Harper's Index

Harper's Magazine 1oct04

1. Days since the U.S. government first placed the nation under an "elevated terror alert" that the level has been relaxed : 0
2. Years of "elevated" or "high" terror alerts since then : 2
3. Aid that U.S. leaflets dropped on Fallujah in July threatened to freeze if insurgent attacks continued : $102,000,000
4. Number of insurgent attacks in Fallujah in the week before and after the leafletting, respectively : 21, 36
5. Compensation the U.S. government has paid Iraqis for wrongful deaths, injuries, and property damage since 2002 : $4,475,643
6. Total "death gratuities" the U.S. government has paid since then to survivors of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq : $11,436,000
7. Total amount Ohio's crime-victims compensation fund has paid the survivors of one U.S. soldier killed in Iraq : $5,656.77
8. Maximum percentage income- and corporate-tax rate under laws made for Iraqis by the Coalition Provisional Authority : 15
9. Days a House committee postponed July hearings on antidepressants while its chair considered a pharmaceutical-lobbyist job : 50
10. Number of the 5 Republicans investigating Rep. Tom DeLay on ethics charges who have taken donations from his PAC : 4
11. Number of Ohio election boards being sued over erroneously informing parolees that they may not vote : 21
12. Number of banks robbed in Davenport, Iowa, while John Kerry and George Bush gave speeches there on August 4 : 3
13. Estimated number of right-wing Jewish extremists Israel monitors as potential threats to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon : 300
14. Years after leaving his post during the Vietnam War that a Connecticut man was arrested for desertion in July : 34
15. Minimum number of Guantánamo detainees who boycotted their military tribunals in August : 13
16. Average number of kidnappings per week in Iraq since March : 5
17. Number of non-Iraqis detained there by U.S. forces in the last year : 400
18. Ratio of the minimum number of beheadings by the Saudi government last year to those by Saudi terrorists so far this year : 50:1
19. Date on which Turkmenistan added questions on the president's spiritual writings to its driver's-license test : 6/12/04
20. Percentage of Mississippians who have failed their written driver's-license test since it became computerized last year : 60
21. Chance that a new light vehicle bought in the United States last year was a truck or SUV : 1 in 2
22. Minimum number of U.S. children killed since 1998 as a result of heat stroke after being left locked in cars : 219
23. Rank of last year among those in which the largest number of children died this way : 1
24. Square miles of surface areas between Canada and Mexico that are impervious to water : 112,610
25. Square miles of wetlands : 98,460
26. Rank of this year's desert-locust plague in northern Africa among the world's worst in 15 years : 1
27. Number of countries susceptible to such a plague : 65
28. Chance that a southern Sudanese woman will die in childbirth : 1 in 9
29. Chance that a southern Sudanese girl will complete primary school : 1 in 100
30. Projected lifespan in years of a Zimbabwean born in 1989 and one born in 2002, respectively : 60, 34
31. Number of its international workers that Doctors Without Borders has lost to political violence in its 34-year history : 8
32. Number of them killed in Afghanistan in June : 3
33. Number of American states in which one may legally shoot fish with a semi-automatic rifle : 2
34. Record number of skips achieved by a stone skipper : 40
35. Seconds by which this year's winner of the men's Olympic 400-meter dash was faster than the winner of the women's : 5.81
36. Seconds difference in 1972 : 6.42
37. Factor by which the number of U.S. girls under 19 who got breast implants last year exceeded the number who did in 2002 : 3
38. Price a haunted-house supplier charges for a male figure "being tortured like never before," flesh-ripping sounds included : $2,295
39. Estimated price a British cable company will charge for a kit to track "evidence of the paranormal" via the Internet : £150

Sources

1,2 U.S. Department of Homeland Security
3—5 Coalition Press Center (Baghdad)
6 Air Force Personnel Center (Randolph AFB, Tex.)/Harper's research
7 Ohio Attorney General (Columbus)
8 International Trade Administration (Washington)
9 Congressman Jim Greenwood's Office (Washington)
10 Federal Election Commission (Washington)
11 Prison Re-form Advocacy Center (Cincinnati)
12 Davenport Police Department (Davenport, Iowa)
13 Consulate General of Israel (N.Y.C.)
14 Bridgeport Park Police (Bridgeport, Conn.)
15 U.S. Department of Defense
16 The Brookings Institution (Washington)
17 Coalition Press Center (Baghdad)
18 U.S. State Department/Amnesty International (N.Y.C.)
19 BBC Monitoring International Newswire, August 3, 2004/Neytralnyy Turkmenistan
20 Automated Drivers License Testing System (Jackson, Miss.)
21 Environmental Protection Agency (Washington)
22,23 Jan Null, Department of Geosciences, San Francisco State University
24,25 American Geophysical Union (Washington)
26,27 U.N. Food and Agri-culture Organization (Rome)
28,29 United States Fund for UNICEF (N.Y.C.)
30 U.N. Human Development Report Office (N.Y.C.)
31,32 Doctors Without Borders (N.Y.C.)
33 The Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department (Waterbury)
34 Guinness Book of World Records 2004
35,36 Ray Stefani, California State University, Long Beach
37 The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (N.Y.C.)
38 Halloween Productions, Inc. (St. Louis)
39 Telewest Broadband (London).