Here’s the latest collection of telling statistics and facts gleaned from a variety of sources:

Time well spent: Commuting time to work beyond 45 minutes seems to increase the possibility of divorce by 40 percent.

Que pasa? Since 2000, the percentage of white Americans below 18 years of age has declined 9.8 percent, blacks have declined 2.3 percent, Hispanics have increased by 38.8 percent.

Two elites: 6.2 percent of the applicants to Harvard were accepted this year. 6.2 percent of the applicants at the recent McDonald’s national hiring day were also accepted.

The power of Prayer: 3 percent of Americans (about 10 million people) believe that Osama bin Laden may have been welcomed by 72 virgins in heaven.

Reduced exposure: Tweeting by elected officials declined by nearly one-third the week after U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner exposed himself in a tweet.

There goes the neighborhood: A mortgage firm offered to pay for 10 homes to be converted to advertising billboards. Some 11,575 homeowners applied.

Costs of war: The government paid $2,340,000 in “blood money” to families of two Pakistanis killed by a CIA “contractor.”

Fair and balanced: In a survey to identify “America’s most respected journalists,” Bill O’Reilly was ranked behind “Don’t know” and “None.”

Relative efficiencies: Government-contracted projects cost 83 percent more than those built by government itself.

Success rate: 82 percent of American public schools will fail the standards set by “No Child Left Behind.”

Family pride: On Nov 1, 2008, the daughter of Gov. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) received her degree in anthropology. On Oct 10, 2011, he announced that Florida doesn’t need any more anthropologists.

The political glass ceiling: The United States Congress is 89th in the world for gender equity.

Subject discussed: In Great Britain, one-sixth of all cell phones were found to be infected with fecal bacteria.

How to tell: Easily embarrassed people are seen as more trustworthy and are often more monogamous.

Do unto others: People perceive less pain in the suffering of people they don’t like.

Mr. Gingrich’s waistline: Those who feel loss of power have been shown to eat more to achieve prestige.

Except Tea Partiers: At 10 months babies understand the thought processes of those around them.

Sex bias: Readers of New Yorker cartoons tend to think the funniest ones are drawn by men.

Self-awareness: 13 percent of all Americans consider themselves to be in the top 1 percent of the income earners (28 percent of Hispanic Americans feel that way).

Star Wars: Department of Defense is requesting $2,908,600,000 for just two types of drones this year.

Calories and nicotine: Only 1 in 7 American worker is without either weight or health problems.

Thank you, Mr. Obama: More folks were deported in 2011 than in any year in U.S. history (396,906).

Hunger: In 2008, 9 percent of Americans struggled to pay for food. In 2011, that figure had risen to 19 percent. In China, those figures are claimed to be 16 percent and 6 percent – but they eat dogs.

Animal control: In Ukraine, they have killed an estimated 27,000 dogs in preparation for the 2012 soccer tournament.

News from our neighbors: Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, has proposed a bill that would impose a jail sentence of five years for selling fake Vermont maple syrup.

Rodney Quinn, a former university history and government instructor, lives in Westbrook. He can be reached at rquinn@maine.rr.com.

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