Harper’s Index

Margin by which total votes for Democrats in the last three Senate elections exceeded those for Republicans: 2,900,000¹

Number of seats won by Democrats and Republicans, respectively: 46, 56²

Percentage of U.S. conservatives who report having experienced déjà vu: 63³

Percentage of liberals who do: 74⁴

Minimum number of Iraq war veterans who have declared they are running for Congress this year: 11⁵

Number of these who are Democrats: 9⁶

Percentage of Americans who say that fighting terrorism should be one of the nation’s top two priorities: 6⁷

Number of people whom Coalition forces have imprisoned in Iraq at some point since March 2003: 48,526⁸

Percentage of these who have been convicted of a crime: 1.5⁹

Portion of prison inmates in Mozambique who have been tried in a court of law: 1/4¹⁰

Average number of civilian policemen per every thousand square miles of Darfur, Sudan: 7¹¹

Number of workplace arrests made by U.S. immigration authorities in 1997: 17,554¹²

Number in 2003: 445¹³

Percentage change since 1999 in federal prosecutions of white-collar crime: ‒25¹⁴

Chances that a U.S. company settling a corporate crime case will illegally deduct some or all of the settlement to the IRS: 3 in 5¹⁵

Average percentage by which U.S. senators’ investments outperform the stock market each year: 12¹⁶

Percentage of U.S. CEO vacancies that are filled from outside the company: 40¹⁷

Average amount the companies spend on each search: $2,000,000¹⁸

Chance that the CEO will quit or be fired within eighteen months: 1 in 2¹⁹

Average amount it costs U.S. companies to process a query through a call center: $6.62²⁰

Average performance rating, on a scale of 1 to 100, of top U.S. government managers who are political appointees: 62²¹

Average for those who are career bureaucrats: 70²²

Estimated amount the U.S. would save each year on paperwork if it adopted single-payer health care: $161,000,000,000²³

Percentage change since 2000 in the average amount U.S. workers spend on out-of-pocket medical expenses: +93²⁴

Factor by which the total amount that U.S. pension plans have invested in hedge funds today exceeds that in 1990: 100²⁵

Number of centenarians that the U.S. census counted in 2000: 50,740²⁶

Projected number it will count in 2050: 1,149,500²⁷

Percentage change since 1996 in the amount that drug companies spend on direct-to-consumer advertising: +420²⁸

Percentage of the air-ambulance helicopters in the U.S. that have crashed since 2000: 10²⁹

Number of dominoes that a wayward sparrow toppled just before a Dutch world-record attempt in November: 23,000³⁰

Hours later that the sparrow was executed: 1.5³¹

Estimated amount spent in the United States each year to treat ACL injuries in dogs: $1,320,000,000³²

Number of registered U.S. teams in the World Adult Kickball Association: 650³³

Minimum number of American colleges and universities that offer programs in video-game design: 82³⁴

Chance that a boy in a U.S. high school plays cards for money at least once a week: 1 in 9³⁵

Monthly fee to add a “virtual girlfriend” game to an Ericsson mobile phone: $5³⁶

Price for a vibrator that plugs into an iPod and “stimulates you in time with your favorite music”: £29.99³⁷

Year that a Hindu nationalist party in India rechristened Valentine’s Day “Prostitution Day”: 2005³⁸

Minutes that the library in Malmö, Sweden, “lent” a gay man and a Muslim cleric for conversation last fall: 45³⁹

Number of patrons who borrowed each: 8⁴⁰

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