Harper's Index

[Dr. Rosenpenis]

Harper's Index is a list of revealing statistics published in every issue of Harper's magazine, one of America's best progressive publications.
The index is available at harpers.org a few weeks after its publication. I'll post the latest available Harper's index here.

Harper's Index for November 2004
Posted on Wednesday, December 1, 2004.

Chance that a Republican president has not won the popular vote : 1 in 6 [Jimmy Carter Library & Museum (Atlanta) ]

Chance that a Democratic president has not : 0 [Jimmy Carter Library & Museum (Atlanta) ]

Number of New York voters who are also registered in Florida : 46,000 [New York Daily News (N.Y.C.) ]

Deadline for completion of the first federally mandated national list of registered voters : 2006 [Board of Elections (Albany, N.Y.) ]

Number of states in which voters can cast ballots in advance by mail or in person without providing a reason : 30 [helpingamericansvote.org (Washington) ]

Number of states with such a policy in 1996 : 11 [helpingamericansvote.org (Washington)]

Ratio of hours of live U.S.-convention coverage per U.S. network this year to hours of live coverage on Al Jazeera : 1:2 [Harper's Research]

Number of dead bodies pictured in the New York Times during the first week of September : 16.5 [Harper's Research ]

Number of countries they represented : 5 [Harper's Research]

Chances that one of them died in Iraq : 2 in 3 [Harper's Research ]

Number of U.S. soldiers returned from Iraq in the last year who have been diagnosed with mental-health problems : 5,375 [Department of Veterans Affairs (Washington) ]

Ratio of suicides worldwide in 2001 to war deaths : 7:2 [World Health Organization (Geneva, Switzerland)]

Ratio of Americans killed by lightning since January 2002 to those killed by terrorism : 3:2 [National Weather Service (Silver Spring, Md.)/U.S. Department of State Counterterrorism Office (Washington)]

Factor by which the annual number of Sahara dust storms has increased in the last 50 years : 10 [Andrew Goudie (Oxford, England) ]

Minimum number of customers trampled to death in September at the opening of a Saudi Arabian Ikea : 2 [Ghasson A. Al-Sulaiman Co. Ltd. (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia)]

Percentage of Britons over the age of 50 who have hurt themselves attempting to open product packaging : 71 [De Vere Media (Hampshire, England)]

Estimated number of Afghans who died in last year’s pistachio harvest : 50 [Afghan Non-Governmental Organization Security Office (Kabul, Afghanistan)]

Number of restaurants in Guizhou, China, closed in April for adding opium to their dishes : 215 [Guizhou Provincial Bureau of Public Security (Guiyang, China)]

Number of U.S. McDonald’s franchises whose drive-through order taking has been outsourced to another state : 2 [McDonald's Corporation (Chicago)]

Average number of seconds by which orders placed at these franchises are processed more quickly than at others : 30 [McDonald's Corporation (Chicago) ]

Price paid on eBay last November for two bottles of turkey-and-gravy soda : $63 [eBay Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) ]

Distance in feet traveled by the winning pumpkin at Delaware’s Punkin Chunkin Competition last year : 4,434.28 [Bruce Bradford (Howell, Mich.) ]

Length in feet of the barrel of “The Second Amendment” pumpkin cannon from which it was shot : 150 [Bruce Bradford (Howell, Mich.) ]

Maximum number of rounds a semi-automatic rifle may hold to be considered legal in New Jersey : 15 [Evan F. Nappen (Eatontown, N.J.)]

Maximum number allowed by the recently lifted federal ban on assault rifles : 10 [Evan F. Nappen (Eatontown, N.J.) ]

Minimum number of Californians serving a life sentence for cheating on a driving exam : 1 [Citizens Against Violent Crime (Santa Ana, Calif.)]

