Small thoughts

Long, Healthy Lives…

… are hazardous to the taxpayer, reports IBNLive.com. A study has found that “the health costs of thin and healthy people in adulthood are more expensive than those of either fat people or smokers,” and “healthy people live longer and may develop long-term diseases in old age like Alzheimer’s which are very expensive to treat.”

The solution here is not to prevent people from living long and healthy lives. Instead, it is to question what our governments do with the money it coerces out of its citizens. Is it fair to take money from the obese to pay the medical costs of the relatively healthy, as is effectively the case here? Would it be fair the other way around? Is the government taxing us to provide certain basic services like law and order, or to redistribute it according to the interests of a few politicians in power?

I hope to live a long and healthy life— and even if I don’t, to be a burden on nobody. Is that unusual?

(Link via email from Andy.)

John McCain = Moe Greene

I may not always agree with Peggy Noonan, but her columns make for great reading, and her insights are always sharp. Consider this excerpt:

Mr. McCain seems to me to have two immediate problems, both of which he might address. One is that he doesn’t seem to much like conservatives, and never has. They can’t help admire him, but they’ve disagreed with him on so many issues, and when they bring this up his demeanor tends to morph into the second problem: He radiates, he telegraphs, a certain indignation at being questioned by people who’ve never had to vote in Congress and make a deal. He’s like Moe Greene in “The Godfather,” when Michael Corleone tells him he’s going to buy him out. “Do you know who I am? I’m Moe Greene. I made my bones when you were going out with cheerleaders.” I’ve been on the firing line, punk. I am the voice of surviving conservatism.

This doesn’t always go over so well. Mr. Giuliani seems to know Mr. McCain is Moe Greene. Mr. Huckabee probably thought “The Godfather” was kinda violent. Mr. Romney may be thinking to himself, But Michael Corleone won in the end, and had better suits.

I’m just glad someone’s comparing politics to the underworld. One could be considered a more respectable form of the other.

But which one?

Core Competence

The Guardian reports:

She was so convincing as White House hotshot CJ Cregg in The West Wing that Allison Janney has been offered work as a political pundit and is now being wooed by more than one Democratic candidate. They seem to be forgetting, she tells Emma Brockes, that she is an actor – and not too strong on politics.

On the contrary, I think they’re smart to run after her. A key part of politics, especially during elections, is playing a part, and the core competence of many political actors is acting. From Barack Obama to Mitt Romney, they’ve all carefully crafted their persona depending on the political constituency they think they can pander to most efficiently. It’s the wisdom of that choice, and the quality of their acting, that will decide who wins.

(Link via email from Salil Tripathi.)

Who is Today’s Ota Benga?

Hari Balasubramanian, in an excellent post, tells us the story of Ota Benga, “a pygmy from the Belgian Congo [who, in 1906,] found himself sharing a cage with an orangutan at the Bronx Zoo, as part of an exhibition intended to illustrate the stages of evolution.” Benga’s filed teeth, Hari writes, which came from “a tradition of cosmetic dentistry followed by his people … was mistaken as a sign of cannibalism.” That impression suited the zookeepers, who “scattered bones in the cage.” No one protested.

Hari asks:

The outrage we feel today about this scarcely believable story from just over a century ago is an indication of just how much sensibilities have changed. But to me the key issue is not what happened to Ota Benga; rather, it is this: What is it that most of us do not condemn today and are complicit with that will in 2107 seem utterly outrageous?

This is a great question, and one that I’ll attempt to tackle in a longer piece at some point in time. Let me point out, in the meantime, that we don’t need need to compare different periods of time for such startling contrasts in attitude—we can simply compare continents, or cultures, of today.

For example, the Qatif rape case, where the victim of a gang rape in Saudi Arabia was sentenced to six months in prison and 200 lashes, is no less appalling than Ota Benga’s story. The victim has been ‘pardoned’ after an international outcry, but barring stray cases like this, the West is largely tolerant of such nonsense, even justifying it in the name of cultural differences.

Will a rape victim in Saudi Arabia in 2107 be treated better? I sure hope so. As for Ota Benga, his Wikipedia page tells us that “at the age of 32, he built a ceremonial fire, chipped off the caps on his teeth, performed a final tribal dance, and shot himself in the heart with a stolen pistol.”

It’s a relief that he couldn’t be prosecuted for that theft.

On Being Labelled

I found this excerpt, from a Bryan Appleyard piece on science fiction, to be quite telling:

In the 1970s, Kingsley Amis, Arthur C Clarke and Brian Aldiss were judging a contest for the best science-fiction novel of the year. They were going to give the prize to Grimus, Salman Rushdie’s first novel. At the last minute, however, the publishers withdrew the book from the award. They didn’t want Grimus on the SF shelves. “Had it won,” Aldiss, the wry, 82-year-old godfather of British SF, observes, “he would have been labelled a science-fiction writer, and nobody would have heard of him again.”

Well, who knows, buoyed by the award, Rushdie might well have gone on to write Midnight’s Cyborgs. Wouldn’t that have been such fun?

Cricket and the Veshti

CNN-IBN reports that a “prestigious cricket club” in Chennai did not allow a civil servant to enter its premises because he was dressed in a veshti.

On a tangent, I wonder—and I know I can check this with two mouse-clicks, but it’s more fun to wonder—whether you’re allowed to play cricket in a veshti. Why should cricket only be played in trousers? Indeed, with a veshti, you could actually catch a ball between your legs without the risk of scraping the skin on your fingers. If you have a really long veshti, you could let it loose in the breeze while running a single, possibly ensuring that you’re inside both creases at the same time. And if you’re at the non-striker’s end, and your partner’s having a problem with the sightscreen, you could stand on your head.

I hope the BCCI takes this matter up with the ICC. The colonial hangover must go, and air must circulate.

(Link via email from Gautam John.)