In the month of July 2006...

Cribbed from Harpers.org:

Estimated change since 2001 in the total number of U.S. private-sector jobs: +1,900,000 [Economic Policy Institute (Washington)]

Estimated number of new private-sector jobs created by government spending during that time: 2,800,000 [Economic Policy Institute (Washington)]

Percentage of U.S. workers who say they are confident that they will be able to live comfortably after retirement: 68 [Employee Benefit Research Institute (Washington)]

Percentage who have saved less than $25,000 toward retirement: 53 [Employee Benefit Research Institute (Washington)]

Percentage of Americans who believe that most Americans are too fat: 90 [Pew Research Center (Washington)]

Percentage who believe that they themselves are too fat: 39 [Pew Research Center (Washington)]

Average number of extra calories children consume for every hour of television they watch: 167 [Jean Wiecha, Harvard Prevention Research Center (Boston)]

Size, in inches, of Panasonic’s new top-of-the-line plasma TV: 103 [Panasonic Corporation of North America (Secaucus, N.J.)]

Factor by which Hummer sales in April exceeded those a year earlier: 3 [General Motors Corporation (Detroit)]

Percentage change in average U.S. gas prices over that year: +80 [U.S. Energy Information Administration]

Volume of new reserves added by major oil companies in 2005, expressed as a percentage of oil pumped that year: 51 [Sanford C. Bernstein Limited (London)]

Ratio of the amount of energy used in producing corn ethanol to the amount yielded when it is burned in gasoline: 1:1 [Alexander Farrell, University of California, Berkeley]

Ratio of the amount of energy used in producing gasoline itself to the amount yielded when it is burned: 6:5 [Alexander Farrell, University of California, Berkeley]

Amount it costs the U.S. Treasury to manufacture and distribute a penny: 1.4¢ [U.S. Mint]

Amount that insects add to the U.S. economy each year, according to one invertebrate advocacy group: $57,000,000,000 [The Xerces Society (Portland, Oreg.)]

Percentage of this total attributed to insects’ value as a food source for larger animals: 88 [ The Xerces Society (Portland, Oreg.)]

Ratio of the average U.S. import of Mexican lettuce each year to the average Mexican import of U.S. lettuce: 1:1 [Foreign Trade Division, U.S. Census Bureau]

Number of players that Brazilian soccer teams have sold to teams overseas since 1993: 6,700 [Confederação Brasileira de Futebol (Rio de Janeiro)]

Amount the Brazilian teams have earned from these sales: $918,819,900 [Revista Superinteressante (Sâo Paulo)/Harper’s research]

Percentage of Peruvians who say their nation needs leaders who “impose order” and “authority”: 74 [U.N. Development Programme (Lima)]

Number of U.S. residents the FBI investigated last year using Patriot Act powers that waive the need for a warrant: 3,501 [U.S. Department of Justice]

Number of times that President Bush’s “signing statements” have exempted his administration from provisions of new laws: 750 [Phillip Cooper, Portland State University (Portland, Oreg.)/Charlie Savage, Boston Globe]

Total number of times for all other presidents since Washington: 568 [Christopher Kelley, Miami University of Ohio (Oxford)/Christopher May, Loyola Law School (Los Angeles) ]

Minimum number of close-up photographs of President Bush’s hands owned by his new chief of staff, Josh Bolten: 4 [Office of Management and Budget (Washington)]

Percentage of Republicans who viewed “Hillary Clinton” favorably in an April poll: 16 [CNN (Washington)]

Percentage who viewed “Hillary Rodham Clinton” favorably: 23 [CNN (Washington)]

Rank of atheists among minorities whom Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry: 1 [Penny Edgell, University of Minnesota (Minneapolis)]

Rank of Muslims and African Americans, respectively: 2, 3 [Penny Edgell, University of Minnesota (Minneapolis)]

Number of “peace walls” that divided Protestant and Catholic communities in Belfast at the time of the 1994 ceasefire: 30 [Institute for Conflict Research (Belfast)]

Number today: 41 [Institute for Conflict Research (Belfast)]

Percentage of Irish Catholics who think that priests should not have to be celibate: 76 [Sunday Independent (Dublin)]

Percentage by which Britain’s The Independent outsold its daily average on May 16, the day U2’s Bono was guest editor: 30 [The Independent (London)]

Last date on which the newspaper sold as many copies: 9/12/01 [The Independent (London)]

Number of books that Art Garfunkel has read since June 1968, according to a comprehensive list on his website: 948 [Donald McCarthy, www.artgarfunkel.com (N.Y.C.)]

Length, in hours, of a book appearance that author Lawrence Lessig made in January inside an online fantasy world: 2 [Wagner James Au (San Francisco)]

Minimum number of different characters who showed up: 100 [Wagner James Au (San Francisco)]

Number of MySpace.com users featured by Playboy in its June “Girls of MySpace” photo spread: 9 [Playboy Enterprises, Inc. (Chicago)]

Minimum number who sent pictures to try out: 2,000 [Playboy Enterprises, Inc. (Chicago)]

Estimated number of hot dogs that will be eaten in the United States over the Fourth of July weekend: 150,000,000 [National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (Washington)]

Tons of mud a Mongolian girl has eaten since 1994, because she finds it “delicious”: 1.7 [Bao Bao (Xinxiang, China)]