Watching the World
DIM OUTLOOK
“The world is still a dangerous place,” states The Economist. “The end of the cold war and the new relaxation between East and West have tempted some to believe that peace is the order of the day. It is not. Rid of one big source of tension, the world still has lots of little ones: neither hatred, intolerance nor aggression, nor even the clash of ideas, died in tumultuous 1989. . . . In some ways 1989 may have made the world, or parts of it, more dangerous.” Why? Because “as the influence of the superpowers declines, the unpredictability of the regional powers grows,” says The Economist. “And hitherto passive peoples may now be infected by the example of those who won their freedom in 1989.” Many of the ingredients of quarrels—border disputes, religious and ethnic rivalry, age-old animosities, clashes over ideology and principle—exist worldwide. Some smaller nations possess or are working to get nuclear and chemical weapons, making it “a little more likely that one day the war will turn from words to something more deadly.”
LANDMARK COURT DECISION
Three years ago a 28-year-old woman in her 26th week of pregnancy lay heavily sedated and dying of cancer. The hospital, fearing legal liability if no effort was made to save the fetus, sought a judicial ruling as to what should be done. The judge, endeavoring to balance her interests with that of the unborn child, ordered that a cesarean section be performed. That was improper, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in the United States recently ruled. The patient’s own preference, as determined from all available evidence, is the only factor to be considered. “The right of bodily integrity belongs equally to persons who are competent and persons who are not,” the court’s opinion said. “Further, it matters not what the quality of a patient’s life may be; the right of bodily integrity is not extinguished simply because someone is ill, or even at death’s door.” The court said that a judge should “pay special attention to the known values and goals of the incapacitated patient, and should strive, if possible, to extrapolate from those values and goals what the patient’s decision would be.” Both the woman and her baby died.
THE HIGH COST OF ALCOHOLISM
In 1987 Brazil was the world champion consumer of distilled spirits, averaging about 14.3 quarts [13.5 L] per person, according to the Brazilian newspaper O Globo. But the price was high. In 1988 the cost of alcoholism in Brazil was estimated at $18.9 thousand million (U.S.). The newspaper O Estado de S.Paulo reports: “The 12 million Brazilian alcoholics cause the country damages amounting to 5.4% of the gross national product due to health leaves, early pensions, or job-related accidents.” Of course, the total cost is even higher, since it is impossible to place a monetary value on the emotional damage caused not only to the alcoholics but also to their spouses and children.
ASTROLOGY THRIVING
“Men or women, corporate presidents or working class, almost one person in two believes in the supernatural. A veritable religion feeding a thriving market,” says the French magazine L’Express, reporting on the fascination the French have for the supernatural, including astrology, witchcraft, telepathy, and spiritism. France has over 40,000 professional astrologers, serving from 10 to 12 million clients. Even large, established corporations have engaged astrologers to draw up “personality assessments” prior to hiring, to determine if a prospective director or executive is suitable for a position and whether his “astral theme” is compatible with the existing staff.
PUTS ‘EYES’ IN THEIR EARS
A new entertainment system has been designed to enable the blind to get more enjoyment from cinema, television, and theater. Reporting on the debut in Europe, the International Herald Tribune of Paris says that the system uses the art of “talking pictorially.” In addition to the regular audio program, special open headphones allow the visually impaired to hear a second synchronized sound track in which the action is narrated between dialogues. It also describes the characters, their clothing, their gestures, and their expressions, thus helping blind persons to visualize what they cannot see. The system will be made available in specially equipped theaters and broadcast by FM radio to accompany television programs.
MOST EXPENSIVE AIRCRAFT
The president of the United States will soon be using “the most expensive transport aircraft ever produced,” reports Time magazine. Dubbed a “flying Taj Mahal,” Air Force One, ordered several years ago, was designed to be the roomiest, safest, and best, with “more self-sufficiency, range (7,140 miles [11,500 km]), comfort and convenience than any other airplane ever built.” The plane sports a presidential suite with twin beds and a shower-tub, six additional lavatories, 85 telephones, provisions for a minihospital, a six-cubic-foot [0.2 cu m] safe, a television system that can view eight channels at once for scanning crowds, two galleys with refrigerator-freezers that can hold provisions for the 23 crew members and 70 passengers for a week, as well as the latest in antimissile devices, communications gear, and many other executive amenities. “Americans are spending the better part of a billion dollars to get their President airborne, and then it will cost around $6,000 an hour to keep him aloft,” says Time. “That is more than the gross national product of Greenland.”
MONKEYS FOR HIRE
Faced with a severe shortage of manual labor, a Korean farmer just outside of Seoul has put monkeys to work picking pine nuts on his farm. Japan’s Mainichi Daily News reported that the 20 monkeys employed “were found to work so diligently in the farm after a short period of training that each monkey performed the equivalent of five workers’ work in a day.” Local government officials say they will import more monkeys this year from Thailand for employment on other farms. Although foreign manual workers are banned in the Republic of Korea, evidently foreign monkeys are not.
OPERATION QUESTIONED
Radial keratotomy, an operation that was developed in Japan and the Soviet Union to correct nearsightedness, has been criticized by many ophthalmologists as “variable in its effects and potentially damaging to healthy, though myopic, eyes,” reports The New York Times. The procedure, which costs from $1,500 to $3,000 an eye and can be done under local anesthesia in a doctor’s office in less than half an hour, involves changing the shape of the cornea by cutting shallow slits in a pattern resembling the spokes of a wheel. If the operation is a success, light rays will focus correctly on the retina and produce a clear image. But a long-term study has shown that “significant undercorrection or overcorrection of the vision problem occurred in 45 percent of eyes operated on. And in a significant minority of patients, the changes progressed in ensuing years and made the problem more difficult to correct than before.” In addition to the unpredictable results, a number of patients complained of problems with glare that “severely disrupted their ability to drive at night.”
SCHOOL DRESS CODES
“Students have been beaten, shot and robbed of their leather and goose-down coats, thick gold chains, designer shoes and other prized items,” reports The Wall Street Journal. “A high-school student in New York was killed for his bomber jacket. Another, in Detroit, was found dead with his coat and shoes missing.” Because of increased violence and robberies, officials in principal cities across the United States have been invoking dress codes banning trendy clothing items or requesting the wearing of school uniforms. Some have required students to carry see-through book bags to combat the carrying of concealed weapons to school. “Yet many students, confident that if something violent happens it will happen to somebody else, resist dress codes as a blow to their culture and their freedom to express themselves in fashion,” says the Journal. In explanation, one school official says: “Our entire society has become extremely materialistic. Greed is reflected from the highest public office to the streets.”