Get Access to Print and Digital for $23.99 per year.
Subscribe for Full Access
Microfiche

February 2000

Harper’s Magazine welcomes reader response.

Email us about articles in the magazine.

[Harper’s Index]

Ratio of eToys’ 1999 net sales through last September to what it spent on marketing and advertising : 2:3

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Ratio of the divorce rate in New York State in 1998 to the rate in Arkansas : 2:3

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of New Yorkers who say they have already decided which Senate candidate to vote for in November : 92

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage change in the number of marijuana arrests since Bill Clinton became president : +56

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage change in Colombia’s estimated cocaine production since 1990 : +154

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Number of kidnappings reported in Colombia in the first nine months of last year : 2,283

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Hours during which Rio de Janeiro drivers may legally run red lights in order to avoid being carjacked : 10 P.M.–5 A.M.

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Maximum number of years to which a Burmese citizen may be sentenced for owning an unregistered computer : 15

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage change in the stock price of Microsoft rival Red Hat in the five weeks after the antitrust ruling : +218

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Number of the 10 disputes involving environmental or public heath issues that led to a weakening of national laws : 10

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Ratio of the price of a 30-second Super Bowl ad to what Pizza Hut paid last fall for an ad on a Russian space rocket : 2:1

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Seconds by which a “slingshot‚” maneuver performed by a NASA probe last August slowed the Earth’s rotation : 10^???12

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Number of feet by which Arctic sea ice has thinned since 1976 : 4

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Number of colonies of Antarctic Ad?lie penguins that have disappeared since 1988 : 11

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Number of U.S. children treated for sledding injuries in 1998 : 46,067

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Rank of self-inflicted wounds among the top injuries for which teenage girls were hospitalized in New York State in 1998 : 1

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Rank of assault among the top causes of injuries for which teenage boys were hospitalized that year : 1

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Estimated profit earned by New York State last year on collect calls made by prisoners : $21,000,000

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Hours it took a Tennessee jury last December to decide that the assassination of Martin Luther King was a conspiracy : 2

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Number of the 65 international trade disputes settled through the WTO that led to a change in national policy or law : 59

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Days after China announced it would begin acquiring offensive weapons that it was accepted into the WTO last fall : 7

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Maximum range at which China North Industries’ new “portable laser disturber‚” can “injure or dizzy the eyes,‚” in miles : 6

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Estimated tons of high-performance explosives that the Irish Republican Army must turn in by May : 2.7

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of Chechnya’s air force destroyed last September when Russia bombed a single plane : 100

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Days after Ukraine reopened a nuclear reactor at Chernobyl last November that a water leak forced a shutdown : 6

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Megawatts by which the world’s nuclear-power capacity changed during 1998 : ???230

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Megawatts by which the world’s wind-power capacity changed that year : +2,200

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage increase since 1994 in annual federal spending on highways and mass transit, respectively : 50, 33

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Ratio of the number of Americans killed in traffic accidents in 1998 to the number killed by medical errors : 1:1

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Number of Africans used to test a U.S. polio vaccine made with primate kidney cells in the 1950s : 1,000,000

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Number of the 46 Africans found to be HIV-positive before 1981 who lived within 90 miles of the vaccine trials : 45

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Projected age to which the AIDS epidemic will lower the life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa by next year : 45

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Factor by which the pregnancy-related death rate among African-American women exceeds that of white women : 3

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Chance that an African American believes that blacks will never obtain equality in the U.S. : 1 in 2

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Years after 1993’s Baby Jessica custody ruling that both her birth parents and her adoptive parents filed for divorce : 6

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Chance that a drug user holds a full-time job, according to a federal study released last year : 7 in 10

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Months after George W. Bush became a candidate last year that the study was released : 3

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Number of the two memoirs published by GOP presidential candidates last year that use the phrase “toga party‚” : 2

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Number of textbook reproductions of _ George Washington Crossing the Delaware_ retouched by a Georgia school last year : 2,322

February 2000
[Harper’s Index]

Number of parental complaints that prompted the school to decide that Washington’s watch fob resembled genitalia

February 2000
[Article]

Field trips
by ,
[Poetry]

The water inspector
by ,
[Photography]

Readings
by ,
[Article]

A class outing
by ,
[Article]

There’s a place in France
by ,
[Article]

All the philosopher king’s men
by ,
[Photography]

Rex in peace
by ,
[Article]

Take my pregnant wife–please
by ,
[Article]

Havana be your valentine
by ,
[illustration]

Room 114
Art by ,
[Article]

Beer and Loafing on the Campaign Trail
by ,
[Article]

Master of His Own Domain
[Article]

Quit avramizing, you squirtus
by ,
[Article]

