---Harper's Index Stats---
Average number of minutes devoted to President Bush on network evening news during each of his first 50 days in office : 9.24 Average number of minutes devoted to President Clinton during each of his first 50 days in office : 18.04 Source: Center for Media and Public Affairs (Washington)
Years after the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance-reform bill was first introduced that it passed the Senate in April : 5 Source: U.S. Government Printing Office Total amount raised at the two major-party fund-raisers held in the week before its passage : $9,500,000 Source: Democratic National Committee (Washington)/National Republican Congressional Committee (Washington)
Number of members of Congress or their staffers who failed to file a tax return or pay back taxes in 1999 : 856
Source: Internal Revenue Service (Washington)
Amount Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill earned last year as CEO of Alcoa : $56,400,000
Source: Securities and Exchange Commission (Washington) Rank of Alcoa among the worst U.S. polluters during O'Neill's tenure, according to the National Wildlife Federation : 1 Source: National Wildlife Federation (Reston, Va.)
Minimum number of accidental releases of chemicals or oil leading to deaths or injuries at U.S. work sites last year : 230 Source: National Response Center (Washington)
Percentage change since 1995 in carbon emissions by the United States and China, respectively : +6, –15
Source: World Resources Institute (Washington)
Ratio of the amount of insecticides used in the U.S. in 1945 to the amount used last year : 1:10
Estimated percentage of U.S. pre-harvest crops lost to insects in 1945 and last year, respectively : 7, 13
Source: David Pimentel, Cornell University (Ithaca, N.Y.)
Average number of food-poisoning incidents in the United States each day : 208,000
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Atlanta)
Percentage increase since last spring in European meat orders from OstrichesOnline.com : +200
Source: OstrichesOnline.com (Elmwood Park, Ill.)
Estimated number of people who tried to cross illegally into England via the Channel Tunnel each night last year : 125 Source: Eurotunnel (Folkestone, England)
Estimated number of Bosnians who have been identified from the 4,000 bags of remains from the 1995 Srebrenica massacre : 80 Source: Physicians for Human Rights (Boston)
Amount that the U.S. has given El Salvador for earthquake relief since January : $14,500,000
Source: USAID (Washington) Estimated amount that Salvadorans living in the U.S. sent home last year : $1,800,000,000 Source: Embassy of El Salvador (Washington)
Number of medical scholarships that Cuba announced it would offer U.S. minorities next year : 500
Source: Congressional Black Caucus (Washington)
Annual amount spent since 1995 to maintain a former U.S. congressional nuclear shelter as a tourist site : $500,000 Source: The Greenbrier (White Sulphur Springs, W.Va.)
Holes of golf that Japan's prime minister played after learning of February's fatal collision of a fishing boat and a U.S. sub : 3 Source: Embassy of Japan (Washington) Average duration of a Japanese prime minister's tenure since August 1993, in months : 16 Source: Embassy of Japan (Washington)/Harper's research
Estimated number of blank ballots cast in protest during Israel's national election in February : 56,000
Source: Tanya Reinhart, Tel Aviv University (Israel)
Days before the election that the Israeli supreme court rejected a request that blank ballots be counted : 4
Source: Harper's research
Amount Iraq pledged last December to support the Palestinian Intifada : $930,000,000 Amount Iraq pledged in January to aid "poor Americans" : $93,000,000 Source: Permanent Mission of Iraq to the United Nations (N.Y.C.)
Estimated number of Americans who are eligible for food stamps but have not applied : 12,400,000
Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture
Average number of pounds gained by an international student during his or her first ten weeks in the U.S. : 2
Source: David Holben, Ohio University (Athens)
Ratio of the weight of a croissant at an Au Bon Pain to that of a typical croissant at a Parisian bakery : 2:1
Source: American Institute for Cancer Research (Washington)
Ratio of per capita Ritalin use in Vermont to per capita use in California : 3:1
Source: Drug Enforcement Administration (Washington)
Concentration of over-the-counter painkillers, in parts per billion, detected in Missouri's Blue River last February : 0.98 Source: U.S. Geological Survey (Reston, Va.)
Percentage of the electrical supply of the U.S. and Canada, respectively, that is produced by dams : 10, 62
Source: National Hydropower Association (Washington)/Canadian Hydropower Association (Ottawa) Percentage of the United States' 77,000 dams that are equipped with hydroelectric generating stations : 3 Source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Performance of the Panama Canal Authority last year, on a scale of one to ten, according to its advisory board's chair : 12 Source: Panama Canal Authority (Panama)
Performance of Ricky Martin in bed, on a scale of one to ten, according to his new girlfriend : 20
Source: New York Post (N.Y.C.)
Age range in which a heterosexual U.S. man is most likely to acknowledge having once had a homosexual experience : 50–65 Age range in which a heterosexual U.S. woman is most likely to acknowledge this : 18–29 Source: Yankelovich Partners (Norwalk, Conn.)
Percentage change since 1989 in the annual number of paternity tests conducted at U.S. blood-bank-accredited labs : +262 Source: American Association of Blood Banks (Bethesda, Md.)
Number of U.S. states whose laws still refer to children born out of wedlock as "bastards" : 13
Source: American Association for Single People (Glendale, Calif.)
Number of PBS stations that aired a program called "Magnificent Lovemaking" during March fund-raising : 88
Source: KERA (Fort Worth, Tex.)
