food for thought from Harpers

A number of ditties in the Harper's index this month:

-Average number of hours of television watched per week by Americans aged 43 to 61: 19

-Average number watched by those aged 26 to 42 and those aged 14 to 25, respectively: 15, 11

-Number of days in November that a family farm near Denver opened up its fields for free picking: 1

-Number of people who showed up: 40,000


-Last year in which total world trade shrank, before it did so in 2008: 1982


-Average pain rating, on a scale of 1 to 7, given by study participants to a shock they believed to be unintentional: 3.0

Kurt Gray, Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.)

-Average rating they assigned the same shock when they believed it to be intentional: 3.6