The Best Stats from the Best Feature from the Best Magazine in the World!

As I may have bleated in an earlier post (and if I haven't, shame on me for not doing so), Harper's Magazine is not only the best magazine in the world, but they have the best feature of any magazine in the world: Harper's Index (from which I am sure I've posted various, interesting tidbits). They have a relatively new, additional feature at the back of the mag, which is also hella cool, but more on that later.

Among the things I like about Harper's Index: The variety! The shock and amazement value! The juxtaposition of various stats that helps provide a searing commentary on humanity with no editorial comments necessary at all - just plain hard facts. A few examples from the most recent issue:

Average amount NATO spends each week enforcing the no-fly zone over Libya: $1,930,000
Estimated value of arms sent by NATO countries to Qadafi since 1969: $10,000,000,000

See? I don't even have to make a snarky comment about the hypocrisy of this - it's all laid out there in two simple facts!

Next:

Percentage of Republicans who said in March that they fear that ACORN will steal the 2012 election for Obama: 25
Date on which ACORN shut down: 11/2/10

This pair of stats is "great" because not only does it help illustrate the absurd ignorance of (at least) one-fourth of Republicans but it also shows a complete cluelessness about what ACORN was ever about and/or the "power" they supposedly wielded. To think, even if the fucking organization were still around, that so many people could honestly be so deranged as to think ACORN could--or even WOULD--"steal" an election! More appalling, those sad, clueless freaks wouldn't even DREAM of suggesting that the U.S. Supreme Court "stole" the election for Dubya.

Next:

Amount of federal money that went to NPR in 2010: $2,700,000
To Jerry Falwell's Liberty University: $446,000,000

Again, just the stark reality, outrageousness, and simple lunacy of those stats is enough to make any sane, fair-minded person want to throw up.

Finally, talk about something both surreal and just flat out wrong:

Chances that a convict will be granted parole if his case comes up right after a judge has had breakfast: 70%
Chance right before lunch: 25%

I didn't even get to the stats that showed India has gained half of the current U.S. population in just ten years, that extra-religious people are WAY more likely to be obese; or how domestic violence increases whenever a local NFL team loses.

I didn't get into those coz I want to share what, for me, is the most interesting stat I've come across in a long time! As mentioned, beyond the Index, Harper's also has a really cool feature at the back called "Findings," which shares a variety of interesting/bizarre research findings. While many of them are often things that make you think, "Why the hell would they be researching THAT?" (e.g., "Existential anxiety was found to make people dislike Richard Dawkins" Seriously? Someone studied that?), there is always something truly interesting - altho, still, not necessarily of much practical use.

My favorite example from the latest issue is this tidbit: "The number of phonemes in a given language is inversely proportional to its distance from Africa." If, like me, you can't remember enough Language Arts to know what a phoneme is, click HERE to find out.

I'm not sure why, but this little factoid just fascinates me no end! You'd think it has SOMETHING to do with the fact that humans originated in Africa, but how? HOW??