Harper’s Index

Average amount an American earning at least $250,000 would pay to find “true love”: $487,000

Average amount that he or she would pay to become president: $55,000

Percentage of Americans who believe that “adultery can sometimes be good for a marriage”: 22

Percentage change in the annual number of federal indictments of elected officials since Watergate: +291

Number of the 524 subpoenas issued in Rep. Dan Burton's campaign-finance investigation that have gone to Republicans: 9

Number of Congress members who attended a Capitol Hill hearing last March on the genocide of Muslims in Bosnia: 4

Years after the Rwandan massacre that President Clinton admitted “we did not act quickly enough”: 4

Amount by which U.S. exports to sub-Saharan Africa last year exceeded those to former Soviet countries: $1,504,000,000

Number of times since 1991 that Boris Yeltsin has replaced a cabinet member: 124

Change since January in the membership of the U.S. Communist Party: +4,000

Year in which General Eisenhower said that NATO “will have failed” if U.S. troops were in Europe a decade later: 1951

Year in which all mobile-phone companies will be federally required to be able to locate callers to within 125 feet: 2002

Portion of all research time on government supercomputers granted in 1996 that went to military scientists: 1/2

Portion that will go to military scientists this year: 5/6

Amount by which NASA is over budget on its international space station: $3,900,000,000

Percentage change since 1993 in U.S. sales of manual push mowers: +150

Percentage of the poverty level for a family of three earned by a full-time minimum-wage worker: 82

Percentage of the 1968 poverty level earned by a minimum-wage worker that year: 111

Number of cities that require companies receiving public funds to pay a “living wage” above the federal legal minimum: 11

Percentage change in the number of Texans favoring the death penalty since the execution of Karla Faye Tucker: -21

Ratio of California prison jobs created between 1984 and 1994 to state jobs in higher education cut during that time: 3:1

Ratio of applicants to slots for DigiPen Institute's new degree program in video-game design and computer animation: 10:1

Number of artificial reefs planned for construction worldwide to facilitate surfing: 4

Number of days last winter that Lake Champlain was officially Great: 18

Ratio of the size of Lake Ontario to the size of the Gulf of Mexico's polluted “dead zone”: 1:1

Ratio of the size of New Jersey to the number of square miles of Brazilian rain forest cleared since 1994: 1:3

Number of jars of Exxon Valdez oil sludge sold by the state of Alaska since last November to help pay cleanup costs: 850

Percentage change since 1996 in Amway sales in China: +183

Total value of all Japanese capital held in no-interest savings accounts or cash: $5,544,889,025,400

Number of institutions that are on a “higher moral ground” than the World Bank, according to its president: 0

Amount the Bank spent last year to gild the ceilings of its Washington headquarters: $400,000

Number of people killed worldwide last year by pirates: 51

Number of cars broken into by bears last year at Yosemite National Park: 889

Rank of ER among prime-time TV shows that are most popular with African-American viewers: 19

Percentage of African-Americans who wish Bill Clinton could run for a third term: 74

Percentage of white Americans who say this: 34

Number of people besides Al Gore who called the Washington Post last March to point out an “upside-down” Earth photo: 0

Milliseconds by which El Niño's drag on the Earth's rotation last year extended each day's average length: .04

Estimated number of calls made to Californian Al Nino since last year by people asking, “Why are you doing this?”: 100

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