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March 2007

February 2007 April 2007

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[Harper’s Index]

Number of Iraqis who have been given refugee status in the United States since 2003 : 764

[Harper’s Index]

Chance that an Iraqi has fled his or her home since the beginning of the war : 1 in 8

[Harper’s Index]

Year by which the world’s seafood will run out, at current rates of decline : 2048

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of the world’s fished species that have lost at least 90 percent of their peak populations : 29

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage change between 2000 and 2005 : +3.2

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage change between 1990 and 1999 in the world’s global carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels : +0.8

[Harper’s Index]

Estimated amount that Americans lose each year by buying overheated gasoline, which has less energy per gallon : $959,000,000

[Harper’s Index]

Last year there was a decrease : 1980

[Harper’s Index]

Average number of miles driven by an American in 2004 and 2005, respectively : 13,711, 13,657

[Harper’s Index]

Average number of new banks chartered annually in the United States since 1995 : 167

[Harper’s Index]

Number of previous months since the Depression that this had been the case

[Harper’s Index]

Number of consecutive months that the American workforce has spent more than its take-home pay : 20

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of U.S. voters who said in December that “America’s best days‚” were “in the past‚” : 48

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage who said that success in Iraq was “not very likely‚” or “not at all likely‚” : 41

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of U.S. military personnel in December who thought more troops should be sent to Iraq : 38

[Harper’s Index]

Number between 1999 and 2002 : 8,051

[Harper’s Index]

Month when the total value of euros in circulation worldwide surpassed that of U.S. dollars : 6/2006

[Harper’s Index]

Rank of Turkey and Israel : 35, 36

[Harper’s Index]

Number of anti-Zionist Orthodox rabbis who appeared at Iran’s conference to “discuss‚” the Holocaust last December : 6

[Harper’s Index]

Rank of Iran and the United States, respectively, among nations with the most living kidney donors per capita : 1,2

[Harper’s Index]

Amount that Iran’s tourism ministry says it pays travel agents for every Westerner they bring to the country : $20

[Harper’s Index]

Estimated percentage of U.S. household spending that is controlled or influenced by children under 14 : 47

[Harper’s Index]

Minimum number of hits received each month by the GM website Hummerkids.com : 40,000

[Harper’s Index]

Portion of female college students and graduates who say attending Spring Break results in “increased sexual activity‚” : 3/4

[Harper’s Index]

Portion of Girls Gone Wild footage that is shot in the month of March : 1/4

[Harper’s Index]

Rank of the U.K. and the U.S., respectively, among thirty-six “nation brands‚” rated by worldwide polling last year : 1, 9

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage he says he actually got, before he “falsified‚” the number to make it acceptable to Europe : 93.5

[Harper’s Index]

Official vote percentage with which Belarus’s president was reelected last winter : 86

[Harper’s Index]

Minimum wage this year, given new rules that require more hours in session : $139.97

[Harper’s Index]

Minimum hourly wage last year of a member of the U.S. House of Representatives : $203.95

[Harper’s Index]

Number whose alleged crime is murder : 14

[Harper’s Index]

Number of the 541 members of India’s lower house of parliament who have been charged with crimes : 125

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage change in the number of adults in their fifties doing so : +63

[Harper’s Index]

Percentage change since 2002 in the number of U.S. teens using illegal drugs : ???15

[Harper’s Index]

Number of U.S. states where marijuana is the top cash crop : 12

[Harper’s Index]

Estimated portion where forests increase warming, by trapping more heat than their CO2 consumption reduces : 1/3

[Harper’s Index]

Estimated portion of the earth where forests reduce global warming, through consumption of CO2 : 1/3

[Fiction]

Knall

by Ann Goldstein,

[Poetry]

Reasons for the plague

by Eustache Deschamps,Translated by Anne M. Dropick,

[illustration]

Newsstand No. 88 (popular words on the net)

Art by Masaaki Sato,

[Article]

The war on Christmas

by Jared Ruddy,

[Article]

Axis of evil

Bold as love

by Jean-Baptiste Kim,

[Article]

Paradise by the dashboard light

by Harper’s Staff,

[Article]

Tragic carpet ride

by Harper’s Staff,

[Photography]

El canto despuÃ©s del encuentro (The melody after the meeting)

by Luis González Palma,

[Article]

You have to see this

by Harper’s Staff,

[Article]

Pardon Me

by Richard M. (Richard Milhous) Nixon,

[Tête-à-Tête]

