"Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable." - Woody Allen

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My Favourite Periodical:


April 19th:

"SIR – It seems that The Economist has developed a prejudice against Heathrow. In the past year I've read three articles slating the place and another half-dozen taking energetic sideswipes. I have experienced far worse airports. Gatwick, for example, has longer security lines. Then there are O'Hare in Chicago and LAX in Los Angeles.

These two horrors serve nearly as many passengers as Heathrow, are more overcrowded and have worse amenities. Many American airports routinely deal with bad weather conditions resulting in delays, cancellations and excess time spent in dismal terminals, which Heathrow travellers are usually spared. O'Hare is in an utterly different league of unpleasantness compared with Heathrow. I am into my third hour of waiting for a delayed flight.

Dave Taggart
Concourse H, Terminal 3
Chicago O'Hare airport"

"SIR – Sitting on my bag in the shambles that is Heathrow and thoroughly frustrated at my flight being delayed by ten hours I flicked through The Economist to cheer me up. It worked a treat until I got to the article about Willie Walsh's love for his new terminal (Face value, March 29th). I agreed with only one statement in the article; British Airways' boss has indeed learned a lot from Ryanair.

Aidan Cahalane
Terminal 5"

"More officers patrol on foot. That way, they get to know the people they protect, who may in turn supply them with information. That is crucial in a city where thugs have mounted a “Stop Snitching” campaign, complete with T-shirts and a DVD, to intimidate potential or actual informants."

"Following the example of their children and grandchildren, some small investors formed a group on Facebook, a social-networking site, to trade information, provide mutual support and plot strategy. Brian Hunter, the group administrator, says the site turned out to be an “amazing tool”. People who would never have met in real life, from pig farmers and retired loggers to MBA students and pastors, created a formidable interest group. Campaigners were able to ensure that investors armed with information attended cross-country meetings held in late March and early April by the backers of the restructuring deal. “We had 300 raging grannies show up in Vancouver,” says Mr Hunter. “[The backers] got their heads handed to them at that meeting.”"

"The common alternative view is that women are all too often “either patsies or victims”... Ms Pinker finds out why men and women travelled along different career trajectories by the simple method of asking them. Able women who left academic science or stepped off the corporate ladder tell her they wanted something different from life, and insist discrimination had little to do with it... Ms Pinker is surely right that understanding the causes of workplace gender gaps, rather than mulishly insisting sex differences do not exist, will ultimately be better for both women and men. “Simply letting the chips fall where they may has a discriminatory effect,” she points out. Gender-blind parental-leave policies at universities often load the dice against women; many return to work with nothing more than a backlog, whereas men tend to advance their case for tenure by coming back with a book. Ms Pinker's “vanilla male” hypothesis is supported by the shame felt by the women she interviewed about having made choices that differed from men's: those who decided against careers in mathematics or science, despite excelling in those fields, or who found themselves emotionally torn on becoming mothers, worried they were “letting the side down”. One interesting detail is that all the women she interviewed asked for their identities to be concealed; no man did."
I'm sure the strawfeminists will have something to say about that.

"As for Mr Murakami's sexualised sculptures, with their oversized breasts and silly big eyes, like “Miss Ko2 at Wonder Festival 2000” (pictured left), here he is clearly celebrating the emotional regression and sexual perversion of Japanese manga comics, even as he claims to critique the genre."


April 26th:

"As Adam Smith said, outlays on “trinkets of frivolous utility” are what “keeps in continual motion the industry of mankind.”"

"Having lied to its people about Tibet for so long, how could it explain to them a new, less hostile policy? It seems also to have convinced many of its people of the truth of two other egregious lies: that criticism of China's government is an attack on the Chinese people, and that dialogue is a sign of weakness."

"SIR – Is Israel the sole cause of Palestinian suffering? Which neighbouring countries have extended assistance? Not Lebanon, which confined Palestinians to refugee camps, depriving them of the right to work, the ability to educate their children and the right to become citizens. Certainly not Jordan, which quarantines exports from the West Bank until they are proven to be free of Israeli content, further burdening Palestinian businessmen.

