Harper's Index #5

Avg number of shopping carts stolen from American supermarkets each hour: 39
Ratio of the number of plastic flamingos to number of real ones in the US : 700:1
Number of Americans injured by jewelry per year: 43,000
Amount of writing Florida state colleges require students to complete before their junior year, in words: 24,000
Ratio of homebuyers in Orange Co., CA named Smith to those named Nguyen: 1:2
Tons of trash generated by the Rio Earth Summit in June, per day: 7
Estimated percent of all hats sold in the US each year that are baseball caps: 70
Chance a defendant tried in a criminal case in Japan will be found guilty: 99 in 100
Rank of the US, among the 12 largest democracies, in voter turnout: 11
Number of wisdom teeth extracted from Americans last year: 9,337,000
Ratio of Americans employed by government to those employed by manufacturers: 1:1
Ratio of the amount the Ford Motor Company spent in 1993 on health care to the amount it spent on steel: 1:1
Percentage of Mexican-Americans who say there are too many immigrants in the US: 75
Rank of basketball among sports contributing to fatalities among players: 1
Number of times a WV man accidentally shot himself in the foot while cleaning his three guns: 3
Weight in pounds of a hairball removed from an Alexandria, IN, manhole: 200
Number of new clerical workers hired each day by US physicians to do paperwork: 68
Chance that a dollar spent on health care goes for administrative costs: 1 in 4
Percent of TV viewers who wouldn't give up watching TV in exchange for any amount of money: 25
Percent of Super Bowl viewers who do not live in the United States: 89
Average length of a professional football player's career, in years: 3.2
Chances that a Russian lives in an area in which air pollution exceeds safety standards by five times: 3 in 4
Trees used to produce the mail-order catalogues sent to US households each year: 14,000,000
Percentage of all US domestic mail that consists of personal letters: 4.5
Number of years since there has been no dog in the White House: 79
Number of beds at Mass. General Hospital, per billing-department employee: 3.5
Number of classified manuals used by the Department of Energy to specify what is to be classified: 850
Hourly wage the Resolution Trust Corporation paid contract workers to photocopy documents: $35
Number of body parts suitable for piercing, according to a NYC jewelry store: 30
Number of women scalped by hay balers in New York State since 1976: 4
Average speed of Heinz ketchup, from the mouth of an upended bottle, in miles per year: 25
Chances that a visit to a psychiatrist will end with a drug prescription: 1 in 2
Number of the world's 187 countries that do not have Most Favored Nation trading status with the United States: 12
Percent of American vegetarians who eat red meat once a week: 10
Chance an American does not know which president appears on the $1 bill: 1 in 5
Average number of steps an American adult takes each day: 9,000
Ratio of rats to people in Washington, D.C.: 2:1
Number of nuclear reactors it would take to supply the energy consumed by United States refrigerators: 25