Fascinating Facts and Trivia.

The Health Danger of Noise?

If we look at the history of the fight against other pollutants—smoke, for instance—the trend is generally upward.  Ever since the first substantial air-pollution regulation was enacted…the more that scientists have identified health risks, the more these emissions have been regulated.  Yet with the exception of the very loudest sound offenders, a chart of the fight against noise would resemble less the progressive ascent to enlightenment than the graph of a wildly swinging stock market.
The easiest assumption would be that noise is simply a less-acute public-health threat than smoke.  Relative to global warming, of course that’s true.  But the overall risk to our health from road traffic noise is 40 percent higher than that from air pollutants, according to a 2008 World Health Organization report.  Dr. Rokhu Kim, the head of the WHO’s noise-related task force, told me that while there’s a politically powerful consensus that particulate matter from combustion engines increases cardiovascular mortality, it’s still difficult to identify how those particles actually enter the body and jeopardize the heart.  At this point, Kim said, “I think it’s fair to say that there’s a higher biological plausibility for noise as a trigger of heart disease than air pollution.”

If we look at the history of the fight against other pollutants—smoke, for instance—the trend is generally upward.  Ever since the first substantial air-pollution regulation was enacted…the more that scientists have identified health risks, the more these emissions have been regulated.  Yet with the exception of the very loudest sound offenders, a chart of the fight against noise would resemble less the progressive ascent to enlightenment than the graph of a wildly swinging stock market.

The easiest assumption would be that noise is simply a less-acute public-health threat than smoke.  Relative to global warming, of course that’s true.  But the overall risk to our health from road traffic noise is 40 percent higher than that from air pollutants, according to a 2008 World Health Organization report.  Dr. Rokhu Kim, the head of the WHO’s noise-related task force, told me that while there’s a politically powerful consensus that particulate matter from combustion engines increases cardiovascular mortality, it’s still difficult to identify how those particles actually enter the body and jeopardize the heart.  At this point, Kim said, “I think it’s fair to say that there’s a higher biological plausibility for noise as a trigger of heart disease than air pollution.”

–In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise, by George Prochnik

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The Passenger Pigeon

The real onslaught began with the onset of large-scale commercial hunting carried out by well-organised trappers and shippers in order to supply the developing cities on the east coast of the United States with a cheap source of meat. It began once railways linking the Great Lakes area with New York opened in the early 1850s. By 1855 300,000 pigeons a year were being sent to New York alone. The worst of the mass slaughter took place in the 1800s and 1870s. The scale of the operation can be judged by figures that seem almost incredible but which were carefully recorded as part of a perfectly legal and highly profitable commerce. On just one day in 1860 (23 July) 235,200 birds were sent east from Grand Rapids in Michigan.

Not surprisingly, even the vast flocks of pigeons could not withstand slaughter on this scale. Numbers fell rapidly and by the late 1880s large flocks, which had once been so common, had become a matter for comment and investigation, and most were no more than a few hundred strong. The last known specimens were seen in most states of the eastern United States, in the 1890s, and the passenger pigeon died out in the wild in Ohio about 1900. The last survivor of a species that had once numbered 5 billion died in captivity in 1914.

–Clive Ponting, A Green History of the World

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Why Have We Failed to Eradicate Poverty?

After a rare and fleeting appearance center stage, poverty has once again slipped away behind the curtains. Why does it take a category-four hurricane to draw attention to problems of poverty and inequality? Why are these not matters of more urgent public discussion and more effective government policy? Why have we not heeded Martin Luther King’s appeal to rid our society of poverty once and for all? One reason is this: for many Americans, and most policy makers, the real problem is not poverty at all; the real problem is the poor.’ They have bad genes, poor work habits, and inadequate skills. Poverty is just a symptom, a regrettable by-product of individual failings. The hardships experienced by the poor stem from their own shortcomings, not from any dysfunctions of the system, thus grand schemes to alleviate poverty are inherently misguided. It might be appropriate, according to this view, for government to lend a modest helping hand, aiding the poor in overcoming their defects, but in the end, self-improvement, not social reform, is the only credible remedy.

–Edward Royce,The Problem of Structural Inequality

 

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America’s Political Climate Today and Richard Nixon

What Richard Nixon left behind was the very terms of our national self-image: a notion that there are two kinds of Americans. On the one side, that “Silent Majority.” The “nonshouters.” The middle-class, middle American, suburban, exurban, and rural coalition who call themselves, now, “Values voters,” “people of faith,” “patriots,” or even, simply, “Republicans”—and who feel themselves condescended to by snobby opinion-making elites, and who rage about un-Americans, anti-Christians, amoralists, aliens. On the other side are the “liberals,” the “cosmopolitans,” the “intellectuals,” the “professionals”—“Democrats.” Who say they see shouting in opposition to injustice as a higher form of patriotism. Or say “live and let live.” Who believe that to have “values” has more to do with a willingness to extend aid to the downtrodden than where, or if, you happen to worship—but who look down on the first category as unwitting dupes of feckless elites who exploit sentimental pieties to aggrandize their wealth, start wars, ruin lives. Both populations—to speak in ideal types—are equally, essentially, tragically American. And both have learned to consider the other not quite American at all. The argument over Richard Nixon, pro and con, gave us the language for this war.

–Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America

by Rick Perlstein

 

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Relative Poverty

In wealthy societies, most poverty is relative. People feel poor because many of the good things they see advertised on television are beyond their budget—but they do have a television. In the United States, 97 percent of those classified by the Census Bureau as poor own a color TV. Three quarters of them own a car. Three quarters of them have air-conditioning. Three quarters of them have a VCR or DVD player. All have access to health care. I am not quoting these figures in order to deny that the poor in the United States face genuine difficulties.

Nevertheless, for most, these difficulties are of a different order than those of the world’s poorest people. The 1.4 billion people living in extreme poverty are poor by an absolute standard tied to the most basic human needs. They are likely to be hungry for at least part of each year. Even if they can get enough food to fill their stomachs, they will probably be malnourished because their diet lacks essential nutrients. In children, malnutrition stunts growth and can cause permanent brain damage. The poor may not be able to afford to send their children to school. Even minimal health care services are usually beyond their means. This kind of poverty kills. Life expectancy in rich nations averages seventy-eight years; in the poorest nations, those officially classified as “least developed,” it is below fifty.In rich countries, fewer than one in a hundred children die before the age of five; in the poorest countries, one in five does. And to the UNICEF figure of nearly 10 million young children dying every year from avoidable, poverty-related causes, we must add at least another 8 million older children and adults.

–Peter Singer, The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty

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