EXPAND YOUR MIND: Harper's Index for November 2003
harpers.org
Posted on Wednesday, December 3, 2003.
Last year in which a quarterly rise in U.S. military spending was greater than the one last spring: 1951 [Bureau of Economic Analysis (Washington)]
Total U.S. military spending the Bush Administration projects it will have spent by the end of 2008: $3,200,000,000,000 [Office of Management and Budget (Washington)]
Total U.S. military spending between 1941 and 1948: $3,100,000,000,000 [Office of Management and Budget (Washington)]
Number of banks and suppliers that Gulf War veterans are suing for aiding Iraq’s purchases of weapons and chemicals: 44 [Pitts & Associates (Houston, Tex.)]
Percentage by which the Defense Department proposed cutting its budget this year by closing its Peacekeeping Institute: 0.001 [U.S. Army War College (Carlisle, Pa.)]
Ratio of the institute’s budget to the estimated price of Jennifer Lopez’s engagement ring: 3:4 [Harper’s research]
First year in which the definition of “turkey” in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary went beyond fowl: 1949 [Merriam-Webster, Inc. (Springfield, Mass.)]
Grams by which the amount of fat in McDonald’s fattiest salad exceeds that in its fattiest burger: 3 [McDonald’s (Oak Brook, Ill.)]
Percentage change since 2000 in the number of U.S. surgeries performed each year to treat morbid obesity: +178 [American Society for Bariatric Surgery (Gainesville, Fla.)]
Number of Florida high school students who take physical-education courses online: 1,204 [Florida Virtual School (Orlando)]
Minimum number of facts and rules with which a computer must be programmed to have common sense: 200,000,000 [Cycorp (Austin, Tex.)]
Number of companies that control the U.S. voting-technology market: 3 [Election Data Services (Washington)]
Percentage of votes cast in U.S. elections last year that were counted by the largest voting-technology firm: 52 [Election Systems & Software (Omaha)]
Campaign contributions that one voting-technology CEO raised to become a Bush “Pioneer” this year: $100,000 [Bush-Cheney ’04, Inc. (Arlington, Va.)]
Number of Democrats among the 10 largest political donors since 1991: 9 [Center for Responsive Politics (Washington)]
Average percentage of the Jewish vote won by the Democratic presidential candidate in the 1980s: 59 [Voter News Service (Brooklyn)]
Average percentage since then: 79 [Voter News Service (Brooklyn)]
Square feet of Israeli roads under construction in the 1990s per Israeli: 57 [Adva Center (Tel Aviv)]
Square feet of roads under construction in the occupied territories in the 1990s per settler: 185 [Adva Center (Tel Aviv)]
Percentage of the White House’s proposed Afghanistan spending in 2004 devoted to reconstruction: 3 [U.S. Agency for International Development (Washington)]
Cotton-subsidy reparations proposed by four African countries at the WTO’s Cancún meeting this fall: $250,000,000 [World Trade Organization (Geneva)]
Amount by which federal subsidies to U.S. cotton farmers last crop-year exceeded 2001’s U.S. cotton sales: $300,000,000 [U.S. Department of Agriculture/Oxfam America (Washington)]
Amount that energy companies’ market manipulation cost California consumers between 2000 and 2001 per capita: $260 [California Independent System Operator (Folsom, Calif.)/U.S. Census Bureau (Washington)]
Amount California has received per capita in energy-company settlements since then: $2.60 Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (Washington)/U.S. Census Bureau (Washington)]
Years it took the U.S. Geological Survey to conclude that Arctic refuge drilling would substantially reduce caribou: 12 [U.S. Geological Survey (Juneau, Alaska)]
Days after announcing this conclusion last July that the Geological Survey issued a memo discounting it: 7 [U.S. Geological Survey (Juneau, Alaska)]
Years of study it took the EPA to conclude in August that it is not responsible for regulating CO2 emissions: 3 [Environmental Protection Agency (Washington)]
Last year in which visits to U.S. national parks increased: 1999 [National Park Service (Washington)]
Number of people per mobile-phone line in the United States: 2 [Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (Washington)]
Number of people per sauna in Finland: 2.5 [Embassy of Finland (Washington)]
Number of tortoises that died of heat exhaustion at the Glasgow Zoo in one day last August: 7 [Glasgow Zoo (Scotland)]
Age in years of a California bristlecone pine that is the oldest tree on earth: 4,733 [U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service]
Age in years of a Nevada bristlecone when the U.S. Forest Service let a graduate student cut it down in 1964: 4,950 [U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service]
Rank of the World Wildlife Fund among organizations most trusted by Europeans and Americans, respectively: 2, 8 [Edelman (N.Y.C.)]
Rank of Coca-Cola: 8, 2 [Edelman (N.Y.C.)]
Number of sequels to The Gods Must Be Crazy in which its star N!xau appeared before his death last July: 3 [Boet Troskie, Mimosa Films (Bloemfontein, South Africa)]
Amount that a Louisiana preacher paid white people to integrate his Sunday services last August, per person: $5 [Greenwood Acres Full Gospel Baptist Church (Shreveport, La.)]
Price of admission to the World’s Fair of Money held last August in Baltimore: $0 [American Numismatic Association (Colorado Springs)]
Attendance at last year’s largest annual conference on “establishing the truth behind” JFK’s assassination: 165 [JFK Lancer, Inc. (Dallas)]
Minimum number of such conferences held worldwide each year: 3 [University of Rhode Island (Kingston)] |
