When my brain hits capacity reading Proust and the Squid, I put it down and pick up something lighter. Most recently that lighter thing has been OBD: Obsessive Branding Disorder, by Lucas Conley.

A few tidbits you might find of interest:

• On average, people fulfill 80-85% of their needs with just 150 everyday items.
• The average American encounters between 3,000 and 5,000 ad messages each day.
• In 2006 U.S. advertisers spent nearly $300 billion—about $10,000 a second.

$10,000 a second. It makes one pause.

More:

• Fifty million American households signed up for the Do-Not Call Registry when it was launched in 2003 (10 million in the first three days). Today the list includes 145 million phone numbers.
• As much as 90% of all email is estimated to be spam. 

Today I am grateful for spam filters.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 at 10:24 am and is filed under Statistical Notes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.