Thursday, October 16, 2008

2 interesting Maryland statistics

Yep, just learned two:

1) We are the most educated state in the Union, woot!! 13.65 years of education is the average for adults, yeah baby. In your face Minnesota!! ;P Hmm, I wonder if they count me as 16 or 16.5 years considering I took 4.5 years to get a 4-year degree, not including time spent abroad.

2) Starbucks:Wal*Mart ratio - 3.8. Now this one I'm not sure what to make of. On the one hand I don't really like Wal*Mart, so less of them can be seen as a rather good thing. Simply walking into the Wal*Mart in Germantown gives me the creeps now, and I don't exactly appreciate the smell I was greeted by last time I found myself there.

On the other hand, I don't really drink coffee or caffienated drinks in general for that matter very much, so Starbucks doesn't really do it that much for me either. I guess if I had to choose between the two I would take the smell of Starbucks coffee and products over the average Wal*Mart, and I would say that I'm probably at least 3.8 times as likely to step foot inside a Starbucks as I am a Wal*Mart.

On the 3rd hand (???), I've heard that they both have rather interesting business strategies... Wal*Mart has revolutionized the business of inventory and delivery as well as subsequently changing the face of the retail world as a whole, and is king of "streamlining" their business... sometimes at the expense of their employees, and often to the benefit of Chinese businesses/factories. Starbucks supposedly has an interesting management program and is supposed to have quite a high satisfaction level for employees... if you believe my hippie friend Jeff who (used to?) work there (hi Jeff!).

And finally on the 4th hand, they are both big corporations and thus I hate them both, because I'm white and this is apparently what I am supposed to do.

If you would like to know my new fountain of useless statistical wonderment, you can follow this magical link... oh yeah, and they're pretty sure they know who's going to be President come January as well.

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