Wow. A new frontier in notional crime and relations between the sexes.
As we pack our lives into pickup trucks and head down the dusty road of dearth for Depression, the Times is good to point out that by at least one measure of socioeconomic production the US is still number one.
An old friend who was raised to hate the Soviet Union always refused to grasp that since the advent of the War on Drugs the US has a higher rate of incarceration than the Reds at the height of Stalinism.
(One angle: Seems we freed the slaves then put them in jail.)
Do we live in a Sane Society?
There are other measures. Suicide rates. The now fairly well entrenched fad of adolescents massacring fellow students.
I’ve never, at least since the passing of Santa Claus, been a faithful Christian. But since that same time it has also been clear, in the bones if not between the ears, that the American Civilization (as certain stodgy Brit historians insist on calling it) or, better, the Scientific Civilization, which in the west succeeded Christendom immaturely when the latter blew its brains out in 1914, is off its rocker.
Ungovernable. At odds with the Kind-of-Being-that- is-Human. Chronically mass murderous. And (the most Inconvenient Truth of all) suicidal.
But the new Grand Theft Auto is dynamite. And there’s always Second Life when your first one gets snuffed. (Or …? How does that work?)
Brave new world that hath such creatures in’t.
I haven’t yet seen this in the American press: Nigeria prosecuting Pfizer for operating a la mode The Constant Gardener.
From the German magazine Der Spiegel:
USING AFRICANS AS GUINEA PIGS
Nigeria Takes On Pfizer over ‘Killer Drug’
By Hauke Goos
The Nigerian government is taking on Pfizer, the world’s biggest pharmaceutical company. It accuses the company of using a meningitis epidemic to test an unapproved drug on Nigerian children. Eleven children who participated in the tests died and others were left with disabilities. … END QUOTE
The case is rooted in 1996. Perhaps in part inspired Le Carre’s novel? Which was published in 2001.
It seems art, in any case, imitated life.
Meanwhile, as Democratic candidates debate how many tens of millions of Americans should live without health care, the scientific so-called community heralds progress in the immortalization project: the cloning of primate embryos, and the production of stem cells from skin (rather than embryos).
Most news reports and commentators seem to be presuming that the latter innovation removes all/most ethical roadblocks to stem cell work.
If so, according to the technoprophets who briefly came out of the closet at the turn of the millennium — including some of the scientist businessmen running the primary biotech companies involved — the grandchildren of the very rich may perhaps needn’t die unless they want to. Brave new world that hath such creatures in’t.
NY TIMES says:
SHENZHEN, China, Aug. 9 — At least 20,000 police surveillance cameras are being installed along streets here in southern China and will soon be guided by sophisticated computer software from an American-financed company to recognize automatically the faces of police suspects and detect unusual activity.
Starting this month in a port neighborhood and then spreading across Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million people, residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips programmed by the same company will be issued to most citizens.
Data on the chip will include not just the citizen’s name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord’s phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China’s controversial “one child” policy. Plans are being studied to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card.
