Harper’s Index

Amount the Pentagon will spend this year on its Ballistic Missile Defense or “star wars” program: $4,166,000,000

Amount the world has spent since 1977 on licensed Star Wars merchandise: $4,500,000,000

Number of the Pentagon's 9 Stealth bombers that have ever been deployed in combat: 0

Additional number of bombers that are being built: 12

Expenditures for which the Pentagon could not account last year: $22,000,000,000

Number of federally maintained bridges of which the Department of Transportation has no record: 4,770

Chance that the annual median flow of an unfettered U.S. stream is greater than it was 50 years ago: 1 in 3

Estimated percentage of coral reefs in the Indian Ocean killed by rising sea temperatures last year: 85

Chance that an American believes a manmade disaster will destroy civilization in the next century: 1 in 2

Estimated percentage of all AIDS deaths since 1980 that took place in Africa: 83

Number of people who died in police custody in South Africa last year: 758

Maximum number reported to have died in custody during any year under apartheid: 200

Settlement paid 3 female federal inmates last year after guards sold them as sex slaves to male prisoners: $500,000

Number of the 9 prison employees named in the women's lawsuit who were charged with a crime: 0

Chance that an American born today will spend time in jail: 1 in 20

Chance that a Mexican gray wolf released into the Arizona wilderness last spring has been shot: 1 in 2

Estimated change since 1997 in attendance at America's top 50 theme parks: -2,000,000

Estimated attendance at a rally for debt relief for poor countries held outside Britain's 1998 G-7 summit: 60,000

Percentage of Chile's spending on its privatized pension system that goes toward administration: 13

Percentage of spending last year on the U.S. Social Security system that did: 1

Factor by which U.S. stock market growth must exceed GDP growth for Social Security stock investment to work: 5

Number of years since 1900 in which this has occurred: 13

Change in the value of Ross Perot's portfolio on the day one of his companies went public last February: +$882,112,600

Number of U.S. companies and groups licensed to sell merchandise bearing the Vatican's Jubilee 2000 logo: 31

Chance that a U.S. abortion clinic suffered a severely violent attack from protesters last year: 1 in 4

Number of Ivy League egg “donors” that Options Fertility Registry's school newspaper ads have found since 1997: 18

Percentage of Iceland's gene pool to which Decode Genetics plans to acquire exclusive commercial rights this year: 100

Number of farmers that Monsanto has investigated for “seed piracy” since 1997: 500

Number of times a Florida Fox-TV station asked 2 reporters to rewrite a news story on Monsanto in 1997: 83

Amount the station offered the reporters to quit their jobs and keep silent after the news story was killed: $151,250

Ratio of Americans who say they trust TV news magazines to those who say they trust print news magazines: 2:1

Ratio of those who say they trust local TV news to those who say they trust C-Span: 2:1

Miles per hour at which a New York TV station clocked a police van driving Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to lunch last year: 75

Portion of Yankee Stadium tickets for last year's World Series games that were available to the public: 1/6

Portion of Senate gallery seats during the impeachment trial last winter that were: 1/8

Distance in miles between the Stanford dorm room of Chelsea Clinton and that of Carolyn Starr, daughter of Kenneth: 0.7

Length, in pages, of the letter Linda Tripp distributed last winter soliciting donations to her legal defense fund: 12

Number of Americans who have made a donation: 20,000

Maximum number of pages of tax forms an American was required to fill out in 1913: 3

Number of pages of instructions provided: 1

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