A recent paper in the New England Journal of Medicine advocates expanded use of statins as treatment for cardiovascular events. But such events are becoming less common, says Dalrymple, so are the benefits really worth it?
To those hooked on modern popular culture, the actual world around them often seems slow-moving and dull by comparison. Too bad, says Dalrymple. Some people don’t know what they’re missing.
…the world is so infinite in its variety that our brief time on it cannot, or at least should not be able, to exhaust our interest. I used to tell my patients that it was vastly more important, from the point of view of reaching contentment, that they should lose themselves than that they should find themselves; and that, in losing they would find themselves and most of their problems would disappear, at least for the time they remained lost. If they made finding themselves the precondition of losing themselves, they were, in effect, lost.
Lest you think otherwise, and you probably don’t, Dalrymple says there is no possibility Europe will do much of anything to contain Putin:
Europe has no military power and would not use it if it did. No one wants to let the genie of war out of the European bottle yet again. Just as important, the European population doesn’t give fig what happens in or to Ukraine, so long as whatever happens doesn’t drive tens of millions of Ukrainians westward. Those few who have followed developments in Ukraine over the last few years have probably lost all faith in the possibility of a minimally honest and upright government there. Who wants to risk anything for one group of corrupt oligarchs rather than another?
Dalrymple recently received the following email scam, which he compares – favorably – to one sent by his bank:
Dear I am honorably seeking your assistance…to make arrangement for me to come over to your country to further my education and to secure a residential permit for me. I want you help me not because of the 30 percent I want to offer you but to take me as your adoptive child and take good care of my life.
Refuting a French philosopher’s depiction of capitalism as “savage liberalism” motivated by the darker emotions…
Adam Smith was certainly not a red-in-tooth-and-claw man, neither personally nor doctrinally. He had a rather sunny view of human nature, believing that people had a natural sympathy for one another and indeed often acted against their own immediate and selfish interests. People’s sympathy for one another was so obvious for him, so common and universal an experience, that he said it didn’t need proof of existence.
…Smith thought that certain virtues—honesty, prudence, trustworthiness—were of advantage to capitalists. The nastiest, most unscrupulous person is not necessarily the most successful. Indeed, as Montesquieu understood, economic liberalism is incompatible with savagery and actively promotes certain social virtues. Corporatism is quite different.
Why firmness is not cruelty, and law is not therapy…
In such circumstances, I was alarmed but not altogether surprised to read that [crime victim] Marie, referring to the culprits’ current trial, did not want them to be locked up but rather that they should receive a punishment “so that they understand.”…
Presumably Marie had in mind something such as psychoanalysis, perhaps mixed with a little compulsory social work or planting flowers in municipal flowerbeds. This is like trying to talk reason to Pol Pot at the apogee of his power, to get him to stand down by persuading him that what he was doing was wrong.
Unfortunately, there will always be some very nasty people in the world, and not all of them will be deterred from carrying out nasty acts by whatever consequences they will suffer.
This latest entry in Pajamas Media is interesting, presenting Dalrymple columns that address these controversial questions:
1. Is obesity a disease or a moral failing?
2. Should an alcoholic be allowed a second liver transplant?
3. Are psychiatric disorders the same as physical diseases?
4. Do doctors turn their patients into drug addicts?
5. As life expectancy increases will the elderly become too much of a burden on society?
6. Is marijuana a medicine?
7. Is nutrition really that important for good health?
8. Is drug addiction really just like any other illness?
9. Are obese children victims of child abuse?
10. Should you vaccinate your kids?
Dalrymple recently noticed that European weather forecasts ignore the weather in other European countries, and draws a conclusion in Salisbury Review:
Could it be that national weather forecasts are trying to tell us something about the European Union, namely that none of us fells truly European, and that no Frenchman gives a hoot what meteorological disasters happen outre-Manche or outre -Rhin. This indifference is heartily reciprocated (if indifference can be hearty), except in so far as no one wants his holidays in France spoiled by bad weather. Otherwise the French could all be drowned rats as far as the other nations are concerned.
With Oscar Pistorius’s trial now underway, Dalrymple gives some thought to Pistorius’s field of work. While praising the effort and determination of Paralympians, Dalrymple finds the events themselves distaseful, but that’s not all:
I dislike even more the attempt to drum the population up into enthusiasm for the Paralympics. To me it smacks of quasi-totalitarian propaganda. An atmosphere has been created in which to admit that one finds the spectacle distasteful is to be guilty of a hate crime, an accusation that nowadays can be hurled at almost anyone who wants to preserve public taste and decorum. The spectacle itself seems to me designed to allow one the illicit pleasure of the freak show while enjoying self-congratulation at one’s own generosity of spirit. I prefer less ostentatious, less orchestrated demonstrations of human decency.
President Obama has been accused of weakness for his response, or lack thereof, to the recent events in Ukraine. Leave that debate aside, says Dalrymple, and look at Sir Christopher Meyer’s absurd defense of Obama, which includes a “foolish and horrible criterion of strength, namely the authorisation of the use of drones in a country that cannot reply in kind.”