Welcome to Significant Digits, a daily digest of the telling numbers tucked inside the news.
1 year
Don Blankenship, the former CEO of Massey Energy, was sentenced to a year in prison following his conviction for conspiracy to violate mine safety standards. In 2010 an explosion claimed the lives of 29 miners. [The Associated Press]
6 weeks
Tuesday the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to require employers to offer six weeks of paid leave for parents. This is great for new mothers, but is also, compared to the rest of the world, fantastic news for fathers, given that the citywide paternity leave policy now puts it ahead of many European nations. [FiveThirtyEight]
8.5 percent
According to a new report from the World Health Organization, 422 million adults have diabetes, which makes the worldwide rate 8.5 percent. That rate was 4.7 percent in 1980. [Bloomberg]
76 meteorites
Christie’s is auctioning off 76 meteorites later this month, which brings up the question of how precisely to put a price on a rock that fell from space. It used to be that they were priced based on weight, but since some meteorites are unambiguously cooler than others — anyone would admit a wayward chunk of moon has a lot more panache than some phoned-in detritus from the asteroid belt — meteorphiles took a page of of the diamond business’ book and coined the four S’s: size, shape, science and story. [Bloomberg]
$3,000
Does your dog have an Instagram account? Does that account have 150,000 to 250,000 followers? Well, that’s a good dog. It can also be a lucrative pooch, thanks to groups like The Dog Agency that will serve as reps for your canine and can fetch $3,000 per sponsored post for an account of that size. [The Wall Street Journal]
$30 million
George Mason University said it received $30 million in gifts after announcing that its law school would be named the “Antonin Scalia School of Law.” The university quickly announced the school would be named Antonin Scalia Law School, because nobody wants to say they got their degree from the A.S.S.O.L. [NPR]
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