When Henry Met Sadun

[illustration]

Note #8, mixed media, 2003

Art by Sarah Nind,

[Article]

The baking of the president, 1963

by Harper’s Staff,

[Fiction]

Armies of the net

by Wagner James Au,

[Article]

Completely legitimate

by Harper’s Staff,

[Article]

Lest ye be judged

by Harper’s Staff,

[Fiction]

Crepuscule with Mickey

by Christopher Sorrentino,

[illustration]

Vibrations III

Art by Shaobin Beijing.”,

[Photography]

Invisible self-portrait (in Tom’s bedroom)

by Ellen Harvey,

[Photography]

Invisible self-portrait (in the entrance to my home)

by Ellen Harvey,

[Photography]

Invisible self-portrait (in a bathroom in Philadelphia)

by Ellen Harvey,

[Photography]

Invisible self-portrait (in my studio)

by Ellen Harvey,

[Photography]

Untitled

by Lynsey Addario,

[Letters]

Letters

by Harper’s Staff,

[Notebook]

Terror alerts

by Lewis H. Lapham,

[Harper’s Index]

Harper’s index

by Harper’s Staff,

[Collection]

[untitled]

by Ellen Harvey,

[Article]

Parties of God

The Bush doctrine and the rise of Islamic democracy

by Ken Silverstein,

[Letter from Beirut]

The Lord of No Man’s Land

A guided tour through Lebanon’s ceaseless war

by Charles Glass,

[Photography]

Untitled

by Peter Turnley,

[Collection]

The spectre of Castro: photographs from Cuba

by Peter Turnley,

[Photography]

Untitled

by Peter Turnley,

[Photography]

Untitled

by Peter Turnley,

[Photography]

Untitled

by Peter Turnley,

[Photography]

Untitled

by Peter Turnley,

[Photography]

Untitled

by Peter Turnley,

[Photography]

Untitled

by Peter Turnley,

[Photography]

Untitled

by Peter Turnley,

[Photography]

Untitled

by Peter Turnley,

[Photography]

Untitled

by Peter Turnley,

[Article]

I was a Chinese internet addict

A tale of modern medicine

by McKenzie Funk,

[Illustration]

Flotando con paraguas (detail)

Art by Ricardo Lanzarini,

[Collection]

Devoured by history

Art by Ricardo Lanzarini,

[Illustration]

Desplazamiento con espacio (detail)

Art by Ricardo Lanzarini,

[Illustration]

Mushrooms (detail)

Art by Ricardo Lanzarini,

[Fiction]

The Requirement

by Wendell Berry,

[New Books]

New books

by John Leonard,

[Reviews]

Arms and the poet

The resurrection of Vergil

by Rafil Kroll-Zaidi,

[Reviews]

The disillusionist

In praise of Milan Kundera's hypocrisies

by Arthur Phillips,

[Puzzle]

Gonna build a mountain

by Harper’s Staff,

[Findings]

Findings

by Roger D. Hodge,

[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.

[Findings]

Finnish scientists identified the genomic region associated with fearfulness in Great Danes.

[Findings]

The decreasing transpiration of plants, a result of rising carbon dioxide levels, was partly to blame for recent heat waves in northern latitudes.

[Findings]

Peatlands, which now store roughly as much carbon as Earth’s forests or its atmosphere, can hold more carbon if exposed to low-intensity fires.

[Findings]

Inland waters are emitting previously unaccounted-for levels of carbon dioxide, and freshwater insects are flourishing even as terrestrial insects are dying off.

[Findings]

Ocean acidity can now be predicted five years ahead of time.

[Findings]

Green snow is spreading across Antarctica.

[Findings]

The deepest octopus observed to date was photographed in the Java Trench.

[Findings]

Terrestrial bacteria can grow on extraterrestrial nutrients; the black hole nearest Earth was discovered in the constellation Telescopium; and X-ray experiments conducted at the European Synchrotron indicated that moisture is destroying The Scream.

[Findings]

A fungal parasite that afflicts the reproductive organs of millipedes was named in honor of Twitter.

[Findings]

In Maine, a loon stabbed a bald eagle through the heart.

[Findings]

Six new coronaviruses were discovered in bats.

[Findings]

Falling levels of tourist trash during pandemic lockdowns was found to have caused rat infighting, and macaques were reported to have attacked a lab assistant in Delhi and stolen vials of COVID-19-infected blood, which at least one monkey then tried to eat.

