Plausible reconstruction of how the IRS came to scrutinise Tea Party groups. If tax officials are required to spot signs of political activity in groups applying for exemption, it makes sense to look for short cuts: for example, those that seem to be part of a new political movement, Tea Party. Trouble is, that’s “profiling”. Just like the TSA officer pulling over a traveller in a turban. It’s easy, logical, and wrong
(1,590 words)
Extreme cancer blogging. No detail spared. I muted the title — check the URL — which refers more directly to colostomy. Take daily
before food. “At first, the emptying was done by the nurses, but after watching them doing it enough, I finally managed to sit down on the toilet. I wiped my new plastic anus and then folded the little pouch shut — no more unhygienic than going the normal way really”
(1,619 words)
Thrilling piece on the math of genealogy. Every sentence an eye-opener for the non-adept. “Anyone who was alive 2,000-3,000 years ago is either the ancestor of everyone who’s now alive, or no one at all.” “Everyone of European heritage alive today is a descendant of Charlemagne.” “Past a certain number of generations back, your number of ancestors stops growing exponentially, because they start being the same people”
(909 words)
On the virtues of death as against those of eternal life. “Life is short, and if death were to be a good thing, it would be a better thing much further down the road than it is for human lives now.” But immortality is another matter: Imagine the boredom. So, if, like Indiana Jones, you can save someone from death only by giving them an elixir of eternal life, it’s a harder choice the more you think about it. Neither option is a good option
(5,441 words)
Unmoved by Saturday’s songs in Malmö? Then travel back almost 30 years to the peak of Swedish greatness. “After winning Eurovision in 1974 Abba bestrode the world like a colossus — if you can imagine any self-respecting colossus going out in public in velveteen knickerbockers, silver boots, pearl kimono and tricorn hat. And that was just the boys”. Trivia bonus: “Abba was also the name of Sweden’s largest tuna-canning company”
(2,120 words)
Dante’s 14C
Divine Comedy continues to inspire. After perhaps 100 extant translations into English, this year brings two more from poets Clive James and Mary Jo Bang. Plus a novel from Dan Brown,
Inferno, which uses Dante’s themes and imagery. “For all its absurdities, Brown’s book is a comfort, because it proves that the
Divine Comedy is still alive in our culture”. As do the new translations, which are not great, but honourable
(3,339 words)
Intel boss retires, looks back, he did OK, but missed the deal of his lifetime: the iPhone contract. “There was a chip that they were interested in that they wanted to pay a certain price for and not a nickel more and that price was below our forecasted cost. I couldn’t see it. It wasn’t one of these things you can make up on volume. And in hindsight, the forecasted cost was wrong and the volume was 100x what anyone thought”
(5,671 words)
Remember when Toyota’s Prius hybrid was launched? It was “too expensive”, “elitist”, “only for greenies”. Now it’s the third best-selling car in the world. Looks like the same story for Tesla’s all-electric cars. Remember: new ideas take time to spread. Skeptics laugh, rivals get complacent. Then the idea finds its business model, breaks out of its niche, demand soars. It’s an S-curve, and Tesla has hit the first bend
(1,291 words)
Reprint of classic column from 2008. Waiters should not pour your wine. “The vile practice of butting in and pouring wine without being asked is the very height of the second kind of bad manners. Not only is it a breathtaking act of rudeness in itself, but it conveys a none-too-subtle and mercenary message: Hurry up and order another bottle. Imagine this same tactic being applied to the food”
(925 words)
President Kennedy’s assassin was caught without locking down Dallas. Why the over-reaction in Boston? “Governor Patrick has signaled future terrorists that when they attack American targets they will likely get twice the bang for their buck. Not only will they kill and maim innocents in the immediate vicinity of the bombs; they’ll have the added satisfaction of seeing millions of free people cowering far from the scene of the crime”
(862 words)
Portrait an Aboriginal village, and of its matriarch, Batumbil. “She does not like sand flies and she has no qualms about killing them. But she does believe she’s related to them.” Diet includes sea turtle, dugong, tree worms. “During the two weeks I’m in the bush, two people are eaten by crocodiles, a seven-year-old girl and a nine-year-old boy. I express my grief about this to Batumbil, but she remains unperturbed. These things happen”
(4,886 words)
“We’ve come a long way, as a species. We’re better at many things than we ever were before – not just slightly better, but unimaginably, ridiculously better. We’re better at transporting people and objects, we’re better at killing, we’re better at preventing infectious diseases, we’re better at industrial production. But in some areas, we haven’t made such dramatic improvements. And one of those areas is parenting”
(1,162 words)
Not sure what genre to assign this to. Satire? Whimsy? Anyhow, it’s a very nice piece of writing, inspired by a new Arizona state law stipulating that no weapon collected during a buyback program can be destroyed. “When does life begin for a gun? Is it first casting, first barrel boring, first test fire? Is it before the gun is formed when the metal is mined, or the carbon fiber manufactured? The Bible is mostly silent on firearms”
(747 words)
Interview. Health care in the developing world. “When you’re running a poor country health-care system, you can’t treat a year of life as being worth more than, say, $200, or else you’ll bankrupt your health system immediately. But here’s the good news: If you spend less than 2 percent of what rich countries spend, but you spend it on vaccinations and antibiotics, you get over half of all that healthcare does to extend life”
(2,884 words)
Nominally a review of Norman’s biography of Burke, but largely given over to a stinging critique of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatism. “By insisting that economic progress must come before anything else, she turned social institutions into more or less efficient means of achieving whatever is presently desired. Institutions ceased to be places in which people could find meaning and became mere tools”
(1,948 words)
Shipping containers delivered a huge boost to globalisation by cutting the time taken to load and unload cargo. “In 1965 dock labour could move only 1.7 tonnes per hour on to a cargo ship; five years later a container crew could load 30 tonnes per hour. This allowed freight lines to use bigger ships and still slash the time spent in port.” Journey times halved, cargo was secure from pilferage, dock workers lost their bargaining power
(994 words)
On the lives of street children, and the conflicting emotions they arouse within us. So well done as to be almost unbearable. “They’re forced to exist in a world parallel to ours, and, out there, in their other world, in their bus stations and gutters, in the filth and vileness of their refuse dumps, they survive as best they can, with the same emotions we all share. We diminish ourselves by refusing to look them in the eye”
(4,300 words)
After the financial crash of 2008, rich countries tried to restore growth with government spending. Not enough, but they had the right idea. Why did they reverse course in 2010, cut spending and worsen their recessions? Answer: a few economists — Kenneth Rogoff, Carmen Reinhart, Alberto Alesina, Silvia Ardagna — swayed elite opinion with arguments for austerity which were as persuasive as they were wrong
(5,130 words)
