The Royal Ballet on why Swan Lake is one of the best loved ballets

Todays Thought

When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: 

"Only stand out of my light." 

Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light. 

-John W. Gardner, author and educator (8 Oct 1912-2002)

Todays Thought

A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It is a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity. 

-Jimmy Carter, 39th US President, Nobel laureate (b. 1 Oct 1924)

Todays Gadget

 

Desk Diver

What’s the secret of the supercentenarians? They don’t really exist

 What’s the secret of the supercentenarians? They don’t really exist

Earlier this month, an unusual prize ceremony got under way. Five Nobel laureates gathered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, not to receive further accolades themselves, but to present the Ig Nobel prizes. Now in their 34th year, these are awarded to researchers whose discoveries “make people laugh, then think”.

One winner was Saul Justin Newman, whose research probing the quality of demographic data certainly made me laugh and think. Places with surprising clusters of individuals reaching remarkable ages, with centenarians or even supercentenarians (aged 110+) galore, attract lots of attention. Debates focus on their secrets – from Mediterranean diets to superior genetics.

But Newman argues that the real secret is that many of these super-senior citizens exist only on paper. He shows that in the US, when a state introduced birth certificates, often towards the end of 19th century, there was a 69-82% fall in supercentenarians recorded. Maybe birth certificates harm our health… or, more plausibly, they cleanse dodgy data.

Even better is his work on Europe. It shows super-oldies are correlated with how rich a region is. But not in the way you’d expect: poorer and deprived places record most people living to the oldest ages – odd, when those regions have terrible health outcomes on every other metric.

Despite having high poverty and the lowest proportion of people aged 90+, Tower Hamlets somehow records more people aged 105+ per capita than anywhere else in England. Corsica is apparently stuffed full of the super-old, yet is very poor (and has France’s highest murder rate).

What’s going on? Pension fraud, because deprived areas create financial pressures, not greater longevity. Something to think, but not laugh, about.

 Torsten Bell is Labour MP for Swansea West and author of Great Britain? How We Get Our Future Back

Todays Thought

Racism tends to attract attention when it's flagrant and filled with invective. But like all bigotry, the most potent component of racism is frame-flipping -- positioning the bigot as the actual victim. So the gay do not simply want to marry; they want to convert our children into sin. The Jews do not merely want to be left in peace; they actually are plotting world take-over. And the blacks are not actually victims of American power, but beneficiaries of the war against hard-working whites. This is a respectable, more sensible bigotry, one that does not seek to name-call, preferring instead to change the subject and straw man. 

-Ta-Nehisi Coates, writer and journalist (b. 30 Sep 1975)

Todays Thought

No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly; and this self-deceit is yet stronger with respect to the offspring of the mind. 

-Miguel de Cervantes, novelist (29 Sep 1547-1616