Attention Landlords!

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Making Your Mark Thomas Exter, senior editor of American Demographics, and Cullen Murphy, managing editor of The Atlantic Monthly, have come up with some thought-provoking trivia.

"In the past 2.5 million years," they write, "about 113 billion human beings have lived and died. The names of roughly 7 billion of the departed—or about 6%—have survived in books and manuscripts, on monuments or in public records. This proportion will reach 100% in 100 years."

Deadly Dead Batteries Each year, about 80 million lead-acid batteries go dead on American motorists. In the past, service stations paid up to $3 for a spent battery—but these days stations take them only as a courtesy, if they take them at all. The reason: As the hazards of lead have become better known, demand for the material has plummeted. A pound of recycled lead is worth only one-fourth of its value eight years ago.

As a result, far fewer batteries are being recycled, and far more are ending up in landfills, where lead and sulfuric acid leach out. Compounding the problem are household batteries such as those used in flashlights and radios. Eventually, virtually all of the 1 billion household batteries produced in the U.S. each year also wind up in landfills. One proposed solution to the crisis is a "battery bill"—a law that would require a deposit to fund recycling, much the way bottle bills in some states encourage the recycling of beverage containers.

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