Harper’s Index

Average annual amount the U.S. will spend on nuclear-arms programs through the year 2008: $4,500,000,000

Average annual U.S. spending on nuclear-arms programs during the Cold War: $3,700,000,000

Portion of the Defense Department's “critical” computer systems that are not vulnerable to the year 2000 bug: 1/3

Percentage change since 1991 in total Microsoft contributions to the Democratic and Republican parties: +460

Percentage change since then in Microsoft contributions to the Republican Party alone: +1,863

Ratio of political contributions made last year by the consumer-credit industry to those made by tobacco companies: 4:3

Percentage of Americans who are in favor of outlawing cigarettes: 23

Estimated amount Americans spent on marijuana last year, according to the federal government: $7,000,000,000

Minimum amount federal, state, and local governments spent combatting marijuana, according to NORML: $7,500,000,000

Chance that a caller to the government's cancer-information line gets a busy signal or is put on hold until they hang up: 1 in 3

Chance that a cancer patient in a nursing home over the age of 85 does not receive adequate pain medication: 1 in 3

Estimated number of American senior citizens who played tackle football last year: 47,000

Percentage of full-time U.S. undergraduates who are over the age of 22: 36

Percentage of U.S. universities that use student evaluations as a factor in granting tenure: 88

Percentage that did this in 1973: 23

Days a Denver school principal was put on leave last May for allowing students a sip of wine on a trip to Paris: 13

Average number of public school students expelled each school day last year for gun possession: 34

Chance that a U.S. public high school has at least one police officer stationed there full-time: 1 in 5

Chance that a police officer killed in the line of duty in the last ten years was shot with his own gun: 1 in 6

Percentage change since 1995 in U.S. sales of merchandise featuring The Three Stooges: +300

Price of a gold-plated crucifix pendant with a built-in alarm, from Britain's Avon Silversmiths: $414

Number of people in Salt Lake City converted to Southern Baptism during a one-week evangelism drive last June: 1,717

Percentage of Jerusalem's Jewish population that is ultra-Orthodox: 30

Percentage of Jerusalem's Jewish kindergarteners who are: 52

Percentage of all girls' school facilities in Afghanistan's Taliban territories shut down since 1996: 100

Estimated number of the territories' home-schooling programs for girls shut down last June: 100

Number of beds in Japan's Ichihara Prison for dangerous drivers: 420

Ratio of miles of logging and other roads in U.S. national forests to the total length of the interstate highway system: 8:1

Percentage of U.S. National Park Service land that is in Alaska: 65

Number of months since January that have not broken a record for average global heat: 0

Percentage change since 1996 in the income of North Dakota farmers: -98

Ratio of the average price of a gallon of gas last year to the average price of a gallon of milk: 1:2

Ratio of the price of an ounce of the AIDS drug Crixivan to the price of an ounce of gold: 1:1

Amount that Bear, Stearns' chairman donated to a New York hospital last June to sponsor Viagra for the poor: $1,000,000

Chance that an American would characterize the President's alleged affair with Monica Lewinsky as “harassment”: 1 in 10

Minimum estimated total public spending on investigations by independent counsels since 1978: $144,000,000

Number of years an independent counsel has been investigating Ronald Reagan's Department of Housing: 8

Number of air-traffic controllers ordered to take a two-hour “refresher” course last spring: 10,000

Number of times last June that air-traffic controllers lost track of the altitude or speed of Air Force I or II: 4

Year by which Dan Quayle says he's convinced that Republicans “will select a nominee that will beat Bill Clinton”: 2000

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