Cats, now and forever
by ,
[Article]

Drunk on words
by ,
[illustration]

4,000 yards (apple trees, after Gerhard Richter)
Art by ,
[Fiction]

Three measures of loneliness
by ,
[Article]

Visualizing history
by ,
[Photography]

Slide projection of former Jewish resident and hat shop, circa 1930, Berlin, 1993
by ,
[Photography]

Untitled
by , ,
[Letters]

Letters
by ,
[Notebook]

Merit badges
by ,
[Harper’s Index]

Harper’s index
by ,
[Article]

I. The George W. Bush success story

A heartwarming tale about baseball, $1.7 billion, and a lot of swell friends

by ,
[Collection]

Notes on a native son
by ,
[Article]

II. The prospect of a Bush restoration
[Article]

Guerrilla capitalism

A gringo's guide to doing business in Colombia

by ,
[Article]

Back in the U.S.S.R.? Eight years after independence, Belarus ponders reunification
by ,
[Fiction]

The sun-dog trail
by ,
[Reviews]

Every sweatshop has a silver lining

Happiness is a PBS documentary on New York

by ,
[Reviews]

Connubial abyss

The mysterious narrative of marriage

by ,
[Fiction]

The paperhanger
by ,
[Puzzle]

Twofers
by ,
[Article]

Colombian overdose
by ,
[Findings]

Bay Area researchers debuted a Narcissism Interview Scale for Employment.

[Findings]

More than half of U.S. civilians tasked with evaluating a bombing target endorsed killing unidentified bystanders.

[Findings]

Solitary chicks emit fewer anxious peeps if given a mirror for company.

[Findings]

Marine biologists described the Red Sea’s grumpy dwarfgoby.

[Findings]

Bottlenose dolphins, who were found to inhale and exhale microplastics, respond to a smile with a smile one third of the time.

[Findings]

Archaeologists identified the skeleton recovered from the Sverresborg Castle’s well in 1938 as the man described in the Sverris Saga as having been thrown into the well in 1197.

[Findings]

A primatologist, a mammalogist, and a linguist concluded that the jerky, rhythmic dance of sexually mature female black crested gibbons is innate rather than culturally transmitted.

[Findings]

Parmesan researchers found that “benevolently sexist” adults are less likely to own “clit-oriented” sex toys.

[Findings]

Germans under thirty experience more climate distress and have more rough sex.

[Findings]

Mars gained and then lost a second moon in the autumn.

[Findings]

Scientists determined why some aging gray horses turn white faster than others.

[Findings]

The stranger churches of sixteenth-century London extensively spied on their congregants, noting when women accused other women of being “pocked whores.”

[Findings]

Evidence supporting the hypothesis that the Proto­-Indo­-European language was spread by humans on horseback may have overlooked how humans who ride cows, donkeys, and wild asses exhibit the same hip­ -socket deformations, as previously observed in twentieth­-century nuns.

[Findings]

Scientists allowed a king oyster mushroom mycelial culture to control the movements of a soft five-limbed robot and a four-wheel vehicle.

[Findings]

Juvenile Japanese eels can escape from the stomachs of dark sleepers by pushing their tails back through the fish’s esophagus and out its gills.

[Findings]

EEG experts disagreed on whether, in the future, brain waves could be used to read dreams and long-­term memories.

[Findings]

Turkish doctors reported a case of penile autoamputation with religious delusion.

[Findings]

AI researchers determined that large language models pose no existential threat to humanity and created an AI algorithm that can detect scientific articles written by other AI algorithms.

[Findings]

Mammoths may have been killed with planted pikes rather than with thrown spears.

[Findings]

The birth of a white buffalo fulfilled a Lakota prophecy portending better times.

[Findings]

Wildfires near Canadian mines were found to have released unprecedented levels of arsenic, and wildfires in Maui were making residents unhappy.

[Findings]

Living near oil and gas development sites depresses people who are trying to get pregnant.

[Findings]

The Journal of Pediatric Genetics retracted a study on Islamic beliefs concerning the possible supernatural causes of birth defects on the grounds that the research lacked a scientific basis.

[Findings]

A researcher noticed that a Tartessian slate tablet depicting battle scenes also contains a previously unknown alphabet.

[Findings]

The royal swan marker reported that the depression of the Thames population, previously noted during the late queen’s reign, continues under the king.

[Findings]

Researchers claimed that researchers have been underreporting same-­sex sexual activity among animals.

[Findings]

Cocaine trafficking was found to threaten the golden­-cheeked warbler.

[Findings]

A survey of 7 million parliamentary speeches across eight countries and several decades found that politicians use less complex language as it gets hotter.

