Daily Score Blog

Last week brought a Bush administration report on climate change indicating a possible shift in the president's position on the role of human activity in global warming (this is according to the media; the administration denied such a shift). I wonder if Bush was influenced by the nation's best picture book, National Geographic, which devoted this month's cover story to global warming. The issue's stunning photos illustrate climate change's many warning signs, from melting glaciers (here's the Columbia Glacier in Alaska, which shrank by eight miles from 1977 to 1999) to species shifts (such as gender imbalances in sea turtle populations), to droughts. One note, though: the Web site doesn't come close to capturing the visual power of the print version.

The issue also illustrates that warming is hitting closer to home. Northwesterners will be dismayed that Glacier National Park's glaciers have decreased in number from 150 to 30 since 1910; and the park's famed Sperry Glacier has shrunk from more than 800 acres to 300 acres since 1901. As a transplanted New Englander, I was disturbed that Vermont's maple industry may also suffer. With luck the magazine, which reaches some 6 million people every month will help a wider audience understand that the "slow news" (pdf article) of climate change is becoming more dramatic all the time.

The latest from the Census Bureau: incomes are stagnant, poverty is up, and a red-hot real estate market is leaving Washington's low-income renters feeling the squeeze.

In 2000, about 34 percent of Washington renters spent 35 percent or more of their income on rent. Last year, about 40 percent of renters did so. Many experts say that 35 percent of income is about the upper limit of what families should spend on housing.

The housing report comes on the heels another Census survey that showed that median incomes in the U.S. stagnated while the number of people in poverty or without health insurance increased.

But in better news, consumer confidence rebounded slightly. (Irony alert: see the previous post for what I really think about consumer confidence.)

This sort of thing has no place on this blog. But someone has to mention it, so I guess it will have to be me.

The Olympics are over, and the U.S. sports pages were full of the news that the U.S. athletes won more medals than any other nation. Quite an accomplishment, huh?

Well, not really. The U.S. is an awfully big country -- the third biggest in the world, with about 293 million residents at last count. So with 103 medals, that makes about 1 medal for every 2.8 million people. Adjusting for population, Canada did slightly better than the U.S.: 1 medal for every 2.7 million people.

Both nations were in the middle of the pack. Of the nations that participated in the Olympics, 75 won medals. Person for person, the U.S. haul ranked 40th, Canada's 38th.

The real winner of the Olympic games was...wait for it...the Bahamas. The island nation pulled in just 2 medals--a gold and a bronze--but has a population of less than 300,000. That gives the country a medal for every 150,000 residents, making the Bahamas about 19 times as athletic, person for person, as the U.S. and Canada.

Australia won the silver in the medals-per-capita Olympics, and Cuba just edged out Estonia for the bronze. China, which pulled in the third largest medal haul, was close to the bottom in medals per capita; though India, with just one silver medal for its 1.1 billion residents, was the real cellar-dweller.

None of this should take anything away from U.S. or Canadian athletes. I just thought it was an interesting example of a widely reported statistic in the mainstream media that, on closer examination, is almost meaningless. So the next time you read about the Dow Jones or the Consumer Confidence Index in the business pages, just think "Olympic medal count."