Tidbits from USA Today

I am traveling today and while hanging out in the hotel picked up a span style=”font-style:italic;”USA Today/span to see what was going on in the world (like I can’t find out more easily on the internet). Anyway, I like span style=”font-style:italic;”USA Today/span for their little sidebars and snapshots of interesting stats on American life. br /br /On the frontpage sidebar, I learned that more and more women are attending law school then ever before. In 2007-2008, there were 53% men in US laws compared to 47% women. By contrast, there were 72% men in law and 28% women in 1977-1978, 59% men, 41% women in 1987-1988 and 55% men, 45% women in 1997-1998. br /br /The next a href=”http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-06-26-Blacksurvey_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip”study I read was entitled,/a “Sweeping study finds blacks in U.S. diverse, optimistic.” Interestingly, I found out that although liberals and others keep insisting that we call blacks “African Americans” (wouldn’t this be like calling me an Israeli American because I am Jewish? Nevermind that I was born in California and have not yet visited Israel but that is beside the point), many blacks do not prefer this title. Blacks are evenly divided about what they prefer to be called–42% favor “black” and 44% favor “African American.” br /br /Finally, in the “Nation” section of the paper, I a href=”http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2008-06-26-july4thtravel_N.htm”found an article/a that stated fewer Americans are expected to drive or fly for the 4th of July:br /br /blockquoteFewer Americans than last year will be driving and flying during next week’s Fourth of July holiday, travel experts say.br /br /The number of people driving 50 or more miles from home will drop 1.2% to about 34.2 million, reflecting the continued impact of high gasoline prices, auto club AAA says.br /br /The drop follows a similar decline over the Memorial Day holiday and is the first time this decade that AAA has forecast smaller numbers of people taking driving vacations on consecutive holidays./blockquotebr /br /The article goes on to talk about how the travel industry is responding to high gas prices by offering discounts, promotions, and other incentives to get people traveling this holiday. Really? I haven’t noticed any. The bill for the hotel we are staying in seems higher than ever, including a charge (although very small) for the span style=”font-style:italic;”USA Today /spanthat I did not order but received anyway because in order not to be charged, one has to remember to call the front desk and tell them to take the charge off and not deliver the paper. Fat chance of that.br /br /But anyway, the paper gave me some fodder for a blog post to keep a few readers amused or at least hopefully, not too terribly bored and entertained me for a few minutes so it’s not too bad.