[Findings]

The diet of Japanese youth is growing more confectionary, and Americans are poisoning themselves more severely.

[Findings]

Unaffiliated voters are growing more spiteful toward both Democrats and Republicans.

[Findings]

Researchers debuted an 88 percent accurate hate­-speech detector and a superior sarcasm detector and may be able to send messages back in time.

[Findings]

Increased border­-wall height was tentatively linked to a thirtyfold increase in the rate of migrant drowning deaths off San Diego.

[Findings]

Women bond more closely with therapy bulls than men do.

[Findings]

The perceived onset of old age increases by approximately one year for every four to five years a person ages.

[Findings]

A study of brain­-injured but not brain­-dead patients found that many would have survived had their families not chosen to withdraw life support.

[Findings]

Sets of both fraternal and identical twins exhibit internally similar metacognitive abilities, suggesting that metacognition is environmental rather than heritable.

[Findings]

Southern California beach erosion is expected to increase by 50 percent by 2050.

[Findings]

Archaeologists translated cuneiform tablets recording shareholder agreements for the first company in Anatolia.

[Findings]

The melting of the poles is making Earth’s days longer.

[Findings]

The hatching season of a male spear squid (Heterololigo bleekeri) determines whether he will pursue bold or sneaky mating tactics.

[Findings]

A bionic eye deciphered a scroll carbonized by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that reveals the burial place of Plato, who was found to have complained about the musical abilities of the enslaved Thracian girl who played the flute for him as he lay dying.

[Findings]

Humans are losing their ability to digest cellulose.

[Findings]

Toxicity has remained a consistent feature of online interactions since 1989.

[Findings]

Microplastics were found in sixty-two of sixty-two human placentas from a biobank in Texas.

[Findings]

A metal scar on the surface of the white dwarf WD 0816-310 indicated that it has cannibalized other bodies in its orbit.

[Findings]

An orca acting alone killed a great white shark and ate its liver.

[Findings]

Genomic analysis indicated that psychedelic mushrooms emerged around the time of the Mesozoic–Cenozoic mass extinction.

[Findings]

The playing speed of a metal guitarist directly correlates with his intrasexual competitiveness but not his mating success.

[Findings]

Depression in humans is correlated with higher body temperature, and cold-water swimming mitigates menopause symptoms.

[Findings]

Researchers warned that, as temperatures rise, humans should prepare for more diarrhea.

[Findings]

A mother is 4.6 percent more likely to give birth in the same month she was born, and adjacent siblings are 12.1 percent more likely to be born in the same month as one another.

[Findings]

Electric eel discharge transforms the DNA of zebrafish larvae.

[Findings]

An AI that was fed the employment and health data of six million Danes turned out to be more accurate than existing sociological methods at predicting if a given person was about to die.

[Findings]

Onshore wind turbines severely deter German bats from foraging.

[Findings]

Astrophysicists argued that the development of advanced alien technology requires an atmosphere composed of at least 18 percent oxygen.

[Findings]

Off the Five Finger Islands, a team of cetologists aboard the Glacier Seal conducted an extended conversation with a female humpback named Twain.

[Findings]

True crabs independently evolved to live out of the ocean up to seventeen times.

[Findings]

The average American girl born in 2019 will take prescription drugs for more than half her life.

[Findings]

The U.S. municipal bond market penalizes communities in proportion to the percentage of their population that is black but generally ignores their vulnerability to climate change.

[Findings]

Somalis, surveyed as proxies for earlier inhabitants of the Cradle of Humankind, were found to fear spiders less than scorpions but snakes to the expected degree.

[Findings]

The collapse of the Qing Dynasty was driven by the quadrupling of its population and consequent rural impoverishment, an overabundance of qualified applicants for elite academic degrees, rising costs and trade deficits, and falling productivity, which were variously associated with internal unrest, opium imports, and the depletion of silver reserves.

[Findings]

Geoscientists were confident that, given access to the oldest barnacles on the flaperon of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, they could help pinpoint its crash site.

[Findings]

Scientists were not certain whether the globally synchronized waves observed in the brains of wakeful rats on ketamine or LSD were a cause or a symptom of hallucinations.

[Findings]

Neuropsychologists developed a shorter IQ test for children with shorter attention spans.

[Findings]

The depression-prone are less attracted to the political right.

[Findings]

The nocturnal heart rate of young men can be predicted by their female partners’ daytime feelings of intimacy or annoyance.

[Findings]

Men who pose for photos with cats are seen as less datable.

[Findings]

Men can rate the facial attractiveness of women without paying attention, but women cannot do the same for men; gay men find the faces of purportedly fertile women and men more attractive; adolescents and adults both rate the faces of children younger than 4.6 years old as more appealing than those of older children; and body odors associated with fear quicken the visual processing of others’ facial expressions of fear.

