Harper’s Index

Percentage change in the average monthly price of oil during the Carter Administration: +85¹

Percentage change during the presidency of George W. Bush, before Hurricane Katrina hit this fall: +107²

Days after Katrina hit that Dick Cheney’s office ordered an electric company to restore power to two oil pipelines: 1³

Days after Hurricane Katrina that the White House authorized sending federal troops to New Orleans: 4⁴

Percentage change since January in the total value of Saudi Arabian stocks: +83⁵

Percentage discount that Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez has said he will offer poor Americans on oil and gas purchases: 40⁶

Minimum number of Americans who have signed up so far at the Venezuelan embassy in Washington: 140⁷

Salary of a new State Department job created, in Secretary Rice’s words, to “accelerate the demise” of Castro’s regime: $145,000⁸

Rank of the fugitive ex-president Alberto Fujimori among top-polling prospects for Peru’s election next year: 1⁹

Portion of imports from CAFTA nations that already avoided U.S. tariffs before the treaty: 4/5¹⁰

Percentage change, in today’s dollars, in the average U.S. price of apparel and shoes since 1995: ‒30¹¹

Price, from an online vendor, of a “Free Judith Miller” thong: $9.99¹²

Price to attend a sold-out “confidential,” “off the record” political forum with Robert Novak in September: $595¹³

Number of journalists killed in Vietnam during twenty years of war there: 63¹⁴

Number killed in Iraq since March 2003: 71¹⁵

Years after the start of the Vietnam War that a majority of Americans first said it was a “mistake”: 3 1/2¹⁶

Years after the start of the Iraq War that a majority said this: 1 1/4¹⁷

Number of volunteers who are making personalized quilts for the next of kin of all U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq: 150¹⁸

Current backlog of quilts they face: 588¹⁹

Estimated number of pro-terrorism websites worldwide in 1998 and today, respectively: 12, 4,700²⁰

Rank of the FBI among ideal employers, according to U.S. undergraduates polled in spring 2004: 138²¹

Its rank in spring 2005: 10²²

Rank of Microsoft in 2004 and 2005, respectively: 1, 8²³

Average number of new blogs created each second: 1²⁴

Number of erotic Harry Potter fan-fiction stories posted on a website run by an Illinois woman: 1,750²⁵

Average number of hits the site receives each day: 198,000²⁶

Percentage of U.S. women who own vibrators: 46²⁷

Amount Americans spent last year on “fantasy football”: $2,079,000,000²⁸

Percentage change since 2004 in the number of NFL teams that require all fans to get full pat-downs: +167²⁹

Estimated chance, worldwide, that a father is unknowingly raising another man’s child: 1 in 25³⁰

Minimum number of infants impeded from boarding airplanes because their names were on the U.S. no-fly list: 14³¹

Number of out-of-town men who posted to New Orleans’s Craigslist site seeking refugee women: 49³²

Number of women who posted for refugee men: 4³³

Percentage of homes in Orleans Parish that lacked flood insurance: 54³⁴

Years that property owners in New London, Connecticut, spent fighting the city’s seizure of their land: 5³⁵

Minimum back rent that the city, after winning in the Supreme Court, is now intending to charge them: $951,718³⁶

Number of consecutive years that the U.S. median income has failed to increase: 5³⁷

Number of consecutive years that the percentage of Americans living in poverty has increased: 4³⁸

Percentage margin by which an MTV awards-show poll for best-dressed male attendee was decided this fall: 1³⁹

Hours before polling closed that host Sean “Diddy” Combs told viewers to “vote or die”: 1.5⁴⁰

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