Harper's Index for November 2005

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Harper's Index for November 2005

Posted on Thursday, December 8, 2005.

Percentage change in the average monthly price of oil during the Carter Administration: +85[U.S. Department of Energy/Harper’s research]
Percentage change during the presidency of George W. Bush, before Hurricane Katrina hit this fall: +107[U.S. Department of Energy/Harper’s research]
Days after Katrina hit that Dick Cheney’s office ordered an electric company to restore power to two oil pipelines: 1[Southern Pine Electric Power Association (Taylorsville, Miss.)]
Days after Hurricane Katrina that the White House authorized sending federal troops to New Orleans: 4[U.S. Department of Defense, Northern Command (Peterson, Colo.)]
Percentage change since January in the total value of Saudi Arabian stocks: +83[Tadawul (Riyadh)]
Percentage discount that Venezuela’s Hugo Chᶥz has said he will offer poor Americans on oil and gas purchases: 40[Minestrio de Comunicaci InformaciCaracas)]
Minimum number of Americans who have signed up so far at the Venezuelan embassy in Washington: 140[Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Washington)]
Salary of a new State Department job created, in Secretary Rice’s words, to “accelerate the demise” of Castro’s regime: $145,000[U.S. Department of State]
Rank of the fugitive ex-president Alberto Fujimori among top-polling prospects for Peru’s election next year: 1[Grupo APOYO (Lima)]
Portion of imports from CAFTA nations that already avoided U.S. tariffs before the treaty: 4/5[U.S. International Trade Administration]
Percentage change, in today’s dollars, in the average U.S. price of apparel and shoes since 1995: ‒30[U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis]
Price, from an online vendor, of a “Free Judith Millerthong: $9.99[Lana Sumpter (Bartlett, Tenn.)]
Price to attend a sold-out “confidential,” “off the record” political forum with Robert Novak in September: $595[Human Events (Washington)]
Number of journalists killed in Vietnam during twenty years of war there: 63[Reporters without Borders (Paris)]
Number killed in Iraq since March 2003: 71[Reporters without Borders (Paris)]
Years after the start of the Vietnam War that a majority of Americans first said it was a “mistake”: 3 1/2[The Gallup Organization (Washington)]
Years after the start of the Iraq War that a majority said this: 1 1/4[The Gallup Organization (Washington)]
Number of volunteers who are making personalized quilts for the next of kin of all U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq: 150[Marine Comfort Quilts (Manchester, Mo.)]
Current backlog of quilts they face: 588[Marine Comfort Quilts (Manchester, Mo.)]
Estimated number of pro-terrorism websites worldwide in 1998 and today, respectively: 12, 4,700[Gabriel Weimann, University of Haifa (Israel)]
Rank of the FBI among ideal employers, according to U.S. undergraduates polled in spring 2004: 138[Universum Communications (Philadelphia)]
Its rank in spring 2005: 10[Universum Communications (Philadelphia)]
Rank of Microsoft in 2004 and 2005, respectively: 1, 8[Universum Communications (Philadelphia)]
Average number of new blogs created each second: 1[Technorati (San Francisco)]
Number of erotic Harry Potter fan-fiction stories posted on a website run by an Illinois woman: 1,750[Vicki Dolenga (Schaumburg, Ill.)]
Average number of hits the site receives each day: 198,000[Vicki Dolenga (Schaumburg, Ill.)]
Percentage of U.S. women who own vibrators: 46[Durex (Norcross, Ga.)]
Amount Americans spent last year on “fantasy football”: $2,079,000,000[Fantasy Sports Trade Association (St. Louis)]
Percentage change since 2004 in the number of NFL teams that require all fans to get full pat-downs: +167[National Football League (N.Y.C.)]
Estimated chance, worldwide, that a father is unknowingly raising another man’s child: 1 in 25[Mark Bellis, Liverpool John Moores University (England)]
Minimum number of infants impeded from boarding airplanes because their names were on the U.S. no-fly list: 14[U.S. Department of Homeland Security]
Number of out-of-town men who posted to New Orleans’s Craigslist site seeking refugee women: 49[Harper’s research]
Number of women who posted for refugee men: 4[Harper’s research ]
Percentage of homes in Orleans Parish that lacked flood insurance: 54[FEMA (Washington)/U.S. Census Bureau (Suitland, Md.)]
Years that property owners in New London, Connecticut, spent fighting the city’s seizure of their land: 5[Waller, Smith & Palmer, P.C. (New London, Conn.)]
Minimum back rent that the city, after winning in the Supreme Court, is now intending to charge them: $951,718[Waller, Smith & Palmer, P.C. (New London, Conn.)]
Number of consecutive years that the U.S. median income has failed to increase: 5[U.S. Census Bureau (Suitland, Md.)]
Number of consecutive years that the percentage of Americans living in poverty has increased: 4[U.S. Census Bureau (Suitland, Md.)]
Percentage margin by which an MTV awards-show poll for best-dressed male attendee was decided this fall: 1[MTV (N.Y.C.)]
Hours before polling closed that host Sean “Diddy” Combs told viewers to “vote or die”: 1.5[MTV (N.Y.C.)]

http://www.harpers.org/HarpersIndex2005-11.html
 
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