Harper’s Index

Number of the 614 arrests of protesters at last year's presidential conventions that have led to criminal convictions: 4¹

Number of last year's top ten soft-money donors that contributed to both major parties: 6²

Average annual number of male clients served in America in 1999 by each female prostitute: 694³

Rank of repetitive motion among factors that correlate with forearm pain among workers: 2⁴

Rank of dissatisfaction with the level of "support from supervisors or colleagues": 1⁵

Number of British doctors who visited Cuba last March to study its health-care system: 115⁶

Ratio of Britain's per capita health-care spending to that of Cuba: 11:1⁷

Ratio of public housing units built in Jewish communities in Israel since 1975 to those built in Arab communities: 337:1⁸

Number of land mines per square mile left behind in southern Lebanon by Israeli forces when they withdrew last May: 376⁹

Amount the U.S. Army plans to pay the entertainment industry this year to develop training videos for combat: $45,000,000¹⁰

Total number of hours spent on congressional hearings investigating violence in entertainment since May 1999: 16¹¹

Percentage of FDA advisory meetings since 1998 in which at least one attendee had a financial conflict of interest: 92¹²

Amount Florida state employees donated to the Bush campaign last year for every dollar they donated to Gore: $4.92¹³

Percentage change since 1990 in corporate contributions to Japan's political parties: –68¹⁴

Hours during which free speech is permitted in Singapore's Hong Lim Park: 7 a.m.–7 p.m.¹⁵

Change since 1981 in minutes per day devoted to homework by Americans between nine and eleven years old: +9¹⁶

Average age of a new U.S. grandparent in 1999: 47¹⁷

Chance that an American who visited an emergency room for a shuffleboard injury that year was a senior citizen: 1 in 2¹⁸

Estimated number of Americans who have ever belonged to a nonprofessional self-help group: 25,000,000¹⁹

Estimated number of Americans imprisoned in prolonged solitary confinement: 20,000²⁰

Number of studies showing that the death penalty is a deterrent, according to Attorney General Janet Reno: 0²¹

Chance that the murder rate in a death-penalty state was lower in 1998 than the national average: 1 in 2²²

Chances that the rate in a state without the death penalty was lower than the national average: 5 in 6²³

Years that Mexico spent fighting a Texas death sentence given one of its citizens before his execution last fall: 9²⁴

Years that the United States spent fighting Lori Berenson's life sentence in Peru before she won a retrial last fall: 5²⁵

Percentage of the U.S. budget devoted to foreign developmental aid in 1962 and 2000, respectively: 3, 0.5²⁶

Ratio of Zambia's foreign-debt payments in 1999 to what it is projected to pay this year under proposed debt relief: 2:3²⁷

Percentage of the G-8 countries' combined military budgets it would take to halve the world's TB cases by 2010: 0.4²⁸

Ratio of New York City residents who died of West Nile virus in 1999 to those who died of pneumonia or influenza: 1:619²⁹

Number of laws or provisions that require U.S. oil companies to produce more heating oil in response to a shortage: 0³⁰

Percentage of Kuwait's freshwater supply still contaminated with oil spilled by Iraqi forces during the Gulf War: 40³¹

Percentage change in the maximum size of the ozone hole between 1999 and 2000: +17³²

Factor by which the mass of a black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy exceeds the mass of the sun: 2,600,000³³

Ratio of the record distance for human space flight to the maximum distance depicted in 2001: A Space Odyssey: 1:1,642³⁴

Number of high-tech start-ups funded with venture capital provided by the CIA since 1999: 8³⁵

Percentage change since 1990 in the U.S. industrial-robot population: +138³⁶

Days after Al Gore's birth in 1948 that the States' Rights Party nominated Senator Strom Thurmond for president: 108³⁷

Rank of Thurmond, as senior majority senator, among those within a heartbeat of the presidency: 3³⁸

Year in which the levered voting machines used in some precincts last November were invented: 1892³⁹

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