surface.
• Over 85% of the world’s population lives north of the Equator
• In 1985, NASA estimated that the probability of an accident occurring to the space shuttle was 1 in 100,000. However, on January 28, 1986, only the 25^th shuttle launch, Challenger exploded after take-off, killing all seven astronauts aboard, and on February 1, 2003, the 113^rd mission, Columbia exploded on re-entry, again killing all seven astronauts. Earlier estimates by other groups had estimated the probability as being closer to 1 in 100, a probability that seems more reasonable
• In a study of 3,000 people that made New Year’s resolutions in 2007, only 12% stuck to them. The resolution with the greatest chance of success was “to enjoy life more”
• The chances of winning a lottery in which six numbers are drawn from 49 is 1 in 13,983,816
• For every 100,000 girls, 223 will become doctors and 17,475 will become nurses
• 100 people a year choke to death on ball-point pens.
• One’s lifetime risk of dying due to living with a smoker is 1 in 4,200. Getting struck by lightning over the course of a lifetime is more likely, with odds of 1 in 3,000
• Over 50% of people that win the lottery jackpot return to work

 

From: http://www.sentex.net/~ajy/facts/statistics.html

 

Thanks,

Lili

I thought this was interesting.

 

 

International News In Japenese!

Sorry no translation available! Copied from Asahi

Something under business!

東京株、続落　午前終値９２円安の９５８４円

１９日の東京株式市場で、日経平均株価は続落して取引が始まった。日経平均の午前の終値は前日比９２円７９銭（０．９６％）安い９５８４円０１銭。東京証券取引所第１部全体の値動きを示すＴＯＰＩＸ（東証株価指数）は同１１．４５ポイント（１．３５％）低い８３８．６１。出来高は１２億５千万株だった。

前日に三菱ＵＦＪフィナンシャル・グループが最大１兆円の巨額増資を正式に発表するなど、「大企業の増資ラッシュとも言える状況に、株式の需給悪化を懸念した売り注文が優勢になっている」（大手証券）という。日経平均は一時、前日終値より１４０円以上値下がりした。午前には取引時間中としては７月２１日以来、約４カ月ぶりとなる９５００円台をつけた。

さらに東京外国為替市場の円相場は１ドル＝８９円台前半と、円高傾向が続いており、輸出関連の自動車や電機といった銘柄には売り注文が集まっている。

 

Don’t know what it means just for the sake! News below in English!

Woman leaves $40,000 at Md. shrine for safekeeping

Copied from: Yahoo News

Originally from Associate Press

By DAVID DISHNEAU, Associated Press Writer – 52 mins ago

HAGERSTOWN, Md. – A woman quietly left $40,000 worth of rare U.S. coins near a Catholic shrine for safekeeping so the Virgin Marycould watch over her life savings while she was out of town, and apparently it worked: The money was returned to her when she got back a week later.

Operators of the National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes nearEmmitsburg thought they had been blessed with a big donation when a groundskeeper found the two plastic freezer bags filled with gold and silver while raking leaves.

But Shrine Director William Tronolone said the woman approached him after a noon Mass Sunday, six days after the discovery, to ask whether anyone had found some coins she had hidden beneath fallen leaves at the site on the campus of Mount St. Mary’s University.

“I said, ‘Why did you leave it there?’ And she said, ‘Well, I had to go away and I was afraid to leave it and I wanted the Blessed Mother to watch over it for me — and evidently she did because you found it,'” Tronolone said.

By then, university officials had had the coins appraised, notified police and placed the money in a safe while awaiting word from investigators.

Tronolone refused to identify the woman. He said she had been out of town about a week.

After the school’s security director returned the coins Monday, he accompanied the woman to her bank and persuaded her to put them in her safe deposit box, Tronolone said.

The shrine, about 50 miles northwest of Baltimore, features a replica of the grotto in Lourdes, France, where Catholics believe Mary, the mother of Jesus, appeared to a French schoolgirl named Bernadette several times, beginning in 1858. The Emmitsburg replica draws more than 200,000 visitors annually, Tronolone said.

Grotto visitors often leave anonymous donations, including a $3,000 cash gift two weeks ago.

“Up here at the grotto, you get a lot of people that are very, very faithful,” Tronolone said, “and they do things you and I would never even attempt to do.”

 

Thanks,

Kristen

Twilight (New Moon)Review!

Hey I wanted to get you in the Twilight spirit! Movie will be out Friday but here is what to expect.*Note this is one person’s review*

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-new-moon19-2009nov19,0,2375513.story

La Times

By KENNETH TURAN

“This is the last time you’ll ever see me,” Edward Cullen says to Bella Swan. As if.

Spoken early on in “New Moon,” that promise is one of the least likely to be kept in movie history. With most of that film still to unfold, and two more adaptations of Stephenie Meyer‘s“Twilight” series in the works, the next due out as soon as next summer, the world is going to see as much of Kristen Stewart‘s melancholy Bella and Robert Pattinson’s undead Edward as it can take. Maybe more.

In the short term, however, Edward is as good as his word and “New Moon” suffers as a result. Constrained by the plot of the novel, the film keeps the two lovers apart for quite a spell, robbing the project of the crazy-in-love energy that made “Twilight,” the first entry in the series, such a guilty pleasure.

“New Moon,” which has been grandly titled “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” in honor of that first episode’s huge success, marks the franchise’s entrance into the self-protective, don’t rock the boat phase of its existence, which is inevitable but a bit of a shame.

In place of “Twilight” director Catherine Hardwicke, a filmmaker of intense, sometimes overwhelming and out of control emotionality who seemed to feel these teenage characters in her bones, “New Moon” has gone with the more polished Chris Weitz.

A smooth professional whose credits include such adaptations as “The Golden Compass” and “About a Boy,” Weitz makes the vampire trains of Melissa Rosenberg’s capable script run on time, but he almost seems too rational a director for this kind of project. This lack of animating madness combined with the novel’s demands give much of “New Moon” a marking time quality.

Yes, I know, “New Moon’s” emotional energy is supposed to come through Bella’s putative attachment to newly buff best friend Jacob Black ( Taylor Lautner). But though audiences gasp when Jacob uses his shirt to staunch Bella’s blood (don’t ask) and reveals a torso that would make Charles Atlas swoon, the connection between these two is so self-evidently non-romantic that it turns out not to be much of a diversion.

More interesting is Jacob’s discovery that as a member of the fierce Quileute tribe he is prone to turning into an exceptionally large wolf at a moment’s notice, a wolf whose main objective in life is to safeguard humans from vampires. In addition to pining for Edward, Bella suddenly finds herself in the middle of age-old and bitter enmities. This is one hard-luck young woman.

Before all this can happen, however, Edward has to break up with Bella. It’s not like you can’t see this coming, what with all the bickering these two do about whether or not she should be changed into a vampire, with Bella in the affirmative and Edward, worried, it seems, about her immortal soul, preferring she stay in human form. READ MORE!

 

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while especially to LILI!!