Percentage of judges nominated by George W. Bush since 2000 who have been confirmed by the Senate : 89 [Office of Senator Patrick Leahy (Washington) ]

Last year in which there was as low a federal judicial vacancy rate as in 2004 : 1984 [Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (Washington) ]

Percentage by which John Ashcroft cut the number of judgeships on the federal Board of Immigration Appeals in 2002 : 50 [U.S. Department of Justice Executive Office for Immigration Review (Falls Church, Va.) ]

Percentage change from 2000 to 2003 in the number of immigration appeals sent to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court : +355 [United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (San Francisco) ]

Estimated chance that a classified document is “over-classified,” according to a Pentagon official this year : 1 in 2 [Carol A. Haave (Washington)]

Years since U.S. law began defining aborted fetuses with “pulsation of the umbilical cord” as legal persons : 2.5 (see page 44) [Harper's Research]

Rank of antidepressants and anti-ulcer drugs among the best-selling prescription drugs worldwide last year : 3,2 [IMS Health (Plymouth Meeting, Pa.) ]

Rank of cholesterol-lowering drugs : 1 [IMS Health (Plymouth Meeting, Pa.)]

Percentage change between 2002 and 2003 in the number of U.S. buttock-augmentation surgeries : +533 [The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (N.Y.C.)]

Weight in pounds of a “millionaire” seeking “Cinderella” in a New York magazine personal ad last summer : 444 [New York magazine (N.Y.C.) ]

Days after the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that Dick Cheney married, securing a draft deferment : 22 [Office of Lynne Cheney (Washington)]

Price charged on Amazon.com this year for Lynne Cheney’s out-of-print lesbian historical novel, Sisters : $1,000 [Amazon.com, Inc. (Seattle) ]

Number of U.S. newspaper editorials and op-eds published this year that included the phrase “pot calling the kettle black” : 16

[FatFreeMilk]

Number of American states in which one may legally shoot fish with a semi-automatic rifle : 2 [The Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department (Waterbury) ]

Record number of skips achieved by a stone skipper : 40 [Guinness Book of World Records 2004]

Seconds by which this year’s winner of the men’s Olympic 400-meter dash was faster than the winner of the women’s : 5.81 [Ray Stefani, California State University, Long Beach ]

Umm, some of these numbers are interesting but what purpose could they serve besides for magazines like Cosmo or FHM to publish as conversation starters?

If CSULB would admit a guy like Ray Stefani, then they better accept me.

:(
Chance that a southern Sudanese girl will complete primary school : 1 in 100 [United States Fund for UNICEF (N.Y.C.) ]

[Non-Sectarian Bastard!]

Oh my allah

It would be better to create a thread with handy links in it. This as a sticky is pretty useless.

[Dr. Rosenpenis]

Harper's Index for October 2004
Posted on Wednesday, November 10, 2004.

Days since the U.S. government first placed the nation under an “elevated terror alert” that the level has been relaxed : 0 [U.S. Department of Homeland Security ]

Years of “elevated” or “high” terror alerts since then : 2 [U.S. Department of Homeland Security ]

Aid that U.S. leaflets dropped on Fallujah in July threatened to freeze if insurgent attacks continued : $102,000,000 [Coalition Press Center (Baghdad) ]

Number of insurgent attacks in Fallujah in the week before and after the leafletting, respectively : 21, 36 [Coalition Press Center (Baghdad) ]

Compensation the U.S. government has paid Iraqis for wrongful deaths, injuries, and property damage since 2002 : $4,475,643 [Coalition Press Center (Baghdad) ]

Total “death gratuities” the U.S. government has paid since then to survivors of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq : $11,436,000 [Air Force Personnel Center (Randolph AFB, Tex.)/Harper’s research ]

Total amount Ohio’s crime-victims compensation fund has paid the survivors of one U.S. soldier killed in Iraq : $5,656.77 [Ohio Attorney General (Columbus) ]

Maximum percentage income- and corporate-tax rate under laws made for Iraqis by the Coalition Provisional Authority : 15 [International Trade Administration (Washington) ]

Days a House committee postponed July hearings on antidepressants while its chair considered a pharmaceutical-lobbyist job : 50 [Congressman Jim Greenwood’s Office (Washington) ]

Number of the 5 Republicans investigating Rep. Tom DeLay on ethics charges who have taken donations from his PAC : 4 [Federal Election Commission (Washington) ]

Number of Ohio election boards being sued over erroneously informing parolees that they may not vote : 21 [Prison Reform Advocacy Center (Cincinnati) ]

