7/04Weeks the Patriot Act allowed the government this year to delay the ACLU’s announcement of a suit over the Act itself: 3
7/04Seconds it took a Maryland consultant last winter to pick a Diebold voting machine’s lock and remove its memory card: 10
7/04Number of states where a shift of no more than three seats this fall could change party control of a legislative chamber: 23
7/04Percentage of state legislative seats that Democrats controlled in 1980 and today, respectively: 60, 50
7/04Last year in which deaths due to terrorism in Israel and the Occupied Territories exceeded those in Kashmir: 2001
7/04Percentage of deaths due to terrorism last year that took place in South Asia: 49
7/04Estimated number of guns that the U.S.-led force in Haiti has confiscated since Aristide’s departure last February: 100
7/04Ratio of deaths of U.S. contractors worldwide in the last three months to those between April and September last year: 2:1
7/04Value of the “political risk insurance” that the U.S. government is providing two private investors in Iraq: $30,000,000
7/04Estimated percentage of U.S. corporations that paid no federal taxes between 1996 and 2000: 61
7/04Percentage change between 2001 and 2002 in the number of Teamster officials earning six-figure salaries: +20
7/04Number of publications on women’s rights that the Labor Department has removed from its website since 1999: 25
7/04Number of days this year that the Small Business Administration’s largest loan program shut down for lack of funds: 8
7/04Percentage of his salary Minnesota senator Mark Dayton spends on bus trips for seniors buying drugs in Canada: 100
7/04Ratio of U.S. and Canadian spending on pharmaceuticals last year to the amount the rest of the world spent: 31:32
7/04Average amount an American spent on pharmaceuticals in 2002: $202.81
7/04Minimum number of prisoners under the age of 17 or over the age of 70 held by coalition forces in Iraq last April: 79
Amount the U.S. spent partially reconstructing it: $1,900,000
7/04Number of times after prison-abuse photos aired in April that the President boasted of freeing Iraq of torture chambers: 13
7/04Amount NBC’s parent company, General Electric, stands to earn from Iraq’s reconstruction: $600,000,000
7/04Price of a bleepinator, a device for TV broadcasters that “surgically removes indecent words and phrases”: $9,995
7/04Number of individual “songs” for sale in Apple’s iTunes Music Store that consist of utter silence: 17
7/04Percentage change in Mattel’s first-quarter earnings last winter, when Barbie and Ken’s “break-up” was announced: -73
7/04Percentage by which average earnings of a major U.S. film with no sex in 2003 exceeded those of one with graphic sex: 120
7/04Average number of “smoking incidents” per hour in major U.S. films in 1950 and 2002, respectively: 10.7, 10.9
7/04Ratio of ambient fine-particle emissions from gasoline-powered vehicles to those from cooking meat in Houston in summer: 5:4
7/04Days after McDonald’s CEO died of a heart attack last April that the firm’s ex-CEO for Japan did the same: 2
7/04Years after symptoms of his deranging genetic disorder appeared that King George III held the throne in England: 56
7/04Average inches by which a British man’s height fell short of an American man’s in the eighteenth century: 3.1
7/04Number of fried chocolate sandwiches served at a British hotel chain in April after their debut: 1,256
7/04Last year in which French frogs were served at the Brotherhood of the Frog Thigh Tasters’ annual fair in Vittel, France: 1977