In China, 84 percent of all car buyers are first-time buyers.

I’ve known that for a month now, and I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with it. Was there some analogy, perhaps, with first-time visitors to my church? None that I’ve been able to find.

The United States probably passed that 84 percent mark in the 1940s. But during periods in my life, I’m sure 84 percent of all cell-phone buyers were first-time buyers, and likewise with computer buyers, home cable installers, and even color TV buyers.

So, I don’t know, there you have it–a useless fact. Hope you can figure out what to do with it.

Here’s a fascinating page which talks about domain names. I know–probably boring stuff to most people. But to me, with about 20 names registered with Network Solutions (3 for church, 5 personal, 14 for work), it’s pretty fascinating. For instance:

• There are 676 possible two-letter sequences ending in .com, and all are taken. So are all 17,576 of the three-letter combinations. The United Brethren domain is a two-letter domain (ub.org), but with the .org extension. However, we’re still pretty lucky to have registered it early.
• Of the 467,000 four-letter domain possibilities, nearly 98,000 are still available. For now. The writer says, “Choose one, and then manufacture a ridiculous backronym to explain it.” Like 7RG8.com, or U3JZ.com.
• The average domain name is 11 letters long.
• The maximum-allowed length is 63 characters. There are 538 domains of that length, including one with 63 Zs. followed by .com.
• The US Census Bureau lists 1219 male names, and all of them are registered. But not all of the 2841 female names are registered. All of the top 10,000 family names are registered.

Like I said, it’s interesting to me.

I discovered a great new term yesterday: CPA, which stands for Continuous Partial Attention. It was apparently coined by an executive with Apple who was speaking at a convention of, basically, geeks. While she spoke, those geeks would have been consulting their Blackberrys, surfing on their G4 laptops, doing stuff on iPods, and playing with their Treos. In other words, giving her, as she spoke, only partial attention. And she nailed them about it.

Our society is seriously afflicted with this Continous Partial Attention disorder. This includes the church. When we have denominational meetings, guys sit there listening to the bishop or keynote speakers with their laptops open, typing away as if taking notes, but everyone knows their actually responding to emails, writing sermons, or doing other things under the guise of “multi-tasking.” But to me–a former transgressor, I freely admit–it’s become simply rude.

When we held transition meetings with representatives from the Missionary Church, back in the merger-talks days, none of the MC guys brought laptops. But on the United Brethren side, you would see four or five laptops open. And when a laptop is open, with a clean wireless connection to the internet, it’s impossible to just ignore it. The keyboard cries out, “Use me! Use me!” And so, we UBs were giving partial attention as others spoke about hugely important issues.

The same thing happened last summer at our US National Conference. Curses on the presence of wireless! And I saw it again a few weeks ago when our cluster leaders met for a two-day meeting in Hillsdale, Mich., to discuss how we were totally re-engineering the denomination. Very important stuff. But as Bishop Ramsey or Pat Jones or Tom Blaylock spoke, or as others entered into discussion, we’d have a number of guys poking away at their laptops.

This is not peculiar to UBs. It’s just an example of the prevalence of CPA.

For denominational meetings, we–meaning, sacrificial tithes-payers in the pews–will spend hundreds of dollars to fly a guy or gal to Huntington. Why? Because we desire their input and wisdom and experience. But when they pay only partial attention to what’s going on, I think we’ve wasted our money. Yeah, this partial attention malady irks me. Continuously.

I’ve received a number of comments from people who read my February 5 post, a drooling rant about people who insist on typing two spaces between sentences. I thought I’d add another pet peeve from the editing world.

Have you noticed how often people spell out a number, and then put it in parentheses? What’s this all about? Someone writes, “I went to the store and bought ten (10) cans of cat food for my two (2) cats.” I suppose there are, indeed, people in the world who never learned to spell their numbers, and (&) therefore need to see the aramaic numeral in parentheses (()). I never learned to correctly type numbers in 7th (seventh) grade, because the semester ended before we got to the number (#) row, so maybe this happened to people in second (2nd) grade reading class. But still, don’t you think this is a bit silly? Maybe people do it merely because they see other people do it, and they assume that it is therefore correct or necessary. In 27 (twenty-seven) years as a professional editor, I have NEVER allowed this to go into print. I always edit it out.

If this is necessary, then perhaps we should extend it to other things:

• “I went to bed at 10:00 (ten o’clock).”
• “The baby weighed 7 lbs, 6oz” would become, “The baby weighed 7 (seven) lbs (pounds), 6 (six) oz (ounces).” That way, there would be no mistaking it.
• “I live in Ft. (Fort) Wayne, Ind. (Indiana).”
• “The score was 42-13 (twenty-four to thirteen).”
• “I have 20/20 (twenty-slash-twenty) vision.”
• “I paid $45 (forty-five dollars), plus (+) change, to fill my truck with gas! (exclamation point)”
• “This is my second (2nd) editorial rant.”

It’s too bad that readers are so doggone, unredeemably stupid that we must put things in parentheses to avoid confusion, but I guess that’s the way it is. At (@) least, judging by the number (#) of people who still insist on duplicating a written-out number in parentheses. But alas, I may be showing some elitism here. Not everyone has the benefit of a degree from Huntington University (HU), as do I. In writing, we must be conscious of the unlearned huddled masses yearning to read numbers accurately.

So that’s today’s (February 17th’s (seventeenth’s)) rant. Don’t for a second (2nd) think this is the last one (1). I’ve got more.