Alan Jacobs

The scientific evidence linking both processed meat and tobacco to certain types of cancer is strong. In that sense, both are carcinogens. But smoking increases your relative risk of lung cancer by 2,500 percent; eating two slices of bacon a day increases your relative risk for colorectal cancer by 18 percent. Given the frequency of colorectal cancer, that means your risk of getting colorectal cancer over your life goes from about 5 percent to 6 percent and, well, YBMMV. (Your bacon mileage may vary.) “If this is the level of risk you’re running your life on, then you don’t really have much to worry about,” says Alfred Neugut, an oncologist and cancer epidemiologist at Columbia.

[gallery] The article is fine, but I really like this illustration by Mike McQuade

[gallery] Only one thing the WHO has ever studied is “probably not carcinogenic”

Far from being a secret Muslim who was indifferent to the death of an American diplomat, or a progressive peacenik who resents U.S. leadership, Obama was something much more destructive to the interests of Americans — he was a typical American hawk. He was different from George W. Bush only in preferring air power for aiding revolutionaries and rebels on the ground, rather than a ground invasion and think-tank conquerors like Ahmed Chalabi. The result of the policy of our foolish Christians is worse than the fever dreams of any Manchurian Mohammedan or American weakling: a continuation and intensification of the wars that are leading to the eradication of Christianity from the Middle East. ISIS is conquering territory and killing Christians with American materiel.

The fact is that the opposition party in America can’t honestly investigate Obama’s foreign policy without doing fatal collateral damage to its own. And so Hillary Clinton can say in public that the intervention she championed in Libya is “smart power at its best,” even though that country is being terrorized by ISIS and other jihadists and is one source of the refugee crisis. The supposedly mean-spirited GOP that would do anything to attack Clinton has run into something it won’t do: challenge our recklessly hawkish foreign policy.

[gallery] From The Negro Motorist Green Book

I am reminded of a story I recently read on a website called Marketwatch. This story explained to me that reading fiction can improve empathy. It was a proven fact—the scientific method had determined that books could do this. This was relevant because Marketwatch was reporting on a new finding that only 47 percent of Americans had read a novel, play, or poem in 2012, down from 50 percent in 2008. The argument was simple: you can get a tangible benefit out of fiction—in this case, greater empathy. This benefit could make reading more competitive with other entertainment options. Reading could improve its market share.

I was struck by the fact that this article never tried to account for the utilitarian benefits of much more widespread forms of entertainment, like professional basketball or a Hollywood action movie. I’ve read a lot of articles like the Marketwatch one, and I’ve noted that none of them ever do this. Never is an NBA playoff game or a blockbuster movie expected to explain its reason for existing, its benefits to the consumer. They only ever try to make novel art account for its purpose. Maybe this is the divide we’re really speaking of when we invoke that binary, high and low. Perhaps we are talking about ways of filling our free time that need no justification, and those that do.

Britain’s got talent.

Americans have not, in fact, become more tolerant.  Rather, they have shifted their dislike to new groups.  For example, “Muslim clergymen who preach hatred against the United States” are now the least liked group included in the General Social Survey (GSS), followed by people who believe that “blacks are genetically inferior”.   Most importantly, compared to those in their 40s, people in their 30s and 20s actually show lower tolerance towards these groups.  According to the 2012 GSS, people in their 40s are the most tolerant of Muslim clergymen who preach anti-American hatred: 43% say a member of this group should not be allowed to give a public speech in their community.  Among people in their 30s, the number who would prohibit this group from speaking climbs to 52%, and for those in their 20s it jumps to 60%.  Young people are also less tolerant than the middle aged groups toward militarists, communists, and racists.  This is not true for tolerance towards homosexuals or atheists, because younger people simply like these groups more. (Political tolerance is not a measure of liking someone, but the willingness to extend political freedoms to those one dislikes).

[gallery] myimaginarybrooklyn:

John Austen’s woodcuts for Aristophanes’, “The Frogs.”

In one sense there were differences, and not just that I was younger and slenderer first time round. Food and service are both much better than when I first came here. Attitudes have also changed mostly for the better, although not always. There is this paradox that Britain has never been so rich and the amount of money and possessions most people have cannot be compared with what people had when I first arrived. And yet the country behaves as if it has never been so poor. The refrain you constantly hear is “we can’t afford it”. It feels like we are permanently in this age of austerity in which we not only can’t afford large things – housing for all that need it, cottage hospitals in every town – but also small things such as flower beds on roundabouts. All these things the country had when I first came here, and when we were all much poorer.