Harper’s Index

Ratio of whales killed by Captain Ahab in pursuit of Moby Dick to people indicted by Kenneth Starr since 1994: 1:1

Ratio of the estimated cost of Starr's investigation to projected ad sales for the last episode of Seinfeld : 1:1

Percentage of Americans who cannot name the allegation that Starr was initially appointed to investigate: 40

Length, in pages, of the Senate's new report on the financing of the 1996 Democratic campaigns: 1,112

Number of the report's 33 chapters that are devoted to the issue of campaign-finance reform: 1

Number of House votes that Representative Jay Kim's 1997 campaign-finance-fraud conviction will cause him to miss: 0

Number of days during the 105th Congress that he will wear an electronic monitoring bracelet: 60

Number of former U.S. representatives who are now Microsoft lobbyists: 3

Amount by which Oxford Health Plans' losses in 1997's last quarter exceed its total profits since 1993: $96,200,000

Amount that a Disney licensing agreement has earned the Royal Canadian Mounted Police since 1995: $414,848

Cans of beer the U.S. Navy requisitions for each sailor completing 45 days at sea: 2

Cubic feet in the Navy's F-18 Super Hornet jet that have been set aside for computer systems not yet developed: 17

Ratio of U.S. spending on the Gulf War to estimated cost of maintaining a U.S. military presence in the region since then: 7:5

Number of countries that have received U.S. military aid since 1995 in preparation for NATO expansion: 19

Value of international defense loans the U.S. has written off since 1990: $10,000,000,000

Chance that an American believes Madeleine Albright has alleged a sexual relationship with the President: 1 in 200

Price a San Francisco hotel charges guests per one-minute phone session with its on-call psychotherapist: $2

Number of New York City pedestrians splattered with blood last winter after a suicide's 17-story jump: 3

Factor by which the average suicide rate in a city where gambling is legal exceeds that in a city where it is not: 2

Factor by which U.S. deaths from prescription and medication errors increased between 1983 and 1993: 2.6

Chance that a U.S. high school student owns a promotional item from a cigarette company: 1 in 3

Number of Americans sentenced to federal prison for marijuana convictions since 1992: 21,424

Percentage of violent offenders in state prisons whose crime was committed under the influence of alcohol alone: 21

Percentage whose crime was committed under the influence of crack or cocaine alone: 3

Amount for which a Missouri inmate offered to sell one of his organs last winter to pay legal fees: $50,000

Percentage change since 1984 in the average price paid in the U.S. for a month's worth of human eggs: +900

Percentage of parents who say that they would abort a fetus found to be predisposed to obesity: 11

Factor by which having an overweight parent increases a child's chances of becoming obese: 2

Average number of mosquitoes a dragonfly consumes each day: 300

Number of Crocus sativus flowers required to produce one pound of saffron: 68,182

Number of years Britain's Prince Charles has farmed organically: 12

Number of Poets-in-Residence sponsored by Britain's National Lottery this year: 4

Percentage of Ford Explorer owners who have never taken their vehicle off-road: 87

Percentage of California counties declared disaster areas last February: 60

Portion of Malaysia's Petronas Towers, the world's tallest buildings, that is vacant: 1/3

Number of nuclear-plant accidents in Ukraine since 1993: 418

Number of consecutive hours that a Maryland man spent kissing a motorboat last winter in order to win it in a contest: 59

Number of minutes that Mir's Russian cosmonauts spent this year advertising a “space pen” live on QVC: 15

Number of weeks after the Monica Lewinsky story broke that a Denver company began selling “presidential kneepads”: 3

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