Watching the World
Acceptance of Terrorism
● “Incidents of international terrorism increased more than sixfold during the ’70s,” writes political scientist Robert J. Jackson in the Toronto Star. “The most numerous were political assassinations, diplomatic kidnappings and embassy seizures. And as the violence escalated, the public threshold for tolerance also mounted, giving terrorism an unprecedented degree of acceptance in modern western societies.” Wondering if governments and individuals are “becoming conditioned to accept violence as a proper part of the political process,” he cites examples of governments that “openly sponsor international terrorist acts, treating them as a legitimate means of political pressure.” Terrorist tactics are effective, he points out, as shown by a study of seventy-seven international hostage incidents that revealed that “almost 80 per cent of the kidnappers escaped capture or death” and had a “50 per cent chance of having some or all of their demands met.”
Aging World
● For the first time in history, mankind is faced with a world in which the old outnumber the young. It is said that by the year 2025 the world birthrate will be cut by half, while the average life expectancy will rise to seventy. The implications of a shrinking work force supporting a soaring number of the elderly “has so worried the United Nations,” says the Glasgow Herald, that it called a special conference to discuss the problem. “The main objective of the U.N.,” according to the article, is to help governments “realise that compulsory retirement, once considered a major social achievement, is bad for their economies, as well as for the old themselves.” It is felt that most people can continue to work until they are seventy-five. The biggest problem is expected to occur in the Third World, where a lifetime of poverty and disease will disable a large proportion of the elderly.
Child VD Cases Growing
● “The number of children below the age of 15 who are suffering from sexually transmitted diseases has increased tremendously,” says a report from Africa. According to the Zambia Daily Mail, the annual meeting of the Association of Physicians of East and Central Africa heard a talk by Professor Chilango Mulaisho in which he stated that the “number of cases reported . . . is growing every day,” and that many more go unreported because “children are generally afraid to tell anybody that they have contracted such a disease.” Why such a dramatic increase? According to Professor Mulaisho, it is because of the “apparent free moral attitude existing between children of opposite sexes and lack of control by parents.”
World Smoking News
● Candy cigarettes once were popular with children, and now candy is being used to entice the young to smoke. The Japanese tobacco industry is now marketing a candy-flavored filter cigarette to attract young smokers. The cigarette comes in four flavors: mint, lime, orange and cinnamon. They expect to sell 120 million of these candy-flavored cigarettes a year.
While the tobacco industry seeks to attract new smokers and increase sales, others are working to discourage the practice. Some have put up signs saying Smoking Is a Dying Habit and Go Ahead if You Must Smoke, but Please Do Not Exhale Here. Also, many employers are refusing to hire applicants who smoke. And in London an organization called COUGH-UP (Citizens’ Organisation Using Graffiti to Halt Unhealthy Promotions) is turning posters promoting smoking into antismoking slogans. If an advertisement referred to “the perfect cigarette,” the members would add, “for the perfect dope.” And a poster extolling a certain cigarette brand, urging readers to “make a note of it,” had a new conclusion added: “ . . . a suicide note.”
In Zurich authorities upheld the decision of an insurance commission to cut the disability pay of a man who could not work due to heart and circulatory troubles. Noting that he had smoked twenty to thirty cigarettes a day for the past twenty-five years, they ruled that the responsibility was his, due to “gross negligence.”
Two Million Lawless
● Almost 2 million adults in the United States were behind bars or on probation or parole at the end of last year—one out of every eighty-three persons over eighteen years of age. These figures, which continue to grow, do not reflect the additional several thousand adults on county or city-run parole. The majority of these—over 1.2 million adults—were on federal or state probation, which generally refers to the release of a convicted person under official supervision. This was a 9-percent increase over 1980, according to the government figures.
Mediterranean “Ill”
● “The Mediterranean, which nurtured so many civilisations, is gravely ill,” says London’s Observer. “And the pollution does not merely stifle the life of the sea—it threatens the people who inhabit and visit its shores.” Sewage from the Mediterranean’s 120 coastal cities, wastes from the thousands of factories that line its shores, inland filth carried by the rivers that empty into it and oil pollution—have all added together, to make the Mediterranean the “most polluted” sea in the world. According to the report, the Mediterranean “has only 1 per cent of the world’s sea surface, but carries more than half the oil and tar floating on the waters,” making its oil pollution four times as great as the North Atlantic and forty times as bad as the northeast Pacific. As the Mediterranean is landlocked, apart from the nine-mile-wide Strait of Gibraltar, it takes eighty years for the water to be renewed—too slow a process to cope with the ever-increasing pollution. Since it is the world’s most popular holiday destination—with 100 million tourists annually—the article cautions visitors to select less polluted areas, swim in waters away from cities and not eat shellfish.
