12/05Percentage change since 1995 in the U.S. trade deficit with China, as a percentage of U.S. GDP: +202
Percentage change with all other countries: +147
12/05Amount the U.S. spends annually on imported toys: $23,631,000,000
Amount spent by the next ten highest toy-importing nations combined: $21,729,000,000
12/05Average number of credit cards per U.S. household: 12.7
12/05Percentage of middle-class Americans who spent more than a third of their income on home ownership in 1975: 2.8
Percentage in 2001: 13.5
12/05Number of homeless San Franciscans hired to be extras in a movie with Will Smith as a formerly homeless millionaire: 250
Amount they were paid hourly: $8.62
12/05Average hourly wage made by drug-dealing foot soldiers in Chicago, according to a Columbia University study: $3.41
12/05Average number of New Orleanians killed by gunfire each month since 2000: 16
12/05Number of the 1,035 confirmed Hurricane Katrina‒related deaths that were caused by gunfire: 8
12/05Number of Cuba’s fourteen provinces that were directly hit by a Category 4 hurricane in July: 12
12/05Chances that one of the 126 Wal-Marts shut down by Hurricane Katrina reopened within ten days: 9 in 10
12/05Days after Katrina hit that the first strip club was reopened in New Orleans: 20
Percentage of their income from “dollar dances” that its strippers are donating to relief efforts: 100
12/05Portion of British food aid for Katrina evacuees that still sits unused in an Arkansas warehouse: 7/10
12/05Percentage of British adults who are members of any of their country’s three major political parties: 1.2
12/05Minimum number of insurgent attacks in Iraq since November 2003 using explosive-carrying dogs or donkeys: 6
12/05Minimum number of U.S. generals in Iraq using private security companies for their personal security: 4
12/05Date on which USAID launched an Internet campaign asking Americans to help pay for the Iraqi reconstruction: 9/9/05
12/05Number of U.S. soldiers who have posted photographs of dead Iraqis or Afghans on Nowthatsfuckedup.com: 32
Cost of the access to the site’s pornography that each soldier was given in exchange: $20
12/05Number of Alabama state senators co-sponsoring a bill last summer to “protect” public displays of the Ten Commandments: 10
Number of them who could list the Commandments: 1
12/05Estimated number of U.S. abortions that were prevented in 2000 through use of the morning-after pill: 51,000
12/05Price in South Africa next year of a latex vaginal insert that latches onto a rapist’s penis and requires surgical removal: 35¢
12/05Amount a German company says it can save a cargo ship in annual fuel costs by outfitting it with a giant kite: $1,200,000
12/05Amount weather-related disasters cost worldwide in 2004: $107,000,000,000
12/05Percentage change since 1970 in the amount of the earth’s land stricken by severe drought: +100
12/05Number of degrees Fahrenheit that temperatures in California ’s wine country have risen since 1971: 1.6
12/05Miles per hour of two low-flying Danish fighter jets in February when they startled a reindeer named Rudolph to death: 450