Harper's Index, January, 2002
Bonnie,
Here's the complete list. Some of these are quite interesting.
harpers.org
January 2002
Last year in which Americans' confidence in the federal government "to do what is right" was as high as it is today : 1968
Last day on which a total tally of those detained in U.S. terrorism investigations was released to the public : 11/2
Number of the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights that are violated by the USA PATRIOT Act, according to the ACLU : 5
Number of U.S. colleges and universities that were asked by law enforcement to release student information last fall : 220
Percentage that released the students' information without informing them : 90
Amount the Pentagon paid a private company last fall for exclusive access to satellite pictures of Afghanistan : $3,800,000
Estimated number of U.S. sorties flown in Iraqi no-fly zones last year : 10,000
Gallons of concentrated anthrax that Iraq has admitted to producing as a biological weapon : 2,245
Number of biological materials with military potential sent to Iraq by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in the 1980s : 14
Minimum number of the ten biological materials suspected in Iraqi warfare research that were supplied by U.S. firms : 9
Number of mock biological attacks with live bacteria carried out domestically by the U.S. Army between 1949 and 1969 : 199
Year in which the Army released bacteria into New York City's subway system : 1966
Percentage of Navy recruits from the New York City area last year who were green-card holders : 40
Change since 2000 in the percentage of Latin Americans who say they prefer democracy to other forms of government : -12
Change since then in the percentage who feel "confident" in the Catholic Church : -5
Percentage of U.S. Jews who rank the separation of church and state among the top reasons for the country's success : 86
Percentage of the total U.S. population who believe this : 61
Percentage of Americans who believe that the theory of human evolution is "probably" or "definitely" not true : 47
Percentage who believe that the tenets of astrology "probably" or "definitely" have some scientific truth : 48
Number of years after being executed as witches that six Massachusetts women were exonerated last fall : 309
Months after Element 118 was added to a textbook's periodic table last year that its discovery was invalidated : 4
Rank of "serendipity" among words most often queried on Cambridge Dictionaries Online last October : 1 (see page 24)
Year in which the word was coined from the Persian fairy tale "The Three Princes of Serendip" : 1754
Percentage of U.S. college students who say they intend to pursue a foreign language : 57
Percentage who are actually enrolled in a foreign-language course : 8
Number of nations that got less than ten minutes' coverage on U.S. network evening news in the 1990s : 88 (see page 92)
Ratio of minutes devoted to Afghanistan in the 1990s to those devoted to it in three weeks last fall : 1:1
Minimum number of Saudis who have been trained in Al-Qaeda camps : 5,000
Ratio of the number of U.S. soldiers killed by hostile fire since 1990 to the number who have committed suicide : 1:5
Percentage change since 1999 in the number of bankruptcies of companies with liabilities of more than $1 billion : +106
Amount of debt carried by New York City's government, per resident, before September 11 : $5,066
Ratio of natural disasters necessitating help from outside the immediate region in the 1990s to those in the 1970s : 2:1
Pounds of dust blown into the air each year worldwide, per capita : 769
Number of days that E. coli bacteria can survive on polyurethane plastic : 15
Last year for which General Accounting Office data on U.S. baggage screeners was not classified as "sensitive" : 1987
Chance that a potentially dangerous item was missed by screeners that year, according to the GAO : 1 in 5
Minimum number of Winter Olympics volunteers who were rejected last fall after a criminal background check : 273
Number of cases of Polygamy Porter sold by a Utah brewery since October : 1,000
Number of Pop-Tarts dropped on Afghanistan as part of U.S. airborne food aid in the first month of bombing : 2,400,000
Number of knee bends that a 59-year-old Ukrainian woman performed last fall to protest U.S. attacks on Afghanistan : 1,101 |