Ted Levy
Weston, Connecticut"

"SIR – The sight of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama vying in Pennsylvania for the Abraham Lincoln Award for the candidate with the humblest beginnings (Lexington, April 19th) reminded me of the Monty Python sketch about the four Yorkshiremen. Each man argues that his family had the hardest upbringing: “There were 150 of us living in t' shoebox in t' middle o' road”; “You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank”, and so on. Maybe the Python team could write a new version in time for the parties' conventions this summer.

Margaret McGirr
Greenwich, Connecticut"

"Back in the days when he did not realise what a cash-magnet he is, Mr Obama piously vowed to accept public funds if his opponent did. Now, having seen how useful it is to be able to saturate the airwaves with ads praising himself and damning his opponent, he has slithered away from that vow. The current system of public financing for elections is “creaky”, he says. The Obama method of raising lots of small donations over the internet is like a “parallel public financing system,” he told donors earlier this month. Sure it is."

"No fewer than seven bills that would alter how history is taught are currently before California's legislature. One is another measure about Filipinos. The others would encourage or force more lessons about African and Latin American cultures, American Indians, the “secret war” in Laos, the deportation of Hispanics in the 1930s, the desegregation of Mexican pupils and the Italian contribution to California. All of which would be added to a curriculum that is already a brisk 5,000-year trot from ancient Egypt to contemporary America... The state board of education follows “social content guidelines” which, among other things, ban negative depictions of religious groups and foreign cultures. Many have duly complained of slights and inaccuracies; among the most zealous are Hindus, who have succeeded in toning down descriptions of the caste system... Every group supports every other group's plea for inclusion, resulting in a consensus for including a huge amount of new material."

"THE first and second time her husband shot her, the distressed woman in her 30s rejected advice to file a complaint. To do so, she explained, would require the presence of her obligatory male guardian, who happened to be...her husband. Without him, her testimony would not be legally valid. Besides, the all-male police might accuse her of “mixing” with the opposite sex, a crime in the eyes of most Saudi judges. The third time her husband shot her, she died."

"AS OSTENTATIOUS gestures go, splashing out $1.5m (including taxes) to have a custom-made Rolls-Royce Phantom air-mailed to you half-way around the world takes some beating. But Duong Thi Bach Diep, one of Vietnam's new breed of property tycoons, was tiring of being driven round in a mere BMW. “I cried when I first saw it,” she told reporters in January. “All the security and customs officials at the airport shared the joy with me when it arrived.” Naturally her motives were patriotic and noble: “This will show the world that Vietnam is not a country of poverty and war but a lucrative market.”"


May 24th:

"SIR – Your briefing on black America cited the findings of an academic study as evidence that “blacks certainly face barriers in the job market” (“Nearer to overcoming”, May 10th). This study sent out fictitious job applications with “a black-sounding name, such as Jamal or Lakisha, or a white one, such as Emily or Greg”. The white-sounding applicants got a better response.

However, the names you think are “black-sounding” are also quite common in Asian and Arab countries. It was not clear to me from your article what constitutes a truly black-sounding name. If employers turned down applicants with names such as Jamal and Lakisha, is it not possible they may have been discriminating against Asian- and Arab-Americans?

Musaazi Namiti
Doha, Qatar"

"SIR – Blue-collar white applicants with names like Billy Bob and Brandi would probably have suffered the same fate as a Jamal or Lakisha when pitted against an Emily or Greg, something I thought would be obvious to those who designed the study.

I recently attended a ceremony at a university and was amazed at the recurrence of traditional first names; a plethora of Anns, Elizabeths, Johns and Stephens (many of them Asian-Americans) with nary a Staci, Crystal, Cody or Elvis in sight. Parents express their aspirations when they name their children, and usually get what they expect.

David Miller
Austin, Texas"

"THIS drug is peddled on every street corner in America, and is found in every country in the world. It is psychoactive, a stimulant and addictive. Users say that it increases alertness and focus, and reduces fatigue. But the high does not last and addicts must keep consuming it in increasing quantities.

Put this way, sipping coffee sounds more like an abomination than the world's most accepted form of drug abuse. But centuries of familiarity have put people at their ease. In the coming years science is likely to create many novel drugs that boost memory, concentration and planning. These may well be less harmful than coffee—and will almost certainly be more useful. But will people treat them with as much tolerance?"