October 2005 ·
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Rank of 2004 among the most fiscally reckless years in U.S. history, according to the comptroller general: 11
Projected cost of disability payments to Iraq War veterans by 2050, based on rates for Gulf War veterans: $285,000,000,0002
Number of “veterans of the global war on terrorism” that the VA budget assumed for 2005: 23,5533
Estimated number today: 103,0004
Age that the Pentagon in July proposed to set as the maximum for all new military recruits: 425
Number of sites in Iraq from which materials usable to make biological or chemical weapons are now “missing”: 1186
Length, in yards, of U.S. snipers’ longest confirmed kill in Iraq: 1,0507
Portion of all U.S. foreign aid that goes to helping the recipients buy U.S.-produced weapons, equipment, or services: 1/48
Total U.S. spending on poppy eradication and other antidrug efforts in Afghanistan last year: $780,000,0009
Amount it would have cost to purchase the country’s entire 2004 poppy crop: $600,000,00010
Percentage change since 2001 in the estimated value of all bribes paid to Russia’s government officials: +80011
Ratio last year of the estimated total bribes to the nation’s federal revenues: 5:212
Estimated amount of African wealth held in foreign accounts, expressed as a percentage of African GDP: 17213
Minutes that NBC and CBS spent covering the Darfur genocide last year: 814
Points a player earns for delivering a parcel of medicine, in the U.N. World Food Programme’s video game: 25015
Average estimated salary, in today’s dollars, of the dads on the ten top-rated TV shows of the 1950s: $77,00016
Average for the dads on today’s ten top-rated shows: $207,00017
Chance that a U.S. MBA obtained since 1980 was awarded to a woman: 1 in 318
Chance that a corporate officer of a Fortune 500 company today is: 1 in 619
Percentage of patients hearing voices who hear a male voice, according to a British study: 7120
Percentage who hear an “upper-class” or “BBC” voice: 3021
Chances that a user of Pfizer’s new Parkinson’s disease drug will become a pathological gambler as a result: 3 in 20022
Percentage by which the average amount of anesthetic required by redheads exceeds the average for everyone: 1923
Chance that a medical study may be inaccurate or misleading, according to the AMA’s journal: 1 in 324
Months of vacation that President Bush has taken in five years: 1125
Days after the London attacks that Bush said the U.S. was at war abroad “so we do not have to face them here at home”: 426
Number of terrorist acts that one song by the Houston-based rapper Arabic Assassin describes him committing: 427
Months he worked as a baggage screener at George Bush Intercontinental Airport before being fired in July: 628
Minimum number of centuries in prison served by U.S. convicts for crimes of which DNA evidence later exonerated them: 1929
Number of U.S. states where bestiality is legal: 2030
Amount that Oakland residents can now be fined if their dog has not been implanted with an ID microchip: $10031
Years after the Watts riots that the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation trademarked “Burn Baby Burn” for a hot sauce: 4032
Portion of L.A. County’s black residents who would need to move in order for the city to be fully integrated: 3/433
Months that a Louisiana state judge was suspended for wearing an Afro wig and blackface to a Halloween party last year: 634
Kernels of candy corn manufactured for Halloween each year: 9,000,000,00035
Number of different stories offered for sale at any one time on a Dutch dial-a-fairytale service: 436
Price to listen to a seven-minute story: $1.7037
Number of toilet seats at the EU Parliament building in Brussels that a TV station had tested for cocaine: 4638
Number that tested positive: 4139
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