Salient

Pecking Order

By Salient | 7 May, 2007

Percentage by which average Kiwi male income levels are higher than female after five years of leaving study : 20

Number of females on the American Film Institute’s list of the 50 greatest movie villains, aliens included : 15

Number on its list of the 50 greatest movie heroes, Lassie included : 7

Number of times that saw grass switches gender during a week of flowering : 2

Number of times Georgina Beyer announced she would resign from parliament, but then didn’t : 2

Percentage of Americans who believed that democracy would take hold in Iraq last year : 54

Number of the 14 other nations surveyed where a majority believed this : 3

Amount New Zealand’s fire service spent in 2003 on a tv campaign against cooking while drunk : $271,000

Estimated hectares of forest Henry David Thoreau burned down in 1844 trying to cook fish he had caught for dinner : 122

Rank of money and God, respectively, among “the very best thing(s) in the world” to British children under 10 : 1, 10

Rank of the United States among 21 rich countries the UN ranked this year for “percentage of children growing up in poverty” : 21

Rank of New Zealand : 18

Minimum number of Texas death-row inmates who have MySpace pages : 36

Number of US states that passed legislation last year expanding the right to shoot someone in self-defence : 14

Consecutive years that the UN has ranked Norway as the best country to live in : 6

Minutes after the ranking that Norway’s aid minister said Norwegians needed to fight their “culture of whining” : 38

Percentage of city-dwelling Indian men aged 16 to 25 who say they expect the woman they marry to be a virgin : 63

Percentage of these who have had sex with a prostitute or another man, respectively : 22, 17

Chances that a hip-hop fan has had five or more sexual partners in the last five years, according to a U.K. study : 2 in 5

Chance that a country-music fan has : 1 in 67

Average number of times an adult worldwide has sex each year, according to self-reporting in polls : 103

Average in New Zealand : 122

Average in Japan, the lowest of 41 countries surveyed : 45

Percentage of 16 to 34-year-olds in Japan who say they are happy :

8

Rank of this among the 14 countries surveyed : 14

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

SOURCES: 1 Statistics New Zealand 2, 3 American Film Institute (Los Angeles) 4 Jennifer Richards, Florida International University (Miami) 5 www.kiwiblog.co.nz 6, 7 Pew Global Attitudes Project (Washington) 8 New Zealand Fire Service (Wellington) 9 The Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods (Lincoln, Mass.) 10 Luton First 11, 12 UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre 13 Andy Kahan, Mayor’s Office (Houston) 14 National Rifle Association of America (Fairfax, Va.) 15 U.N. Human Development Report Office (N.Y.C.) 16 Norsk Telegrambyra (Oslo) 17, 18 India Today (New Delhi) 19, 20 Adrian North, University of Leicester (Leicester, England) 21, 22, 23 Durex (Manchester England) 24, 25 MTV Networks International (N.Y.C.).