Harper’s Index

Number of the fifty states that are still not in compliance with the 2002 Help America Vote Act: 8 ¹

Number that now use electronic voting machines with no recountable paper trail: 15 ²

Minutes it took a Princeton researcher to hack into a Diebold voting machine in September: 1 ³

Percentage of Americans who cannot say in which year the September 11 attacks occurred: 30 ⁴

Percentage who think that U.S. Muslims should have to carry special I.D.: 39 ⁵

Chance that a U.S. Muslim is Arab: 1 in 5 ⁶

Number of State Department foreign-service members whose jobs require them to know Arabic: 160 ⁷

Number of them who actually do: 64 ⁸

Estimated percentage of “illegal immigrants” in the United States who have simply overstayed a legal visa: 45 ⁹

Amount that U.S. embassy staff in London owe in unpaid traffic charges: $1,600,000¹⁰

Average percentage change in the U.S. aid a country receives when it sits on the U.N. Security Council: +59 ¹¹

Days before the end of this fiscal year that Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals will be halted: 9 ¹²

Total expenditures this will artifically shift from fiscal year 2006 to fiscal year 2007: $5,200,000,000¹³

Number of people whom tobacco will kill this century, if current trends hold: 1,000,000,000¹⁴

Factor by which this exceeds the number it killed last century: 10 ¹⁵

Percentage change since 1998 in the average amount of nicotine that cigarettes deliver to the lungs: +10 ¹⁶

Percentage change for Kool menthol cigarettes: +20 ¹⁷

Chance that an African-American woman says that she worries about becoming a “bag lady”: 1 in 3 ¹⁸

Chance that a white American woman does: 1 in 2¹⁹

Minimum decibel level, on average, at which African Americans in a recent study could hear a high-pitched sound: 21 ²⁰

Minimum decibel level for whites: 33 ²¹

Factor by which the average noise level underwater in the ocean has increased since 1965: 3 ²²

Number of corporations that are now members of the Chicago Climate Exchange, which trades pollution rights: 210 ²³

Percentage change so far this year in the total number of contracts traded: +1,425²⁴

Chances that a Californian lives in an area whose air pollution exceeds that state’s legal limit: 9 in 10²⁵

Estimated amount that smog costs California in extra health-care expenses each year: $71,000,000,000²⁶

Number of additions made to the U.S. endangered-species list so far under George W. Bush: 56 ²⁷

Average number made each year under Bill Clinton: 65 ²⁸

Percentage of U.S. GDP represented by salaries and wages today: 45 ²⁹

Number of years since record-keeping began in 1929 that this percentage has been so low: 0 ³⁰

Number of U.S. mortgages whose interest rates will reset next year to higher levels: 2,000,000³¹

Percentage by which the average payments on these loans will increase: 25 ³²

Fraction of Manhattan real estate that could be bought with the annual gambling earnings of Native American tribes: 1/8³³

Percentage by which the number of U.S. house fires on Thanksgiving Day exceeds the daily average: 32 ³⁴

Percentage of Turkey’s residents in 2004 who supported their nation’s joining the European Union: 73 ³⁵

Percentage who do this year: 54 ³⁶

Average number of books written by each French president since World War II: 8 ³⁷

Average by U.S. presidents: 4 ³⁸

Number written by Jimmy Carter: 20 ³⁹

Number of congressional resolutions proposed since 1989 that have contained the word “delicious”: 5 ⁴⁰

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