Speak and Write like The Economist: Говори и пиши как The Eсonomist
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Doctors manage to restart only about half of the hearts that stop in a hospital, and only about a sixth of patients will go on to survive long enough to be discharged. One of the toughest decisions faced by hospital staff is how long to keep trying, and when to give up on a particular patient as a lost cause.
The lexicon of oncology is filled with military metaphors: the war on cancer, aggressive tumours, magic bullets. And although these are indeed only metaphors, they do reflect an underlying attitude – that it is the clinician's job to attack and destroy his patient's tumour directly, with whatever weapons are to hand. As in real warfare, those weapons may be conventional (surgery), chemical (cancer-killing drugs) or nuclear (radiation therapy). There is even talk of biological agents, in the form of viruses specifically tailored to seek out and eliminate their tumorous targets. Which is all well and good as strategies go. But as Sun Tzu observed, the wisest general is not one who wins one hundred victories in one hundred battles, but rather one who overcomes the armies of his enemies without having to fight them himself. And one way to do that is to get someone else to do your fighting for you.
Is dumping faeces in rivers UN policy?
What is depression? The ancient Greeks believed it resulted from an imbalance in the body's four humours: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile (from the Greek word melas or "dark" and khol'e, meaning "bile"), with too much of the latter resulting in a melancholic state of mind. Early Christianity blamed the devil and God's anger for man's suffering, with depression the result of the struggle against worldly temptations and sins of the flesh. In the Renaissance it was viewed as a disease of scholars, such as Robert Burton, author of "The Anatomy of Melancholy", who were given to abstract and intense speculation.
The very notion of imposing a levy on calorific foods is very illiberal. What is the rationale? People who have sex without a condom also impose a burden on health services if they subsequently catch AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases. Should the condomless also be taxed?
Not quite old enough for Medicare (which typically kicks in at 65) and not quite poor enough for Medicaid.
In 2001 the Singapore-based WTO – that is, the World Toilet Organisation – chose a day to mark the plight of the world's loo-less 2.5 billion (its slogan this year was "I give a shit, do you?"). At least 19 countries mark it. But not the UN, which is perhaps "scared of using the word 'toilet'," a WTO spokesman muses.
In most countries it is illegal to buy or sell a kidney. If you need a transplant you join a waiting list until a matching organ becomes available. This drives economists nuts. Why not allow willing donors to sell spare kidneys and let patients (or the government, acting on their behalf) bid for them? The waiting list would disappear overnight. If John and Mary love each other but are married to other people, they will be tempted to leave their current partner and marry each other. But if John loves Mary, while Mary loves her husband more than John, both will stay put.
The birth and death phases of stars are associated with heavy dust clouds that give off an infra-red signal which might resemble the swarm of artificial satellites constituting a Dyson sphere.
In China a strong taboo hangs over discussing death.
Only 8 % of South Africans opt for cremation, compared with a third in America, half in China, three-quarters in Britain and 95 % in Japan. To many South Africans, cremation is taboo, not least because of ancestor-worship and a propensity to commune with the dead. Many prefer a burial in the countryside where they were born.
Patrolling a rough neighbourhood is a health hazard.
Breast cancer is rare in men. And prostate cancer is obviously absent from women.
The Puente Hills landfill, an artificial mountain near Los Angeles is the biggest dump in America, 30 years old, 150 metres high and containing 130m tonnes of rubbish within a 700-acre footprint. If it were a building, it would be among the 20 tallest in the city. Building a rubbish pile is, it turns out, surprisingly high-tech.
If only we had been born clowns, nothing bad would happen to us except a few bruises and a smear of whitewash.
Fiat came round after a near-death experience.
As anyone who has been to Japan knows, there are strict rules about bathing in onsen, or hot springs. Bodies must be scrubbed beforehand, swimming trunks are banned and tattoos are taboo.
Sun, sea and alcohol, for at least two weeks a year, is now one of the unwritten rights of the British people.
A rising tide lifts all boats, but not all spirits.
One has always choose between cholera and plague in Kinshasa.
To celebrate falling fertility is like congratulating the captain of the Titanic on heading towards the iceberg more slowly.
One suggested that driving damages the ovaries.
Mr Richards laid down the riffs and Mr Jagger provided the vocal pyrotechnics. But time took its toll. Mr Richards's decision to give up heroin destroyed the delicate division of labour in which Mr Jagger took care of the details while Mr Richards took the drugs. Mr Jagger started to refer to the Stones as "his" band. He even performed the group's songs on solo tourse.
To live in Havana was to live in a factory that turned out human beauty on a conveyor-belt. He didn't want beauty.
GM spends more on health than it does on steel.
Many women still have no choice but to use dried leaves as sanitary towels: a Korean-American missionary says the greatest gift you can give to a North Korean woman is a washable one made of fabric. "They cry with joy."
Over half the world's female suicides are Chinese.
He has a brain-bank of 200 experts.
Humans have an uncontrollable urge to be precise, for better or (all too often) worse. That is a fine quality in a watch-repair man or a brain surgeon, but counter-productive when dealing with uncertainty.
Most British towns have a Victorian pool or two, thanks to the 1846 Public Baths and Wash Houses Act, which gave local authorities the power to raise funds to keep the working classes clean and healthy. Since then demand has ebbed: the poor have their own facilities these days and the rich slope off to private clubs.