Might be some downtime during the Pro Bowl, SuperBowl, trips to baseball spring training. Here are some tidbits to dip into:
- 540 -- the number of hospitals that offer a blog or have some presence on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. (Yep, Community Medical Centers is among them.)
- 2,469 -- the number of people killed in China in 2007 from electric-bike accidents, up from 34 fatalities in 2001.
- 1.7 percent -- the annual career dropout rate for emergency physicians, compared to 2% to 3% for physicians overall.
- 22,171 -- the number of prisoners in California at the end of 2009 who are on immigration hold or potential immigration hold as being illegal entrants, comprising 13% of the state's prison population.
- $25 -- the per-diem meal money for minor league baseball players, a $5 increase over last season.
- $89.50 -- the per-diem meal money for Major League Baseball players.
- 1.8 -- the number of athletic shoes the average American buys each year, which is roughly triple the rate of Europeans.
- 7.5 -- the number of characters thumbed per second by 16-year-old Ha Mok-min, in defeating 2.8 million fellow South Koreans in a fastest-texting competition. (Can't you see the future for hand surgery specialists?)
- 2.2 -- the number of characters texted per second by contestants age 40 and older.
- 1 -- the best quote of the day from an exasperated Kim Young-sook, mother of the texting champion referenced above: "The cellphone is a great gift of civilization but also one of its pollutants."
(Sources: New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Sacramento Bee, hhn.mag.com and the Advisory Board)