From the In Box
I get a lot of emails from folks who want us to put someone on the radio…this ranges from authors promoting a book, to folks from non-profit groups seeking some exposure. There’s another category of folks who do surveys and hope we’ll talk about the surveys, giving their business some credit.
For whatever reason, yesterday’s email in box was full of odd notes like that, with equally odd statistics.
For example, Iowa is the 26th best state for small businesses to boom in 2024. They base that on the number of people in each state that searched on line for “side hustle,” “side gig,” and “start up business.”
Another note claims Iowans have the 9th most expensive Christmas list…$711 worth of goods requested. They determined that from reviewing publicly available Christmas lists from Amazon’s Gift List Registry. I didn’t even know there was such a thing. On average, those from Iowa posting such a list added 28 items they said they wanted Santa to bring.
Iowa is also apparently the 11th safest state in the U.S. when it comes to road raged drivers. But watch out for Connecticut, with the second highest rate of crashes, and the highest percentage of drivers causing fatal crashes due to road rage.
Quitting smoking is a good idea for health reasons, but also to help your pocketbook. The average Iowa smoker consumes just more than half a pack a day, and quitting would mean a yearly savings of $1,739.96. You’d save more if you lived in, say, Alaska where a single pack of smokes goes for $14. Connecticut is second in terms of high cost of cigarettes…not sure if that’s related to the other study on road rage collisions.
Careful on line…Iowa ranks 6th among the states most vulnerable to cybercrime per capita. Those numbers come from the annual FBI Internet Crime Reports.
Finally, there’s this…Iowa is the second highest state in percentage of excessive drinkers…25% of Iowa’s population drinks alcohol excessively on a regular basis. We were just beaten out for the title by Wisconsin, which tops the chart at 26%.
Literally, all those notes came into my email between 6 a.m. and noon yesterday. Now you know…and my in box is a lot clearer.