[Findings]

Beak covering and nape-feather ruffling indicate calmness in sulfur-crested cockatoos.

[Findings]

Repetitive negative thinking was associated with an increased risk of dementia, and self-harm in female adolescents may prevent suicide.

[Findings]

Psychopaths recommend harsher punishments for homicides, whether accidental or motivated by profit, but exhibit relatively low concern about killing in general.

[Findings]

Online murder-for-hire advertisements seek to convey professionalism yet tend not to provide references up front.

[Findings]

Convalescent plasma helps Syrian hamsters fight SARS-CoV-2.

[Findings]

Plastic surgeons suggested that Botox could reduce the expression of negative emotions by masked faces.

[Findings]

The presence of a professional sports team increases a city’s seasonal flu deaths.

[Findings]

A psycholinguistic analysis of posts on Twitter and Weibo during COVID-19 lockdowns found that residents of Lombardy grew increasingly focused on leisure and residents of Wuhan grew increasingly focused on religion.

[Findings]

Recent toilet-­paper hoarding was more prevalent among Americans than Europeans and more prevalent among the old than the young.

[Findings]

Gerontologists cautioned that it would be difficult to predict individual Holocaust survivors’ trauma or resilience in response to the pandemic, which was expected to strengthen the market for laboratory mouse-suffocation chambers.

[Findings]

Researchers proposed replacing the paradigm of extinction with that of evanescence.

[Findings]

Climate change was expected to drive American lobsters to seek deeper waters, beavers to colonize new parts of Canada, and wolf spiders in the high Arctic to produce a second annual brood.

[Findings]

Humboldt penguins who nest in the open have more pollutant metabolites in their blood than do penguins who nest in guano-rich burrows.

[Findings]

The tiger snakes of Perth have heavy metals in their livers.

[Findings]

Satellite imagery captured ecosystem damage from fog loss, and aerial photography confirmed the existence of Roman military camps revealed by the 2018 Welsh drought.

[Findings]

A young woman in a Vilnius plague pit was found to have been coinfected with yaws.

[Findings]

A man buried at Newgrange passage tomb was found to be the product of first-degree incest, indicating that he was a member of the elite.

[Findings]

Scientists trained subjects to exercise control over a single neuron, linked the hippocampus to regret, and concluded that humans smell in stereo.

[Findings]

Straight Slovakians assume that a woman in high heels will inspire more intense mate-guarding.

[Findings]

Women who receive continuous rather than interrupted sutures for perineal repair after vaginal delivery report higher sexual levels of arousal and orgasmic function.

[Findings]

Pinkness predicts aggression in flamingos.

[Findings]

Chimpanzees have a bone in their hearts.

[Findings]

Rising population density, poor hygiene, and cold, moist weather led to a spike in ear infections in the Levant around 4000 bc, and postwar atmospheric nuclear testing led to increased cloud thickness and rainfall in the Shetland Islands.

[Findings]

A period of global coolness 4,200 years ago accelerated the diversification of japonica rice.

[Findings]

Ostrich-­shell beads indicating the onset of the Initial Upper Paleolithic were found to have reached Shuidonggou by 39000 bc, and strontium isotope levels revealed the social exchange of ostrich-­shell beads during the Late Quaternary in the Karoo Supergroup.

[Findings]

Interviews with reptile poachers in southwestern Balochistan indicated that the Caspian cobra, the desert monitor, the Iranian mastigure, Maynard’s longnose sand snake, the Persian spider gecko, and the Tartar sand boa were being captured for use by snake charmers.

[Findings]

Herpetologists inventoried the scars of snakes found in the Danube Gorge.

[Findings]

Half of Algeria’s marine turtle strandings are inexplicable.

[Findings]

Hemotoxic snakebite may be treatable with a heavy-­­metal chelator.

[Findings]

The mating calls of male Panama cross-­banded tree frogs are synchronized to confuse bats and midges.

[Findings]

Arson dogs’ noses remain better than lab equipment at detecting certain accelerants.

[Findings]

CBD improves quality of life in arthritic elderly dogs.

Subscribe to the Podcast

Past Issues

January 2025
December 2024
November 2024
October 2024
September 2024
January 2025
| View All Issues |

February 2000

| View All Issues |
Table of Contents
Close
“An unexpectedly excellent magazine that stands out amid a homogenized media landscape.” —the New York Times
Subscribe now
Close
You’ve read one of your two free articles this month. Subscribe for less than $2 an issue.
Close
You’ve read your last free article this month. Subscribe now for only $21.97 per year to continue reading.

Debug