Ant Communication
● How do ants, known for their organized activity, communicate with one another? It is by releasing chemicals, says Edward O. Wilson, regarded as the world’s foremost authority on ants. His discovery came after thirty-five years of studying the ants’ activity throughout the world. “Ants have between 10 and 20 chemicals in different glands in their bodies which they release to signal alarm, recruit workers to a food site, attack an enemy or to tell them to assemble in certain spots—any of about 50 standard behavior patterns,” he says. “They have an extraordinary ability to sense chemicals.”
Ants recognize dead ants, he discovered, by oleic acid—which is released as the dead ant starts to decompose. In experimentation they dropped a spot of oleic acid on a live ant. The other ants carted him out, “squirming and kicking,” to the cemetery outside the nest—and kept doing so no matter how many times he came marching back. But, says Wilson, “we’ve only begun to understand ants’ complex mode of communication.”
“Arcade Arthritis”
● According to Dr. Gary Myerson, a rheumatologist, because of the repetitious actions needed to operate the game controls, habitual players of video games run the risk of developing chronic problems in their hands, wrists and shoulders. In a study he and his associates conducted, 65 percent of the players in a video arcade had blisters, calluses, pain in joints or inflammation of a tendon due to playing the games. “The study definitely demonstrates the acute injuries that can result from direct participation in the video games,” said Dr. Myerson. “Sixty-five percent of people participating in anything that develops an injury is significant. When one considers what could potentially happen to one’s joints, it should be taken quite seriously.”
No Room—Alive or Dead
● Tiny Hong Kong, with its population of five million, is now so crowded that it has become increasingly difficult to find a place even to bury the dead. Reports the International Herald Tribune: “A permanent tomb in a private cemetery now costs $25,000 [US]—if you can find one.” The Hong Kong government encourages cremation by offering to do the service for as little as $20. “But,” says the Tribune, “cremation is unpopular with Hong Kong’s traditional Chinese, for whom ancestral worship is still an important tenet.” A compromise has been reached by making it possible to cremate the dead and yet bury them too. High-rise structures, called columbaria, are being built that can hold the remains of thousands of persons. Each tiny nine-by-nine-inch niche is covered by a plaque containing the name, date of death and a picture of the deceased—and can be visited like a grave. For those who desire a traditional cemetery, without the six-year burial rotation to make room for others, space has been offered in nearby China for a fee of $2,500. But only ninety-five coffins have been buried there in the past three years due to transportation and visa difficulties.
Finger Fraud
● Police in Fukuoka, Japan, have uncovered a scheme that has fraudulently netted some 300 million yen in insurance claims. To cover debts, people there have been taking out insurance policies and then slicing off their index fingers in order to collect. According to the London newspaper The Guardian, police have already taken eighteen fingerless persons into custody, but over sixty more are believed to be still at large. They have also found amateur “surgeons” who will chop off a finger for a payment of 100,000 yen. In one instance a woman in debt to a loan shark was forced to have her finger amputated after taking out an insurance policy. Of the 3 million yen paid for the “accident” by the insurance company, 2 million was taken by the moneylender.
Back to Stone Age
● Technology is going back to the Stone Age—at least to recover a process said to have disappeared 3,000 years ago in which “primitive peoples” made stone blades from volcanic glass. According to an article in The Vancouver Sun, “archeologists and surgeons are experimenting with ways of making the stone age tools, called microblades, because the blades’ sharpness surpasses that of the best scalpel.” The blades are made from obsidian glass or basalt, and, says Dr. David Pokotylo, professor of archaeology at the University of British Columbia, “slice through leather like butter.” Surgeons have shown interest in using the blades in eye and cosmetic surgery. Said Pokotylo: “The sharper the blade, the less damage to tissue. These cut so sharp they even cut between blood vessels, making a cleaner, less easily infected and faster-healing incision with less scar tissue.” Further research is being done to check the blades’ strength and durability.