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Last Month’s Index
[ May 2009 ]

Harper’s Index

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Factor by which the total rate of U.S. tree death this year will exceed the rate in 1991

: 2
May 2009 • Source: U.S. Geological Survey (Arcata, Calif.)

Percentage of its residents who live below the poverty line

: 68
May 2009 • Source: U.S. Census Bureau (Suitland, Md.)

Percentage change since 2000 in the number of multigenerational U.S. households

: +24
May 2009 • Source: AARP (Washington)

Number of MySpace accounts deleted since 2007 because they were created by registered sex offenders

: 90,000
May 2009 • Source: MySpace (Los Angeles)

Average exam score, in a SUNY-Fredonia study, for students who only listened to a podcast of their professor’s lecture

: 71
May 2009 • Source: Vanessa McKinney, State University of New York, Fredonia

Average score for those who only attended the lecture

: 62
May 2009 • Source: Vanessa McKinney, State University of New York, Fredonia

Percentage change in the fourth quarter of 2008 in the number of new websites created worldwide

: ???12
May 2009 • Source: Verisign Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.)

Average number of seconds that Drudge Report readers spend on the site per day

: 118
May 2009 • Source: The Nielsen Company (N.Y.C.)

Average number that visitors to major newspaper sites do

: 26
May 2009 • Source: The Nielsen Company (N.Y.C.)

Current ratio of the price of a Sunday New York Times to the company’s share price

: 8:9
May 2009 • Source: The New York Times Company (N.Y.C.)

Rank of the Hasidic community of Kiryas Joel, N.Y., among the poorest municipalities in the United States

: 1
May 2009 • Source: U.S. Census Bureau (Suitland, Md.)

Gallons of coal ash released into a Tennessee river last December by a power plant

: 1,100,000,000
May 2009 • Source: Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (Asheville, N.C.)/Tennessee Valley Authority (Knoxville)

Factor by which this exceeds the volume of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez

: 101
May 2009 • Source: Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council (Anchorage)

Gallons of freshwater consumed in the production of a gallon of milk and beer, respectively

: 1,000, 300
May 2009 • Source: A.Y. Hoekstra (Enschede, Netherlands)

Number of former L.A. gang members who have been retrained since last June as solar-panel installers

: 120
May 2009 • Source: Homeboy Industries (Los Angeles)

Price for which a group of Palestinian graffiti artists will deface the Israeli security wall in the West Bank

: $39
May 2009 • Source: Sendamessage.nl (Amsterdam)

Number of commissions they have turned down because the requested messages linked to Viagra ads

: 2
May 2009 • Source: Sendamessage.nl (Amsterdam)

Fee offered in February to Nadya Suleman, the recent mother of octuplets, to star in a porn film

: $1,000,000
May 2009 • Source: Vivid Entertainment (Los Angeles)

Number of cloth diapers a rival company offered her to turn down the role

: 400
May 2009 • Source: PinkVisual (Van Nuys, Calif.)

Number of sexual scenarios published in Penthouse Forum so far this year that involve the economic downturn

: 1
May 2009 • Source: Harper's research

Estimated number of minutes it took riot police to eject them from the premises in January

: 15
May 2009 • Source: Kyodo News (Tokyo)

Estimated portion of all new U.S. “savings” last year that actually was payment of credit-card debt

: 3/4
May 2009 • Source: R.K. Hammer Investment Bankers (Thousand Oaks, Calif.)

Percentage change in the past year in the number of U.S. cars and trucks repossessed

: +12
May 2009 • Source: Manheim Consulting (Marshall, Va.)

Percentage change in the number of leisure boats repossessed

: +72
May 2009 • Source: National Liquidators (Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.)

Percentage change between 2007 and 2008 in the number of Americans who reported haggling for goods

: +29
May 2009 • Source: America's Research Group (Charleston, S.C.)

Chances that an American who has become unemployed since December 2007 is a man

: 4 in 5
May 2009 • Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Percentage of all U.S. men over twenty who are now unemployed or not seeking work

: 31
May 2009 • Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Estimated percentage of Bush Administration political appointees who are currently unemployed

: 70
May 2009 • Source: Russell Reynolds Associates (Washington)

Estimated number of Chinese factory workers who returned to the countryside in January

: 14,000,000
May 2009 • Source: Dragonomics Research & Advisory (Beijing)

Months after a Tokyo hotel shut down last fall that its staff kept it running for no pay

: 3
May 2009 • Source: Freeters Union (Tokyo)

Change since March 2008 in the total credit extended to Americans through credit cards

: ???$349,300,000,000
May 2009 • Source: Veribanc, Inc. (Woonsocket, R.I.)

Percentage change last year in the total net worth of Russia’s ten wealthiest individuals

: ???68
May 2009 • Source: Finans (Moscow)

Minimum number of jobs currently open in Antarctica

: 676
May 2009 • Source: Harper's research

Chances that the range of a North American bird species has moved northward since 1966

: 3 in 5
May 2009 • Source: National Audubon Society (Washington)

Average number of miles north these species have moved

: 99
May 2009 • Source: National Audubon Society (Washington)

Minimum number of bald eagles struck by U.S. airplanes since 1990

: 147
May 2009 • Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Airport Wildlife Hazards Program (Sandusky, Ohio)

Number known to have survived

: 7
May 2009 • Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Airport Wildlife Hazards Program (Sandusky, Ohio)

Average number of books about Abraham Lincoln released every week since 2007

: 1
May 2009 • Source: Frank J. Williams (Providence, R.I.)

Percentage by which the average hourly pay of U.S. white men exceeds that of black men

: 27
May 2009 • Source: Robert Fairlie, University of California, Santa Cruz

Percentage by which it exceeds that of biracial Americans

: 40
May 2009 • Source: Robert Fairlie, University of California, Santa Cruz
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