in the web: smile thoughts tromp l'oeil figures: WMDs & MAs
media living connect misc demographic education

Various Figures

  1. Education (separate page): evaluation: international comparison, evaluation: differences within Germany, investment, university, reading
  2. Demographic Figures (separate page): People's Values and Likes, Political Spectrum, People's Knowledge of What's Going On, Citizenship & Migration
  3. Globalization: values & norms, jurisdiction, climate, money flow
  4. Environment: water, electricity, waste, emissions
  5. Regional Comparison: USA, EU
  6. Defence
  7. Law & Crime
  8. Infrastructure
  9. Economy
  10. Business (market shares, profits, little history of oil companies)
  11. Politics

Environment

The Cost of Water

World water prices (in DM/m3) [National Utility Service 2000]
Germany 3.46
Denmark 3.11
France 2.49
Belgium 2.39
Netherlands 2.28
UK 2.24
Italy 1.41
Spain 1.22
Finland 1.21
Sweden 1.08
Australia 1.05
South-Africa 1.04
USA 1.00
Canada 0.82

Investment in waste water treatment (in Mio euro) [Sep 2001, source?] more interesting would be: per capita
Germany 737.22
UK 554.67
France 275.96
Netherlands 101.91
Austria 75.62

Domestic Waste in Germany

Domestic waste produced in Germany per captita & p.a. [Spiegel 11/2002]
1996 429
1997 443
1998 437
1999 431
2000 425

Regional Comparison: USA, EU

USA vs. EU after extension 2004 to 25 countries [Spiegel Online 21 July 200]

To the development of Linux, the OpenSource operating system, Europeans contribute 37%, US-Americans 12% [Zeit 35/3002]

Defence

  • Center for Denfense Information
  • Federation of American Scientists: WMD table
  • Star Wars study 2003

    Troops & equipment comparison [Spiegel 11/2002]
    to land Germany France UK
    soldiers 300,000 290,000 210,000
    artillery systems 2,103 895 424
    battle tanks, armoured combat vehicles 5,153 4,725 2,914
    to air      
    fighter airplanes 507 569 457
    fighter helicopters 204 298 243
    transport planes 91 110 58
    fuel planes - 25 43
    to sea      
    carriers - 1 3
    battle ships 14 35 34
    submarine 14 11 16
    landing boats 5 9 6

    Law & Crime

    Terrorism

    Risk-of-terrorism-attack-on-buisness index by     World Markets Research Centers (used by EU, OPEC, GM, Microsoft, Shell, ...) [Tp 18.08.2003]
    1. Columbia
    2. Israel
    3. Pakistan
    4. USA
    5. Phillipines
    6. Afghanistan
    7. Indonesia
    8. Iraq
    9. India
    10. UK (first in Europe)
    11. ...
    12. Germany
    13. ...
    14. Slowenia
    15. Liechtenstein
    16. Belarus
    17. Andorra
    18. Iceland
    19. North Korea

    Guns

  • Handguns helds by civilians: 238m-276m in USA, 84m in European Union [Economist Jul 23 2003]
  • In terms of gun related homocides, the US ranks among developing countries like Brazil, Jamaica, Zimbabwe and the Philippines [Economist Jul 23 2003]:

    World Prisoners

    Distribution of prisoners, ca. 1999 [Justice Policy Institute 2000]
    prisoners ± jailees (% of world prisoners)% of population under any form of form of criminal justice supervision (prison, jail, parole or probation)
    USA ~2 mio. (~25%)  0.682%  
    Louisiana
    		? > Texas  
    Texas
    		207,526 1.035% 706,600
    California
    		> Texas ?  
    China ~1.4 mio. (~17.5%)  0.115%  
    Russia ~1 mio. (~12.5%)  0.685%  
    ...
    UK 73,545  ca. 0.12%  
    Note: "incarcerated" = in prison or jail.
    Some quotes from Justice Policy Institute (emphasis added):
    «The United States holds the dubious distinction of having the largest incarcerated population in the world, with 2 million people behind bars as of year-end 1999. With only 5% of the world's population, the U.S. holds a quarter of the world's prisoners.»
    «Texas has a rate of 1,035 people behind bars for every 100,000 in the population, the second highest incarceration rate in the nation (second only to Louisiana). If Texas was a nation separate from the United States, it would have the world's highest incarceration rate--significantly higher than the United States (682), and Russia (685) which has 1 million prisoners, the world's third biggest prison system. Texas' incarceration rate is also higher than China (115), which has the world's second largest prison population (1.4 million prisoners).»

    Economy

    US-Dollar vs. Euro

  • By the late 90s, more than four-fifths of all foreign exchange transactions, and half of all world exports, were denominated in dollars; and the dollar accounts for about two thirds of all official exchange reserves.
    «[T]he Euro-zone has a bigger share of global trade than the US and while the US has a huge current account deficit, the euro area has a more, or balanced, external accounts position. One of the more compelling arguments for keeping oil pricing and payments in dollars has been that the US remains a large importer of oil ... However, looking at the statistics of crude oil exports, one notes that the Euro-zone is an even larger importer of oil and petroleum products than the US.»
    [    The Choice of Currency for the Denomination of the Oil Bill, Speech given by Javad Yarjani, Head of OPEC's Marketing Analysis Department in a visit to Spain (April 2002)]
  • During 2002 the majority of Iran's Forex Reserve Fund has been converted to euros [Forex Fund Shifting to Euro, Iran Financial News (August 25, 2002)]
  • Nov. 2000, Iraq switched to trading its oil in euro (when it was worth around 80 cents). [Iraq: Baghdad Moves To Euro by Charles Recknagel, Radio Free Europe (Nov. 2000)]
    Later, Iraq also converted its $10 billion "oil for food" reserve fund at the U.N. to euros. [IMC-Ithaca: Article 965]
  • Effective Dec. 7, 2002, North Korea switched to using euro instead of dollars in its trade. [North Korea embraces the euro by Caroline Gluck, BBC (Dec. 1, 2002)]

    Politics

    The influence of politics on the scientific process. Eg. the report Politics and Science in the Bush Administration by the minority staff of the US House Government Reform Committee.
    http://members.tripod.de/sulf/misc/figs.html, 140601, 051102, Ulf Schuenemann