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Fri 10 Mar, 2006 11:51 am
Harper's Index for January 2006
Percentage of Americans who said in November that the Valerie Plame leak scandal was of "great importance": 51
Percentage who said, two months before President Nixon resigned, that Watergate was "very serious": 49
Percentage who said it was "just politics": 42
Years since a White House official as senior as I. Lewis Libby had been indicted while in office: 130
Years after resigning that the official, Orville Babcock, drowned while trying to build a lighthouse: 9
Percentage approval rating of Bill Clinton the day after impeachment and George W. Bush in November, respectively: 73, 37
Percentage of Russians today who approve of the direction their country took under Stalin: 37
Number of times Saddam Hussein should be executed each day, according to Iraq's new president: 20
Number of U.S. prisoners serving life sentences with no parole for crimes they committed while juveniles: 2,225
Number of prisoners serving such sentences in all other countries worldwide: 12
Average number of mass protests in China each day: 200
Number of manufacturing jobs that China has lost since 1996: 21,000,000
Percentage change last year in foreign direct investment in China: ‒2.1
Portion of its currency reserves that Venezuela says it transferred from U.S. banks to Swiss banks last fall: 2/3
Percentage of all music on Venezuelan radio that must be homegrown, according to a new law: 50x
Percentage of the homegrown music that must also be "traditional": 50
Change since 1996 in the percentage of all Latin Americans who say democracy is the best form of governance: -8
Change in Venezuela: +14
Last year in which the price of heating oil was as high as it is expected to be this winter: 1982
Number of years the United States could meet its energy needs by burning all its trees: 1
Chance that a Briton has bought a book "solely to look intelligent": 1 in 3
Estimated number of Americans who make fake Indian arrowheads: 5,000
Number of arrowheads they produce each year: 1,500,000
Number of product placements on U.S. network TV shows in prime time last year: 101,212
Chance that one of the 23,688 human genes has now been patented in the United States: 1 in 5
Total service charges collected by U.S. banks in 2004: $32,000,000,000
Factor by which this exceeds the total from 1994: 2
Number of weather futures traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in the first nine months of last year: 612,000
Number in all of 2004: 120,000
Number of small businesses that applied for U.S. disaster loans after last fall's hurricanes: 244,602
Percentage that had been approved as of mid-November: 3
Tons of hurricane-related waste still waiting to be hauled away in Louisiana: 22,000,000
Tons of waste produced by New York City each year: 8,500,000
Number of plague-infected mice that a New Jersey biomedical research center says cannot be accounted for: 3
Chance that an airliner has dangerous levels of disease-causing pathogens in its drinking water: 1 in 7
Percentage by which circumcision reduces the risk of HIV infection, according to a study in South Africa: 60
Percentage of free condoms distributed in India that are used for purposes other than sex: 75
Average height gain, in inches, of adolescents who use human growth hormone over five and a half years: 2
Cost per inch that represents: $41,000
Age of the girl who made the first bear kill in Maryland's hunting season last fall: 8
Harpers index has give me alife long list of things to quote at parties. Always intelligent and always newsworthy.
I wonder what they're using the condoms for?
With regard to Detano Inipo's list from Harper and the entry about Libby, I certainly hope that the Libby case does not take as long as the Henry CIsneros case. Cisneros was, of course, Clinton's housing secretary who was indicted on nineteen counts, most of which stemmed from his lliason with a mistress and his subsequent lies about a "payoff" to her.
Lists like the Harper's list can be intriguing. I just finished reading a run-down( most likely exaggerated) of the people who ended up on Clinton's hit list.
Interestingly enough, many of them died bizarre deaths.