Salient

Pecking Order

By Salient | 13 Aug, 2007

Number of Kiwis on antidepressants in 2007 and in 2001 (respectively): 1,004,471; 697,574

Chance that a legal antidepressant will alleviate severe depression: 1 in 2

Chance that a placebo will do the same: 1 in 3

Number of Kiwi toddlers who have swallowed party pills in the past five years: 5

Percentage of British children aged seven to eleven who say they “Worry about global warming”: 34

Percentage who believe their own parents are to blame for the problem: 15

Estimated chance, worldwide, that a father is unknowingly raising another man’s child: 1 in 25

Number of deaths of Kiwi males aged 25 to 34 years in 2005: 207

Rank of this in terms of number of deaths compared to any other age group: 1

Ratio of Americans killed by lightning since January 2002 to those killed by terrorism: 3:2

Percentage of the 651 fatal or wounding terrorist attacks in 2005 that took place in Iraq: 32

Ratio of the estimated U.S. cost of ratifying the Kyoto Protocol to the cost of the Iraq war so far: 1:1

Days after her coronation in April that an Iraqi beauty queen resigned, citing death threats: 4

Average number of litres of blood spilled to produce one mink coat: 6.25

Year in which residents of a mountain village in Fiji apologized to the descendents of an English missionary who made the mistake of touching a chief’s head and was cooked and eaten for the insult: 2003

Amount lost by the Fiji Visitors Bureau after cancelling the first week of a new tourist campaign to attract New Zealanders: $2000

Percentage of Fiji’s gross domestic product earned by tourism: 20

Number of the world’s top ten English language scrabble players who are not native English speakers: 3

Estimated number of different languages spoken at home by Alaskan school children: 110

Number of positive responses TVNZ and Salient have received for their use of Te Reo during Maori language week (respectively): 1023, 0

Number of complaints (respectively): 23, 5

Weight, in grams, of all the information that passed through the Internet last year: 0.001

Cost per minute last spring for callers to the Vienna public library to have literary erotica read to them: 63c

Average number of minutes callers listened: 4

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E-mail Pecking Orders to editor@Salient.org.nz

SOURCES: 1. Sunday Star Times August 6, 2007; 2, 3. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (Rockville, Md.); 4. Dominion Post; 5, 6. Somerfiel Stores Ltd.; 7. Mark Bellis, Liverpool John Moores University (England); 8, 9. Statistics New Zealand 03-10-2005; 10. National Weather Service (Silver Spring, Md.)/U.S. Department of State Counterterrorism Office (Washington); 11. National Counterterrorism Center (Washington); 12. David Sandalow, Brookings Institution (Washington)/Scott Wallsten, American Enterprise Institute (Washington); 13. Talat Model Management (Baghdad); 14. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Norfolk, Va.); 15. Agence France-Presse; 16, 17. Dominion Post 18 June; 18. The SOWPODS Scrabble Site; 19. Alaska Department of childhood and early education; 20, 21. Sunday Star Times August 6, 2007/ Salient Research; 22. B&C Consulting Services (Colleyville, Tex.)/Harper’s research; 23, 24. Vienna City Library.