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• cactus ferruginous pygmy owl
• The average American walks about a half-mile per day outside the home or workplace. There are some 237 million Americans sixteen and older; all told, that’s 43 billion miles walked each year by people of driving age. If we assume that 1 of every 140 of those miles are walked drunk—the same proportion of miles that are driven drunk—then 307 million ...
• Or consider the 1972 U.S. law known as Title IX. While broadly designed to prohibit sex discrimination in educational settings, Title IX also required high schools and colleges to bring their women’s sports programs up to the level of their men’s programs. Millions of young women subsequently joined these new programs, and as the economist Betsey S...
• To be sure, an Everleigh butterfly’s wages were off the charts. But why did even a typical Chicago prostitute one hundred years ago earn so much money? The best answer is that wages are determined in large part by the laws of supply and demand, which are often more powerful than laws made by legislators. In the United States especially, politics an...
• The small discount for condom use is surprising. Even more surprising is how seldom condoms are used: less than 25 percent of the time even when counting only vaginal and anal sex. (New customers were more likely to use condoms than repeat customers; black customers were less likely than others.) A typical Chicago street prostitute could expect to ...