Harper’s Index

Date on which the first contract for a book about September 11 was signed:9/13¹

Date on which the results of a 13-member major-media consortium's 2000 election recount were to be made public: 9/24²

Days before this that the New York Times, a consortium member, declared the unreleased results "utterly irrelevant": 1³

Number of consortium members that ran a news story on their decision to delay publicizing the results indefinitely: 0⁴

Number of minutes of network news coverage devoted to Colombia in the month following September 11: 0⁵

Page on which the New York Times reported the EPA's 7-year extension of genetically modified corn sales last fall: C6⁶

Chance that a "GMO-free" food product studied last April contained no genetically modified ingredients: 1 in 5⁷

Percentage of Chicago sushi chefs who are of Japanese descent: 29⁸

Percentage who are of Mexican or Ecuadoran descent: 30⁹

Price per family that a Puerto Rican company charged last December for a 5-minute stay in a refrigerated snowscape: $30¹⁰

Number of mimes Guatemala's transit department hired last April to administer driver "education" at busy intersections: 20¹¹

Price of a 12-hour do-it-yourself anger-management course from an online vendor: $165¹²

Total number of bids placed on Bidforsurgery.com since last year: 12,600¹³

Estimated number of inquiries the site has received about open-heart surgery: 35¹⁴

Minimum number of anthrax hoaxes reported in the United States in the three years before September 11: 175¹⁵

Number of members of the rock band Anthrax who say they are hoarding Cipro so as to avoid an "ironic death": 1¹⁶

Years after Ernest Hemingway killed himself that his transsexual son died last fall in a Miami women's jail: 40¹⁷

Percentage change since 1994 in the number of boys on competitive U.S. high school cheerleading squads: +470¹⁸

Percentage change between 1998 and 1999 in the number of women construction workers: +36¹⁹

Ratio of New York City welfare recipients whose benefits ended this year to the number of police officers there: 1:1²⁰

Total new tax cuts for U.S. businesses approved by the House of Representatives in October: $146,000,000,000²¹

Ratio of the projected cost of General Electric's dredging of its PCBs from the Hudson River to its total profits last year: 1:280²²

Earliest year in which the dredging might begin: 2004²³

Percentage change since 1980 in federal funding for research on renewable energy sources: –83²⁴

Estimated percentage of U.S. electricity demand that could be met by covering the nation's roofs with solar panels: 27²⁵

Maximum number of gallons of oil stored under the World Trade Center on a given day: 86,000²⁶

Estimated number of mock commando raids on U.S. nuclear-weapons facilities that have been staged since 1995: 100²⁷

Minimum number that succeeded in breaching security: 50²⁸

Minimum number of cats fitted with high-tech listening equipment in a 1967 CIA project: 1²⁹

Estimated number of minutes after the cat was released on its first test run that it was killed by a taxi: 10³⁰

Estimated amount Cleveland has spent in the last two years fulfilling Y2K-protection contracts: $11,000,000³¹

Months after the millennium that Dublin plans to complete the erection of its 394-foot Millennium Spike: 20³²

Internal code number the British census has assigned to citizens who cited their religion as "Jedi Knight": 896³³

Number of Montreal stores vandalized last year for mounting Christmas displays in November: 14 ³⁴

Ratio of businesses to military sites attacked by international terrorists between 1995 and 2000: 38:1³⁵

Chance that a death caused by international terrorism during that period occurred in Asia: 1 in 2³⁶

Number of the world's ten tallest buildings that are in Asia: 8³⁷

Number of Manhattan buildings destroyed in the fire of 1835: 674³⁸

Number of deaths that resulted: 2³⁹

Number of years since 1776 in which no nation was at war: 0⁴⁰

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