Information Station

Here are various items in the news or in my thoughts for this week...

As a study, I listened for and noted any time that Twitter was referred to as a source within TV, as I surfed many channels for one week. I heard only one reference. It concerned a "tweet" from reality TV star Snooki concerning her "baby bump." (And I do dislike the replacement of the word "pregnancy" with something that sounds like it came from a TV reality show, which I also dislike.) Anyway, I don't know what this says about Twitter, but it would make a fascinating graduate study about the times that other media forms use the social media of Twitter and if it is about serious news or celebrity chatter.

I have not joined the Twitter world yet. I tend to think the restriction of words mainly only makes sense for headlines or for cussing.

According the Rock the Vote organization, 13,000 young Americans turn 18 years of age every day.

Another statistic: About 600,000 students drop out of high school every year.

Another statistic: Being terminated from your job can take one year off your life, according to a recent study.

What creature has killed the most people in history? According to the History Channel, the answer is mosquitoes.

For the first time in American history, minority births (at 54 percent) outnumber white births. But does that mean then that everyone becomes part of a minority group?

When Kim Kardashian, Rhianna, and Justin Bieber end up on Forbes magazine's Top 10 list of the Most Powerful Celebrities, it does make me realize how unfair life is. And that luck is an underrated commodity.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg made $20 million in one day when Facebook offered shares of stock this past week. Apparently the rich 1 percent were the ones who had early access to buying shares. (The rich 1 percent always need an edge to help them out.) But 57 percent of Facebook users apparently never click on ads or sponsored messages.

Not all social media stories end with great success. Rupert Murdoch purchased MySpace for $580 million, but later sold it for $35 million.

Over the last 100 years, only two names for babies have remained in the top 10 of popular baby names in America (and they are both for baby boys). The names are Michael and William.

A reality show on Spike TV channel is called "Repo Games." It is about this guy who quizzes frazzled people (who need their cars) about trivia. If they answer the trivia questions correctly, he won't repossess the car. !!!

A SyFy channel show called "Total Blackout" puts contestants in total darkness and they must identify objects with only their senses of touch or smell (not sight). It was amusing to hear this one lady screaming like crazy when, in her imaginative mind raising all kinds of fears, she had to touch the rough texture of a pineapple. Scary!