Harper's Index for August 2004

Number of World Trade Centers under development worldwide since September 2001 : 26 [World Trade Centers Association (N.Y.C.) ]

Number of them that are in Saudi Arabia : 3 [World Trade Centers Association (N.Y.C.) ]

Chance that a member of New York's Army National Guard was in Iraq in June : 1 in 4 [New York Army National Guard (N.Y.C.) ]

Chance that a member of Texas's Army National Guard was : 1 in 31 [Texas Army National Guard (Austin) ]

Percentage points by which the President's approval rating has fallen since September 2001 : 41 [The Gallup Organization (Princeton, N.J.) ]

Percentage points by which his father's rating fell between the end of the Gulf War and August 1992 : 60 [The Gallup Organization (Princeton, N.J.) ]

Rank of Ronald Reagan among U.S. presidents since 1945 with the highest average approval rating while in office : 7 [The Gallup Organization (Princeton, N.J.) ]

Approval rating of Lyndon Johnson in March 1968, the month he announced he would not run for reelection : 36 [The Gallup Organization (Princeton, N.J.) ]

Year in which U.S. oil production peaked : 1971 [U.S. Geological Survey (Denver) ]

Year in which worldwide oil discoveries did : 1964 [Oil Depletion Analysis Centre (London) ]

Estimated year in which Baghdadis first harnessed electricity, using clay pots lined with copper : 230 b.c. [The British Museum (London) ]

Average megawattage of electricity generated in Iraq each day last year before the invasion : 4,500 [Coalition Provisional Authority (Baghdad) ]

Average megawattage generated there each day in June : 4,300 [Coalition Provisional Authority (Baghdad) ]

Maximum voltage New York City's main post office will deliver to pigeons during the Republican convention : 8,000 [Bell Environmental Services, Inc. (Parsippany, N.J.) ]

Words the New York Times devoted last May to examining its own faulty reporting on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction : 3,082 [Harper's research ]

Words the Times devoted last year to "correcting the record" after an investigation of reporter Jayson Blair : 7,102 [Harper's research ]

Minimum number of U.S. firms under contract in Iraq that have paid federal fines, settlements, or restitution since 2000 : 7 [Project on Government Oversight (Washington)/Harper's research ]

Amount they paid : $87,635,766 [Project on Government Oversight (Washington)/Harper's research ]

Minimum amount that Wal-Mart has received in subsidies from state and local governments since 1980 : $625,000,000 [Good Jobs First (Washington) ]

Number of the 73 firms participating in the Medicare discount drug program that have been investigated since 2000 : 20 [Center for American Progress (Washington) ]

Number of these that have paid fines in connection with criminal cases : 17 [Center for American Progress (Washington) ]

Percentage change since 1992 in the annual number of people murdered in the United States, per 100,000 : < 40 [FBI (Washington) ]

Percentage change since then in the number of people serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison : +83 [The Sentencing Project (Washington) ]

Number of years a judge ordered a man convicted of cocaine possession last spring to keep a coffin in his home : 6.5 [Rockdale County Court (Conyers, Ga.) ]

Price a Chilean cemetery charges for an alarm built into coffins to ensure against mistaken live burial : $462 [Camino a Canaan (Santiago, Chile) ]

Minimum number of developing countries whose adolescent birth rate is lower than that of Phillips County, Arkansas : 94 [Save the Children (Westport, Conn.) ]

Chance that an African national leader who left office between 1960 and 2003 did so because he lost an election : 1 in 10 ["Risk, Rule, and Reason in Africa," by Arthur Goldsmith, Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.)/The Economist (London) ]

Rank of Labour among British political parties that won the most votes in local elections in June : 3 [BBC News (London) ]

Percentage of Britons who cannot name the city that provides the setting for the musical Chicago : 65 [Endemol UK (London) ]

Average number of inches by which Chicago sinks each year as the land it stands on adjusts from the last ice age : 0.04 [Seth Stein, Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.) ]

Average number of inches by which Churchill, Canada, rises each year for the same reason : 0.4 [Seth Stein, Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.) ]

Average number of feet by which each boat ramp into Arizona's Lake Powell has been extended since 2002 : 600 [Glen Canyon National Recreation Area (Page, Ariz.) ]

Ratio of the number of cicada eggs per square mile of southern New Jersey to the number of stars in the Milky Way : 4:5 [Jeffrey Lockwood, University of Wyoming (Laramie)/American Museum of Natural History (N.Y.C.) ]

Credit a Barcelona nightclub offers with the purchase of its OVIP VeriChipO implant, in euros : 100 [Baja Beach Club (Barcelona, Spain) ]

Number of implants the nightclub has sold this year : 12 [Baja Beach Club (Barcelona, Spain) ]

Age of a handcuffed Tucson, Arizona, girl whom police shot with a Taser in May : 9 [Pima County Sheriff's Office (Tucson, Ariz.) ]

State grant awarded a Missouri police department's Youth Outreach Unit two years ago to battle Goth culture : $273,000 [Youth Outreach Unit (Blue Springs, Mo.) ]

Amount the Unit returned to the state in April after no Goth-influenced youth could be found to aid : $132,000 [Youth Outreach Unit (Blue Springs, Mo.) ]

Amount spent in the interim to set up the program : $141,000 [Youth Outreach Unit (Blue Springs, Mo.) ]