Per the New York Times:

Among other facts, the Statistical Abstract reveals that West Virginia is the only state in which more people have died since 2000 than have been born; more Burmese were granted asylum than people from any other country; more people speak Italian at home than Arabic; beds injure more people than bicycles; per capita consumption of tea has surpassed that of fruit juice; enrollment of college students from Saudi Arabia and Iran has returned to the levels before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Also, women make up a majority of pharmacists, bartenders and bus drivers and nearly half the medical students granted degrees; bottled water consumption is up at the same time that per capita water use nationally is down; 91 percent of the nearly 12 million surgical and other cosmetic procedures performed in 2007 involved women; consumer complaints against airlines soared to 10,960 last year from 6,452 the year before. Among adults, Jews no longer outnumber Mormons; 57 percent of teenage girls reported having sexual contact in the previous 12 months.

Americans are spending more on prescription drugs ($259 billion in 2007, compared with $72 billion in 1995); the number of people living on the Atlantic Coast of Florida has risen 13 percent since 2000; gambling revenue at American Indian sites nearly doubled to $26 billion since 2002; nearly half of Americans under age 5 are Hispanic or nonwhite; the number of people 75 and over has doubled since 1980 to 18 million; only 5.5 percent of workers age 16 to 24 are represented by unions.

My favorite piece of this story comes one week later, when NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me quiz show addressed the issue of sagging pants, and the audience and panel reacted, almost in total unison, in agreement with President-elect Obama.

This may not get the play the Will.I.Am video got, but the use of a Clinton (?) era ad campaign is interesting nonetheless, and really does show how Obama’s supporters understand the Internet and the “youth vote”.

Imagine this now: Barack Obama gets out at a rest stop, and is mobbed.

…if you head out to see the new Warren Miller film this season, you’ll get to see the rippin’ snow that is Bend, Central Oregon, and Mount Bachelor.

Here in Bend (and I’ve heard elsewhere as well), the Warren Miller flick at the local movie house is sort of the unofficial opening to the ski season, which if POWDR Corp. follows through on its promises, could be a good (and cheaper) one.

The Oregon primary is over, and Sen. Barack Obama (not surprisingly) won the Democratic race.

For reporters, like myself, it was incredibly stressful. In fact, afterwards I almost had to take a trip to the East Coast to give myself some rest.

The one redeeming thing about the primary season, was the opportunity it provided for me to provide some Oregon coverage to a national audience.

For NPR’s political desk, I covered the Oregon senate race for Morning Edition. And then this week, for the national desk, I got to report on a spate of Oregon political resignations for All Things Considered.

The especially fun part of both of those stories, were they were my first appearance on each show. As a professional aside, each new show a reporter can appear on is looked as an accomplishment.

This time in an article about Oregon’s health care lottery.