[Findings]

Vampire bats who are strangers will groom one another before sharing blood via regurgitation.

[Findings]

Skin swabs are three times as accurate as fecal samples at predicting a person’s age.

[Findings]

March 2007

Number of Iraqis who have been given refugee status in the United States since 2003 : 764

Chance that an Iraqi has fled his or her home since the beginning of the war : 1 in 8

Year by which the world’s seafood will run out, at current rates of decline : 2048

Percentage of the world’s fished species that have lost at least 90 percent of their peak populations : 29

Percentage change between 2000 and 2005 : +3.2

Percentage change between 1990 and 1999 in the world’s global carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels : +0.8

Estimated amount that Americans lose each year by buying overheated gasoline, which has less energy per gallon : $959,000,000

Last year there was a decrease : 1980

Average number of miles driven by an American in 2004 and 2005, respectively : 13,711, 13,657

Average number of new banks chartered annually in the United States since 1995 : 167

Number of previous months since the Depression that this had been the case

Number of consecutive months that the American workforce has spent more than its take-home pay : 20

Percentage of U.S. voters who said in December that “America’s best days‚” were “in the past‚” : 48

Percentage who said that success in Iraq was “not very likely‚” or “not at all likely‚” : 41

Percentage of U.S. military personnel in December who thought more troops should be sent to Iraq : 38

Number between 1999 and 2002 : 8,051

Month when the total value of euros in circulation worldwide surpassed that of U.S. dollars : 6/2006

Rank of Turkey and Israel : 35, 36

Number of anti-Zionist Orthodox rabbis who appeared at Iran’s conference to “discuss‚” the Holocaust last December : 6

Rank of Iran and the United States, respectively, among nations with the most living kidney donors per capita : 1,2

Amount that Iran’s tourism ministry says it pays travel agents for every Westerner they bring to the country : $20

Amount it pays for an Asian : $10

Estimated median personal wealth worldwide : $2,161

Average number of Legos owned by each person worldwide : 75

Estimated percentage of U.S. household spending that is controlled or influenced by children under 14 : 47

Minimum number of hits received each month by the GM website Hummerkids.com : 40,000

Portion of female college students and graduates who say attending Spring Break results in “increased sexual activity‚” : 3/4

Portion of Girls Gone Wild footage that is shot in the month of March : 1/4

Rank of the U.K. and the U.S., respectively, among thirty-six “nation brands‚” rated by worldwide polling last year : 1, 9

Percentage he says he actually got, before he “falsified‚” the number to make it acceptable to Europe : 93.5

Official vote percentage with which Belarus’s president was reelected last winter : 86

Minimum wage this year, given new rules that require more hours in session : $139.97

Minimum hourly wage last year of a member of the U.S. House of Representatives : $203.95

Number whose alleged crime is murder : 14

Number of the 541 members of India’s lower house of parliament who have been charged with crimes : 125

Percentage change in the number of adults in their fifties doing so : +63

Percentage change since 2002 in the number of U.S. teens using illegal drugs : ???15

Number of U.S. states where marijuana is the top cash crop : 12

Estimated portion where forests increase warming, by trapping more heat than their CO2 consumption reduces : 1/3

Estimated portion of the earth where forests reduce global warming, through consumption of CO2 : 1/3

Knall

Reasons for the plague

Newsstand No. 88 (popular words on the net)

The war on Christmas

Axis of evil

Paradise by the dashboard light

Tragic carpet ride

El canto despuÃ©s del encuentro (The melody after the meeting)

You have to see this

Pardon Me

When Henry Met Sadun

Note #8, mixed media, 2003

The baking of the president, 1963

Armies of the net

Completely legitimate

Lest ye be judged

Crepuscule with Mickey

Vibrations III

Invisible self-portrait (in Tom’s bedroom)

Invisible self-portrait (in the entrance to my home)

Invisible self-portrait (in a bathroom in Philadelphia)

Invisible self-portrait (in my studio)

Untitled

Letters

Terror alerts

Harper’s index

[untitled]

Parties of God

The Bush doctrine and the rise of Islamic democracy

The Lord of No Man’s Land

A guided tour through Lebanon’s ceaseless war

Untitled

The spectre of Castro: photographs from Cuba

Untitled

Untitled

Untitled

Untitled

Untitled

Untitled

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

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

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

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

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

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.