Significant Digits For Thursday, Feb. 5, 2015

You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the telling numbers tucked inside the news. To receive this newsletter in your inbox, subscribe.

11 percentage points

Finally, an issue that the polarized left and right can approach — almost sort of kind of — agreeing on. When asked whether all children should be required to be vaccinated, 76 percent of Democrats, 65 percent of Republicans, and 65 percent of independents said yes. That’s a margin of a mere 11 percentage points! Vaccinate your kids, people. [FiveThirtyEight]

21 percent

An investigation of herbal supplements by the New York State attorney general found that only 21 percent contained any DNA from the advertised plants. The supplements — which investigators purchased at Target, GNC, Walgreens and Walmart — were advertised as containing supplements such as ginseng or ginkgo balboa, but in fact often contained seemingly random vegetable matter. [CBS News]

68 percent approval

NASA continues to enjoy a solid favorability rating across the board, with 68 percent of Americans holding a favorable view of the space agency. NASA spent 0.5 percent of total federal outlays last year. Meanwhile, the IRS — which collects that coin — sits at a measly 45 percent favorability. [Pew Research Center]

99.8 pounds

American per-capita consumption of red meat has steadily declined while consumption of poultry has risen. This year, the average American is projected to consume more poultry (102.4 pounds) than red meat (99.8 pounds) for the first time in at least 50 years. [National Journal]

640 kilograms

Hafthór Björnsson, an Icelandic strongest-man competitor who plays a barbaric character on the popular television show “Game of Thrones,” has broken a millennium-old mythical record after taking five steps while carrying a log that weighs 640 kilograms (1,411 pounds). The 26-year-old is 6′ 9″ and is a living reminder that we should all be pretty thrilled the Vikings stopped doing that raiding thing a little while back. [New York Daily News]

10,000 Picassos

Pablo Picasso’s granddaughter Marina inherited about 10,000 of the artist’s works, and now is preparing to sell some of them privately. Her decision has prompted worries in the art world that she could flood the market and push down prices. I look forward to the day when I can grab one at a thrift shop. [The New York Times]

31,000 mph

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft was over 126 million miles from former planet Pluto when it sent back its first grainy images of the distant rock. Based on the craft’s rate of travel, New Horizons should be at its closest approach on July 14, which is presumably when it will break the news to Pluto of its demotion to dwarf-planet status. [The Washington Post]

47,000 edits

Bryan Henderson, a Wikipedia editor who goes by the account Giraffedata, is on a solo crusade against a common grammatical error. He has made over 47,000 edits of the world’s largest encyclopedia since 2007, with a singular focus on ridding Wikipedia of the phrase “comprised of,” which he and many others consider to be an invalid English phrase. [Medium]

$15 million

Sony’s reported cost of investigating and responding to the hack that devastated its American film-studio subsidiary Sony Pictures Entertainment late last year. [Gigaom]

$6.3 billion

Staples is buying Office Depot for $6.3 billion in a cash-and-stock deal. If the deal goes through, the only things that will stand between the paper juggernaut and world domination are the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company and the inevitable obsolescence of paper. [Reuters]

Sign up for the newsletter now and be the first to learn about the numbers behind the news. And, as always, if you see a significant digit in the wild, tweet it to me @WaltHickey.