Percentage of voters who believe that Labour will govern after the next election, compared with National: 26, 62

Percentage of voters who say that Helen Clark needs to present a less arrogant and haughty persona between now and the election to gain votes: 15.3

Percentage who say Clark can do nothing and that it’s time for change: 59.7

Percentage increase in the number of Louisiana and Mississippi newborns named Katrina in the year after the hurricane: 153

Amount weather-related disasters cost worldwide in 2004: $107,000,000,000

Percentage decrease in the thickness of the Arctic ice pack since the 1960s : 40

Days in 1970 that northern Alaska was cold enough to operate oil-drilling machinery without damaging the tundra : 213

Days in 2002 that it was cold enough : 106

Percentage of New Zealand employers who expect to hire more people during this fourth quarter of 2007: 31

Percentage of employed U.S. mothers who think full-time mothers look down on them: 66

Percentage of full-time mothers who think employed mothers look down on them: 73

Rank of NZ to other OECD countries in rate of teenage fertility (births to teenagers): 3

Year in which four teenagers were convicted of treason for hitting the Swedish king in the face with strawberry cream cake: 2001

Consecutive years that the U.N. has ranked Norway as the best country to live in the last decade: 6

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

Number of minutes after tickets were placed on Trade Me for the sevens that all 35,000 tickets sold out: 10

Percentage of spam which solicits people to buy pills, potions or exercise regimes to increase their penis size: 21

Hours taken in 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2007 for an average Kiwi e-mail account to collect 100 spam emails (respectively): 168, 60, 24, 20

Amount that Britons paid to “Nigerian-style” e-mail and letter scams last year: $938,069,800.00

Date that an e-mail was sent to all members of Vic Labour telling them that “the poll on the Salient site is crap i.e. coded completely stupidly…vote more than once if you like”: 15-09-2007

Ratio of support that particular e-mail advocated to Geoff Hayward (Vic Labour) and Joel Cosgrove (Workers Party): 1:1

Days later the poll was changed restricting votes to one IP address: 2

Minimum fee per minute charged by a cyber psychologist for online treatment of Internet addiction: $2.10

Minimum number of months that an American bookstore refusing court orders to identify a buyer of a book about making illegal drugs: 22

Percentage of volunteers in a four-year psychedelic-mushroom study who said they experienced “strong or extreme fear”: 31

Percentage who described the experience as “among the five most meaningful” in their lives: 67

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

SOURCES: 1. Dominion Post | Saturday, 15 September 2007; 2, 3. Stuff.co.nz poll; 4. Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals (Baton Rouge)/ Mississippi Department of Health (Jackson); 5. Munich Reinsurance; 6, 7, 8. Alaska Department of Natural Resources (Anchorage); 9. New Zealand Herald 16-9-2007; 10, 11. Family Circle (N.Y.C.); 12. http://www.stats.govt.nz; 13. Harpers Magazine Weekly Review December 11, 2001; 14. U.N. Human Development Report Office (N.Y.C.); 15. Norsk Telegrambyra (Oslo); 16. The Dominion Post 14-9-2007; 17. New Zealand Herald 13-9-2007; 18. New Zealand Herald 13-9-2007; 19. Office of Fair Trading (London); 20, 21, 22. Salient Research; 23. Center for On-Line Addiction (Bradford, Pa.); 24. Tattered Cover Book Store (Denver); 25, 26. Roland Griffiths, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (Baltimore)