a statistical snapshot of world's economic, political, & cultural climate

Harper's Index

Number of top-ten states for bankruptcy filings per capita that voted for President Bush*: 10

Number of Americans who say Bush is a "uniter": 49

Number of Americans who say Bush is a "divider": 49

Minimum number of miles that a private jet has been flown to take U.S. terror suspects to "rendition" abroard: 302,000

Round-trips from DC to Tehran that this many frequent-flyer miles on American Airlines will by: 4

Average self-esteem of a US teenager, as measured by socio;ogists on a scale of 0 to 10: 7.6

Average self-esteem of a Bagdad teenager: 7.9

Minimum number of cows whoses skins are used each year for Major League baseballs: 45,000

Percentage by which this exceeds the seating capacity of Wrigley Field: 14

Year that the Social Security trustees in 1994 projected the program would no longer be able to pay out full benefits: 2029


Year projected by the trustees in 2004: 2042


Amount to which a San Diego defense analyst’s payments to Social Security had appreciated when he retired in 1994: $261,372


Amount to which he calculated they would have grown if he had invested in a Dow Jones index fund instead: $248,166


Estimated total federal assistance for which Wal-Mart employees were eligible last year: $2,500,000,000


Percentage of songs on Billboard’s Top 20 list during 2004 whose lyrics mention at least one brand name: 40


Percentage that mention weaponry: 50


Ratio of the number of U.S. troops in Iraq to the number of Iraqi resisters, as estimated by Iraq’s new director of intelligence: 3:4

Size of cash “gifts” given to reporters by Iyad Allawi’s party in January: $100


Percentage of Britons who say their neighborhood would disapprove if more Iraqi immigrants moved in: 64


Percentage who say this about black immigrants from Africa: 43

Portion of the land normally cultivated in Darfur, Sudan, that went unplanted last year: 1/2


Minimum percentage of Darfuris expected to require emergency food assistance this month: 39


Number of new doctors sub-Saharan Africa would need for its per-capita number to match America’s: 3,900,000


Number of new doctors produced by sub-Saharan Africa’s universities each year: 4,000


Number of African nations that have trade deals with China: 41


Amount that Egypt owes the United States in unpaid parking tickets: $1,700,000


Percentage that Libyan nuclear compliance “contributed” to President Bush’s reelection, according to Muammar Qaddafi: 50


Number of Web postings surveyed in 2003 and 2004 by the “Global Hatred Index”: 2,000,000


Percentage that were found to contain some degree of anti-Americanism: 35

Ratio of the number of computer viruses targeting Microsoft Windows‒based computers to those that target Macs: 1,000:1


Minimum number of songs sold on Apple’s online music store that consist entirely of silence: 291


Year that testimony to Chile’s torture commission last year can be divulged or used in court: 2054


Number of times Italy’s judges have gone on strike since 2001: 3

Minimum number of days that a Florida couple picketed their home in December to get their children to do more chores: 17


Amount that the U.S. wedding industry would gain each year if gays wed at the same rate as straights: $17,000,000,000


Amount that U.S. divorce attorneys would gain if gays also divorced at the same rate: $1,900,000,000


Number of homosexual penguins found in Japan’s aquariums and zoos last year: 46


Number of live bees spilled onto a Las Vegas highway in December: 22,400,000


Estimated percentage that were subsequently foamed to death: 100


Minimum number of snakes living in captivity in Ireland: 2,000

Number of Americans who called poison-control centers in 2003 to report rodenticide exposure: 18,545


Chances that an FDA scientist lacks confidence in the agency’s ability to monitor the safety of current drugs: 2 in 3


Average number of years by which a 2004 study found the cells of chronically stressed women to have prematurely aged: 13


Microseconds by which December’s Indian Ocean earthquake permanently shortened the length of a day: 3


Chance that a tsunami will hit the U.S. Pacific Northwest in the next thirty years: 1 in 10


Days after Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston separated in January that an Us Weekly executive called the story “our tsunami”: 4


Number of saplings that Pitt paid to have planted in Bhutan last year to counteract his personal CO2 production: 1,700


Number of plastic surgeries undergone by the winner of last year’s “Miss Artificial Beauty” pageant in China: 4


Number undergone by the runner-up: 10

Makes that 13 cents off toilet paper not seem so great.


"Estimated total federal assistance for which Wal-Mart employees were eligible last year: $2,500,000,000"