posted 06-16-2003 12:13 PM            

Harper's Index

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May 2003

Last calendar year in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained in value : 1999

Last period in which the Dow declined for four consecutive years : 1929–1932

Percentage change since 1968 in the real value of the U.S. federal minimum wage : –37

Factor by which Americans' total debt to private lenders for college tuition has increased since 1995 : 4

Factor by which industry funding for university biomedical research has increased since 1980 : 22

Percentage change since 1988 in the average subscription price of a U.S. scientific, medical, or technical journal : +250

Number of words that the New York Times has devoted to February's shuttle accident per resulting death : 28,500

Number of words that the Times devoted to 1998's U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa per resulting death : 163

Percentage of Americans who believed in early March that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11 attacks : 45

Weeks before this poll was taken that President Bush said that he "can't make [the] claim" of such a link : 5

Ratio of the price of a barrel of oil in March to the price of a body bag from the U.S. military's supplier : 1:1

Estimated percentage by which the average U.S. gasoline price would rise if costs of securing oil were recouped with a tax : 29

Minimum number of hydrogen-car fueling stations currently under construction in Tokyo : 4

Ratio of the number of Volkswagens sold in China last year to the number sold in the United States : 4:3

Ratio of the average garment-worker wage in China to that in Mexico : 1:3

Percentage of Mexicans who believe that the U.S. Southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico : 58

Number of new Indonesian islands discovered by satellite analysis in February : 1,000

Chance that a male human worldwide is a direct patrilineal descendant of Genghis Khan : 1 in 200

Chances that a thoroughbred stallion is a patrilineal descendant of the Darley Arabian, a seventeenth-century horse : 19 in 20

Price for a fifteen-child sleepover in the Bronx Zoo's Congo Gorilla Forest exhibit : $4,500

Per capita GDP of the Republic of Congo : $900

Estimated number of bird species that have declined because of Oregon logging since 1968 : 23

Estimated number that have increased because of logging : 2

Average number of days an oiled seabird survives in the wild after cleaning and release : 6

Average number of industrial compounds and pollutants that can be found in an American's blood and urine : 91

Average factor by which levels of uranium in the urine of Afghan test subjects last fall exceeded normal : 25

Pounds of steel discovered to have been eaten away from the head of an Ohio nuclear reactor in February 2002 : 70

Thickness in inches of the warped stainless steel that remained to prevent the reactor from rupturing into the air : 3⁄8

Grant that the Department of Energy gave a U.S. company last November to create a new living organism : $3,000,000

Percentage, respectively, of the U.S. fathers and mothers responsible for child support who do not pay it : 26, 36

Percentage of employed U.S. mothers who think full-time mothers look down on them : 66

Percentage of full-time mothers who think employed mothers look down on them : 73

Number of Japanese children who refused to attend school last year, according to Japan's government : 138,722

Fine that Britain's education minister has proposed levying on parents whose children are chronic truants : $3,900

Chance that a British military reservist called up since January has asked to be excused from duty : 1 in 8

Number of U.S. soldiers who faced disciplinary action between 1998 and 2000 for refusing an anthrax vaccine : 441

Number of U.S. doctors per pharmaceutical-sales representative in 1995 and last year, respectively : 19, 9

Estimated number of audience cell-phone calls that constituted a "telesymphony" performed last year in Austria : 5,000

Projected duration in years of John Cage's "As Slow as Possible," whose performance began last February in Germany : 639

Projected duration in months of the piece's opening three-note arpeggio : 18