Traffic Deaths, Svetlana Stalin, Race, Decision-Making, Wimbledon
Our Deadliest Problem Is Traffic, Not Terrorism
Simon Kuper | Financial Times | 11th July 2015 | | Read with 1Pass
Traffic accidents kill more than twice as many people as war and murder combined — about 1.3 million deaths each year. Even to speak of "accidents" is misleading. We know how to make roads safer. “Globally there is nothing to invent”. The return on preventing traffic deaths would be far higher than the return on trying to prevent terrorism. But we are used to traffic deaths. In effect, millions of people are dying of banality (780 words)
Svetlana Stalin In Ladbroke Grove
Donald Rayfield | Literary Review | 1st July 2015
Stalin's daughter emerges from Rosemary Sullivan's biography as a "remarkable, generous, sometimes heroic figure" despite a childhood "as traumatic as any Euripides tragedy". Svetlana was six when her mother committed suicide. Her father had her mother's relatives arrested and killed. "Her most searing memory is of Stalin in his death throes on the floor, soaked in urine, threatening her with a raised left hand" (1,420 words)
I, Racist
John Metta | 6th July 2015
"All the Black voices in the world speaking about racism all the time do not move White people to think about it — but one White John Stewart talking about Charleston has a whole lot of White people talking about it. That’s the world we live in. White people are in a position of power in this country because of racism. Are they brave enough to use that power to speak against the system that gave it to them?" (2,620 words)
The Data Or The Hunch
Ian Leslie | Intelligent Life | 3rd July 2015
How to strike the right balance between data and intuition in decision-making. Data seems the way to go; but data can only go so far. Data-driven decision-making relies on intuitions about what to measure and why; it tends to overweight things because they are measurable; and data sees only the past, the future involves guesswork. Intuition is John Hammond taking a shine to the kid in the cap, and finding Bob Dylan (5,100 words)
Roger Federer vs Andy Murray
Brian Philips | Grantland | 10th July 2015
"Yes, it went only three sets. Yes, Federer never really faced any danger. But it was a gallery of everything modern grass-court tennis can be. Physical problems solved at high speed in thrillingly unexpected ways. Small, pivotal moments — a weak second serve here, a screaming winner there — ramifying outward to affect the match in large ways. The quality of the points averaged out around superb and frequently hit sublime" (2,237 words)
Video of the day: The Art Of The Black Panthers
What to expect: Conversation with Emory Douglas, Bay Area graphic designer and Black Panther (7'54")
Thought for the day
Male writers get asked what they think, women what they feel
Eleanor Catton