Harper’s Index

Number of years that President Clinton's private lawyer David Kendall has vetted articles for the National Enquirer : 15

Chance that a U.S. newspaper publisher believes that coverage of important news is often “shallow and inadequate”: 1 in 2

Chance that a U.S. newspaper publisher voted for Bob Dole in 1996: 1 in 2

Rank of “enemies” and the President, among people usually prayed for by Americans who say they pray: 4,5

Ratio of non-Americans to Americans killed in U.S.-embassy bombings since 1983: 10:1

Ratio of civilian U.N. workers killed in the line of duty this year to soldiers killed in U.N. peacekeeping operations: 5:2

Number of assault weapons the Defense Department gave away to foreign governments last year: 50,000

Number of grenade launchers: 10,000

Number of consecutive intercept tests failed by the Army's $15 billion high-altitude anti-missile system: 5

Years behind schedule the system's research-and-development program is running: 3.5

Hours it took two men last July to win a contest to decode the federal government's data-scrambling system: 56

Amount Microsoft offers any computer-science professor who mentions its programs in an academic presentation: $200

Chance that a president of one of the nation's 50 top-ranked universities serves on at least one corporate board: 1 in 2

Estimated number of U.S. high school students enrolled in first-year Latin classes last year: 88,600

Number in 1962: 700,000

Estimated number of Catholic priests accused of sexual assault in the U.S. since 1978: 3,000

Estimated amount U.S. Roman Catholic dioceses have paid to victims of sexual assault since 1980: $800,000,000

Number of “Assault Recovery” insurance policies sold to school employees in the last year: 207

Price of a set of How to Build Your Own Casket instructions, from Homemade Caskets of California: $19.50

Price of a trench coat with a cell-phone-emission-proof pocket, from Barneys New York: $595

Number of fishing rods and tackle boxes that can be checked out of Georgia's Tybee Island public library: 25

Average price of one of the 200 cabins reserved for a Caribbean cruise next December by The Nation magazine: $2,800

Estimated average hourly earnings of each of the cruise ship's Indonesian crew members: $2.47

Number of slave laborers that Volkswagen admits to having used in one of its factories during World War II: 17,000

Pounds of gold jewelry and dental fillings amassed during wartime by a single SS officer: 1,640

Total bad debt Japan estimates is held by its banks, expressed as a percentage of its GDP: 17.5

Total bad debt held by American S&Ls in 1988, expressed as a percentage of U.S. GDP that year: 3.2

Percentage change since 1995 in Mexico's spending on its bank bailout: +705

Rank of General Motors, among the largest private employers in Mexico: 1

Estimated U.S. taxes that multinational corporations legally avoided this year by using foreign accounts: $10,100,000,000

Number of calls made last year to the Social Security Administration's fraud hotline: 75,000

Amount recovered as a result: $55,900

Chance that a California nursing home has been cited for violations “causing death or life-threatening harm” to patients: 1 in 3

Percentage by which HMO Kaiser Permanente estimates that covering Viagra would drive up its pharmacy costs: 10

Average percentage points by which a male sports fan's testosterone level rises when his team wins: 20

Average points by which it falls when they lose: 20

Rank of meeting the Spice Girls among the “greatest moments of my life” according to Prince Charles: 1

Minimum amount of salsa that USDA regulations allow a public school to offer as a serving of vegetables, in tablespoons: 2

Number of Taco Bell franchises that are owned by the U.S. schools in which they operate: 250

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