Chance that a Catholic saint named in the last 400 years was canonized by Pope John Paul II : 1 in 2
Source: Catholic Church of Norway (Oslo)
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Figures cited above have been adjusted for inflation and are the latest available as of April 2001.
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Estimated cost of fuel consumed in 1999 by U.S. drivers caught in traffic delays : $8,600,000,000
Source: Texas Transportation Institute (College Station)
Amount by which the combined profits of the world's top ten oil companies in 2000 exceeded those in 1999 : $29,000,000,000 Source: Public Citizen (Washington)
"Signing bonus" that two oil companies paid Chad in April 2000 in order to join an oil-exploration project : $25,000,000 Amount of this bonus that Chad spent on weapons, violating an International Monetary Fund agreement : $4,500,000 Source: The World Bank (Washington)
Minimum number of people who have been trampled to death at soccer matches in Africa since April : 177
Source: Harper's research
Number of U.S. major-league baseball players this year who are natives of the Dominican Republic : 79 Ratio of their combined salaries to the Dominican Republic's military expenditures last year : 2:3 Source: Harper's research
Factor by which the number of Catholics in Latin America exceeds the number in Italy : 8 Number of Catholic cardinals from Latin America and Italy, respectively : 32, 40 Source: Holy See Press Office (Vatican City)
Percentage of Americans who would allow "churches and other houses of worship" to seek federal funds for charitable work : 75 Percentage who would allow "Muslim mosques" to do so : 38 Source: The Pew Research Center (Washington)
Chances that an episode of The Simpsons contains at least one religious reference : 7 in 10
Source: John Heeren, California State University, San Bernadino
Percentage of CPR attempts depicted on television that save the patient's life : 67 Source: Dr. James Tulsky, Veterans Affairs Medical Center (Durham, N.C.) Percentage in real life that do : 15 Source: Dr. Ronald Markert, Creighton University (Omaha)
Percentage of Americans who believe they have never eaten genetically modified food : 70
Source: American Museum of Natural History (N.Y.C.) Chance that a processed food in a U.S. grocery store contains genetically modified ingredients : 1 in 2 Source: Union of Concerned Scientists (Cambridge, Mass.)
Chance that a commercial multivitamin does not contain the vitamin levels promised on its packaging : 1 in 3
Source: Consumerlab.com (Pasadena, Md.)
Estimated percentage of Tibetan children whose growth has been stunted by malnutrition : 50
Source: Terma Foundation (Half Moon Bay, Calif.)
Change, in inches, in the average height of a Japanese eleven-year-old since 1950 : +6
Source: Embassy of Japan (Washington)
Rank of cancer and suicide, respectively, among the top causes of death of Japanese bureaucrats last year : 1, 2
Source: Embassy of Japan (Washington)
Chance that a case of cancer diagnosed in the U.S. last year was a skin cancer : 1 in 2 Chance that an American will develop skin cancer in his or her lifetime : 1 in 5 Source: American Cancer Society (Atlanta)
Number of nudist clubs, resorts, and campgrounds in the U.S. : 233
Source: American Association for Nude Recreation (Kissimmee, Fla.)
Average monthly viewership of NakedNews.com, a Canadian website whose anchors strip while reading the news : 6,000,000 Source: NakedNews.com (Toronto)
Number of Russian news organizations that were sent a press release in February touting a fake company : 21 Number that offered to run an article about the company for a fee : 13
Source: Promaco Public Relations (St. Petersburg, Russia)
Estimated percentage of Mexico's thirty major newspapers that would fold without government subsidies : 90
Source: EtcŽtera (Mexico City)
Chances that a body of water in Mexico is too contaminated to swim in : 3 in 4
Source: Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources (Mexico City)
Factor by which radiation-dose levels found in the Library of Congress exceed typical levels outside a nuclear plant : 260 Source: Junkscience.com (Washington)/U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (Rockville, Md.)
Number of Coca-Cola commercials contributed to the Library of Congress last November : 20,000
Source: Library of Congress
Percentage change in the size of Colombia's coca crop since its "Plan Colombia" coca-eradication campaign began in 1999 : +11 Source: U.S. Department of State
Ratio of the total amount the U.S. spent on the Gulf War to the amount it spent last year on the drug war : 2:5 Source: Office of National Drug Control Policy/U.S. Department of Defense
Percentage of George W. Bush's first 189 appointees who also served in his father's administration : 42
Source: The Presidential Appointee Initiative (Washington)
Number of the sixteen previous Republican presidents who experienced a recession during their first term in office : 15 Source: National Bureau of Economic Research (Cambridge, Mass.)
Days after Dow Jones laid off 202 workers that its CEO published a scathing review of his Caribbean vacation : 1 Source: Dow Jones & Company (N.Y.C.)/ Harper's research
Number of General Electric employees who have the title "chief executive officer" : 51
Source: General Electric (Fairfield, Conn.)
Average amount that workers in one El Salvador factory are paid for each $12.99 Gap T-shirt they sew : 11.6¢
Source: National Labor Committee (N.Y.C.)
Percentage of Americans living below the poverty line who believe that "poor people today have it easy" : 31
Source: The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation (Menlo Park, Calif.)
Percentage change, since January, in the stock price of 99¢ Only Stores : +65
Source: Harper's research
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Figures cited have been adjusted for inflation and are the latest available as of May 2001.
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