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Harper’s Index

Chance that the United States bombed Iraq on any given day last year: 1 in 6¹

Rank of Kim Jong Il and the Saudi royal family among the world's worst dictators, according to Parade magazine: 1, 2²

Months after the fall of the Taliban that the United States began on-site assessment of Afghanistan's natural resources: 8³

Percentage of Americans who say that other countries' interests are considered in making U.S. foreign policy: 75⁴

Average percentage of the 30 other surveyed nationalities who say this: 35⁵

Number of current and former national leaders slated for war-crimes prosecution by Belgium's high court: 21⁶

Number of current officeholders left on the list after the court granted Israel's Ariel Sharon immunity in January: 15⁷

Chance that a delegate to Pakistan's National Assembly is a member of an Islamist party: 1 in 6⁸

Chance in 1997: 1 in 54⁹

Fine levied on three Norwegians in 2001 for throwing paper airplanes at the U.S. embassy: $350¹⁰

Total fines U.S. investment banks will pay to end investigations into their stock recommendations: $985,000,000¹¹

Chance that a member of a U.S. firm's executive-compensation committee has financial or familial ties to its CEO: 1 in 5¹²

Percentage change since 1998 in the total promotional spending of U.S. pharmaceutical companies: +47¹³

Percentage change since then in such companies' average profit per dollar spent on promotion: -24¹⁴

Amount for which Dow Chemical is suing Indian protesters over a two-hour demonstration held in Bhopal last year: $10,000¹⁵

Amount of import-tax revenue that Israel is withholding from the Palestinian Authority: $400,000,000¹⁶

Amount the U.S. withheld from the U.N. Population Fund last year, citing links to forced abortions in China: $34,000,000¹⁷

Months after the State Department had cleared the U.N. of such connections that the funds were withheld nonetheless: 2¹⁸

Percentage of Chinese who say they have never heard of AIDS: 17¹⁹

Minimum number of U.S. college students who developed scurvy from poor eating habits last year: 1²⁰

Pounds of grits and other grains to be donated to fill this year's food-budget gap at the South Carolina governor's mansion: 1,000²¹

Percentage in import duties on Vietnamese catfish sought from the Commerce Department last year by U.S. catfish farmers: 190²²

Percentage of California's economy that is accounted for by agriculture: 7²³

Percentage of the state's water that is used for agriculture: 43²⁴

Estimated percentage change since 2000 in acres of Texas recognized as wetlands by the Army Corps of Engineers: -40²⁵

Amount budgeted last year for the EPA's Leaking Underground Storage Tank Program: $72,000,000²⁶

Ratio of the annual budget of the EPA to that of NASA: 1:2²⁷

Minimum number of open-source software applications now in use at the Pentagon: 115²⁸

Number of the 158 used hard drives purchased for an MIT study this year that contained recoverable data: 129²⁹

Minimum number of credit-card numbers the hard drives contained: 6,650³⁰

Decibels of sound pressure employed by a new "thermoacoustic" refrigerator: 190³¹

Decibels of sound pressure sufficient to ignite a person's hair: 165³²

Chance that a student at Indiana University reports having used a tanning lamp in the past year: 1 in 2³³

Percentage of applications from alumni's children accepted by Middlebury College in 1990 and 2002: 70, 45³⁴

Percentage of applications from non-alumni African Americans accepted in those years: 57, 57³⁵

Chances that a Democrat believes that "most" Republicans are prejudiced against African Americans: 2 in 5³⁶

Number of Democratic supporters that qualifies a congressional vote as "bipartisan," according to Ari Fleischer: 1³⁷

Ratio of the U.S. median income in 2001 to what Dick Cheney would have saved that year with the new dividend-tax cut: 2:5³⁸

Ratio of the number of words in the U.S. income-tax code today to the number in 1955: 6:1³⁹

Number of pharmaceutical drugs approved by the FDA since 1998 whose names begin with V, W, X, Y, or Z: 93⁴⁰

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SEE ALSO: AIDS; Afghanistan; Agriculture; Sharon, Ariel; Banking; California; China; Department of Commerce; Democracy; The Democratic Party; Cheney, Richard; Diet; Environmental Protection Agency; Economics; Food and Drug Administration; Fish and Other Aquatic Life; Food; India; Iraq; Israel; Il, Kim Jong; Language & Linguistics; Norway; Pakistan; Palestine; U.S. Department of Defense; Race; The Republican Party; Saudi Arabia; Science; The Taliban; Taxes; Technology; Texas; United Nations; United States of America

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