Number of banks robbed in Davenport, Iowa, while John Kerry and George Bush gave speeches there on August 4 : 3 [Davenport Police Department (Davenport, Iowa) ]

Estimated number of right-wing Jewish extremists Israel monitors as potential threats to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon : 300 [Consulate General of Israel (N.Y.C.) ]

Years after leaving his post during the Vietnam War that a Connecticut man was arrested for desertion in July : 34 [Bridgeport Park Police (Bridgeport, Conn.) ]

Minimum number of Guantánamo detainees who boycotted their military tribunals in August : 13 [U.S. Department of Defense ]

Average number of kidnappings per week in Iraq since March : 5 [The Brookings Institution (Washington) ]

Number of non-Iraqis detained there by U.S. forces in the last year : 400 [Coalition Press Center (Baghdad) ]

Ratio of the minimum number of beheadings by the Saudi government last year to those by Saudi terrorists so far this year : 50:1 [U.S. State Department/Amnesty International (N.Y.C.) ]

Date on which Turkmenistan added questions on the president’s spiritual writings to its driver’s-license test : 6/12/04 [BBC Monitoring International Newswire, August 3, 2004/Neytralnyy Turkmenistan ]

Percentage of Mississippians who have failed their written driver’s-license test since it became computerized last year : 60 [Automated Drivers License Testing System (Jackson, Miss.) ]

Chance that a new light vehicle bought in the United States last year was a truck or SUV : 1 in 2 [Environmental Protection Agency (Washington) ]

Minimum number of U.S. children killed since 1998 as a result of heat stroke after being left locked in cars : 219 [Jan Null, Department of Geosciences, San Francisco State University ]

Rank of last year among those in which the largest number of children died this way : 1 [Jan Null, Department of Geosciences, San Francisco State University ]

Square miles of surface areas between Canada and Mexico that are impervious to water : 112,610 [American Geophysical Union (Washington) ]

Square miles of wetlands : 98,460 [American Geophysical Union (Washington) ]

Rank of this year’s desert-locust plague in northern Africa among the world’s worst in 15 years : 1 [U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (Rome) ]

Number of countries susceptible to such a plague : 65 [U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (Rome) ]

Chance that a southern Sudanese woman will die in childbirth : 1 in 9 [United States Fund for UNICEF (N.Y.C.) ]

Chance that a southern Sudanese girl will complete primary school : 1 in 100 [United States Fund for UNICEF (N.Y.C.) ]

Projected lifespan in years of a Zimbabwean born in 1989 and one born in 2002, respectively : 60, 34 [U.N. Human Development Report Office (N.Y.C.) ]

Number of its international workers that Doctors Without Borders has lost to political violence in its 34-year history : 8 [Doctors Without Borders (N.Y.C.) ]

Number of them killed in Afghanistan in June : 3 [Doctors Without Borders (N.Y.C.) ]

Number of American states in which one may legally shoot fish with a semi-automatic rifle : 2 [The Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department (Waterbury) ]

Record number of skips achieved by a stone skipper : 40 [Guinness Book of World Records 2004]

Seconds by which this year’s winner of the men’s Olympic 400-meter dash was faster than the winner of the women’s : 5.81 [Ray Stefani, California State University, Long Beach ]

Seconds difference in 1972 : 6.42 [Ray Stefani, California State University, Long Beach ]

Factor by which the number of U.S. girls under 19 who got breast implants last year exceeded the number who did in 2002 : 3 [The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (N.Y.C.) ]

Price a haunted-house supplier charges for a male figure “being tortured like never before,” flesh-ripping sounds included : $2,295 [Halloween Productions, Inc. (St. Louis) ]

Estimated price a British cable company will charge for a kit to track “evidence of the paranormal” via the Internet : £150

[somebodywhowantedtoleaveandnotcomeback]

Originally posted by [email protected] 21 2004, 10:50 PM
Number of restaurants in Guizhou, China, closed in April for adding opium to their dishes : 215 [Guizhou Provincial Bureau of Public Security (Guiyang, China)]
Wtf? :lol: