Текст книги "Speak and Write like The Economist: Говори и пиши как The Eсonomist"

In the year 15AD, during the short-lived Xin dynasty, a rumour spread that a yellow dragon, a symbol of the emperor, had inauspiciously crashed into a temple in the mountains of central China and died. Ten thousand people rushed to the site. The emperor Wang Mang, aggrieved by such seditious gossip, ordered arrests and interrogations to quash the rumour, but never found the source. He was dethroned and killed eight years later, and Han-dynasty rule was restored. You only need to move your lips to start a rumour, but you need to run until your legs are broken to refute one.

For the Democrats, this is a great opportunity. For years, they have enjoyed a consistent advantage over Republicans on «mommy» issues, such as education and health care. But Republicans have trounced them on «daddy» issues, such as killing terrorists and defending the homeland. The Democrats have lost a lot of elections because they are easy to caricature as the party that thinks «there are no enemies, just friends whose grievances we haven't yet accommodated.»

Even an optimist would not describe Pakistan's glass as half full – keeping it unbroken may be the best one could hope for.

Cronyism is as American as apple pie. All countries have their cronies. That much-cited model of moral rectitude, Tony Blair, is so surrounded by them that they are called «Tony's cronies» (he made his old roommate, Charlie Falconer, Lord Chancellor). Edith Cresson, a European commissioner, appointed her dentist to an advisory position. But you expect that sort of thing in Brussels. America's problem is the contrast between high-minded idealism and low practice. America regards itself as the world's purest meritocracy – a country based on talent, not patronage and toadyism. A quick glance at history shows this is rubbish. Most presidents surround themselves with a regional mafia: look at Carter's Georgians or Reagan's Californians or Clinton's Arkansans. These mafias produce some rum appointments: Jimmy Carter made his one-time campaign driver, Jody Powell, his press secretary; Bill Clinton made his chum from Miss Marie's kindergarten in Hope, Thomas McLarty, his chief of staff. Scandals are endemic. Harry Truman's Missouri cronies had a weakness for gifts of mink coats and freezers (an issue in the 1952 election). As for the antics of Mr. Clinton's Arkansas buddies, the less said the better.

Englishmen never will be slaves: they are free to do whatever the government and public opinion allow them to do.

In Montgomery, Alabama in the 1950s, as in much of the South, the first four rows of seats were for whites only. No more than four rows were needed, since few whites, and those poor ones, took the bus anyway. But whether they were filled or not, no black could sit there. Blacks sat at the back, in «Coloured», where they belonged. Between the two worlds was a middle section. Blacks could sit there, but if a white needed their seat they were expected to vacate not one seat, but the whole row, in order to spare the white the embarrassment of sitting by a nigger.

93 % of political spots on the Golf Channel are Republican, on Comedy Central, by contrast, the ads are 86 % Democratic.

Rwanda's two main tribes, the Hutus and the Tutsis, have skirmished since pre-colonial times, but organised massacres are a modern evil. There used to be a lot of movement between the groups, but the Belgian colonists, who ruled from 1916 until 1962, judged that the tall, thin Tutsis were superior to the shorter, flat-nosed Hutus, and decided to rule through them. They deposed Hutu chiefs in favour of Tutsis, favoured Tutsis in admissions to colonial schools, and created a legacy of ethnic resentment. They also issued every Rwandan with an ethnic identity card; these were to prove an invaluable tool for génocidaires who wanted to know whom to kill.

Neandertals were dim-witted brutes who lived a crude lifestyle.

Wasn't there at least a dog Hillary once omitted to kick or a child whose lollipop she didn't steal? They talked about linking American power with American ideals: but it turned out, at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, that power can corrupt those ideals.

To require senators to shuffle out of the door when they turn 75 rather than waiting to be carried out feet first.

To do the right deed for the wrong reason, T. S. Eliot wrote, is «the greatest treason» – a familiar one in the world of politics.

The people running Iran are not mystical, millenarian illuminati, but cold-blooded totalitarians.

The real problems start when politics comes into play.

Britishness (as opposed to the more tribal Englishness) has become an inclusive identity, based more on values than ancestry.

Secret societies run through the tapestry of Italy's history like a half-hidden thread.

As an Arab sociologist puts it, in a tribal society you do not buy loyalty, you only rent it.

What does Islamist mean?

Some call them the «six-pack». Ever since Bosnia's election in October 2010 the country has been waiting for the leaders of the six main parties – two Serbs, two Croats and two Bosniaks – to form a government.

Palestinian obligations were «musts» while Israeli ones «shoulds».

Ouagadougu, capital of Burkina Faso – «where people get honor and respect».

It was Barry Goldwater, a Republican politician, who pointed out that to serve in the armed forces, you don't have to be straight. You only have to shoot straight.

Parisians, the car dealers say, turn out to be the ones who are keenest to hide their origins – perhaps to protect their cars from casual vandalism when motoring on holiday, prompted by their reputation for haughty arrogance.

Adam Smith's first book, «The Theory of Moral Sentiments», «turned the tables» on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who believed that society enslaved man to vanity and ambition. Smith argued, instead, that society taught man to be good. This tuition started from man's capacity for «sympathy»: his ability to feel what another man feels. It continued with his capacity for sympathy squared: his ability to sense what other men feel about him, putting himself in the shoes of other men putting themselves in his shoes.

Perhaps people feel little need for corporate social responsibility when the government cares for them from cradle to grave.

Frankin D. Roosevelt did not have much time for Burma or the Burmese. The sympathy he felt for Indian demands for independence from Britain did not extend to that other piece of the British Raj now known as Myanmar. In 1942 he wrote to Winston Churchill: «I wish you could put the whole bunch of them into a frying pan with a wall around it and let them stew in their own juice.»

The brass-hats should be answerable to the government.

One of America's most admirable characteristics is its belief that it has a duty of moral leadership.

The incumbent Mayor of London Boris Johnson, who is known for his chaotic charisma, has run the city competently enough.

One popular revival is the notion of tianxia, or «all under heaven». This dates back to the golden age of classical Chinese philosophy – of Confucius, Mencius, Laozi and the rest – in the «warring states» period before China's unification in 221BC under the first Qin emperor. Tianxia is widely understood as a unified world dominated by one country (call it the «middle kingdom», perhaps), to which neighbours and those beyond look for guidance and pay tribute.

The representative for Long Island has approached this most sensitive of subjects with the delicacy of a steamroller.

The Lebanese would be rich indeed if they had a pound every time their country had been described as «on the brink» of violent collapse.

Osama bin Laden built the brand and turned it into a global franchise; his face advertised it, even as he disappeared.

Only after Mossadeq's ejection was the shah able to become a high-octane dictator.

Mr Bush's victory shows how much power a president has in wartime, even a deeply unpopular president fighting a deeply unpopular war.

Once installed in the presidential palace, he may find it much harder to continue to be all things to all men.

Demography is like a supertanker; it takes decades to turn around. It will pose some of China's biggest problems.

If people are bad at recalling their feelings, they are worse at predicting them.

The government owns 30 % of Eni, and seems happy with its strategy. Of Eni's current board of nine, six are government appointees, described as independent; three of them are directors of companies in the business empire of Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister, and a fourth is a politician of the Northern League, a partner in Italy's governing coalition. Mr Scaroni, in turn, is a longstanding shareholder of Mr Berlusconi's AC Milan football club.

The Greek finance minister, George Papaconstantinou, must feel like a man who finds a one-euro coin on the pavement only to discover he had earlier dropped a five-euro note.

Merkel is a cautious consensus builder.

McCain has legendary volcanic temper who is a serial erupter.

North Korea is unique among communist countries in having what amounts to a royal family. The current dictator, Kim Jong Il, inherited power from his father, Kim Il Sung. The personality cult extends not only to them, but to Kim senior's mother, Kang Ban Suk («mother of Korea»), to his first wife, Kim Chong Suk («mother of revolution»), and to his brother, Kim Chol Ju («the revolutionary fighter»).

He also wants to cut the number of agencies run by the state from 1,000 to around 800 and to consolidate the New York state's astonishing 10,000 local governments.

Republicans are a party of white-trash pride.

It is one thing to be independent of politicians but quite another to have discussions with them in a crisis.

They have a policy of blaming the previous government. But they don't seem to realise that, after 11 years in power, they are the previous government.

Nowadays, a Republican candidate must believe not just some but all of the following things: that abortion should be illegal in all cases; that gay marriage must be banned even in states that want it; that the 12m illegal immigrants, even those who have lived in America for decades, must all be sent home; that the 46m people who lack health insurance have only themselves to blame; that global warming is a conspiracy; that any form of gun control is unconstitutional; that any form of tax increase must be vetoed, even if the increase is only the cancelling of an expensive and market-distorting perk; that Israel can do no wrong and the «so-called Palestinians», to use Mr Gingrich's term, can do no right; that the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education and others whose names you do not have to remember should be abolished Both parties must survive the cannibalistic ritual known as the primaries.

Media is awash with hysterical reports.

It turns out that the only thing that alarms Europeans more than a swaggering American president is one who seems weak.

Asia accounted for more than half of world output for 18 of the last 20 centuries. Its growing clout in the world economy is, therefore, a «restoration» not a revolution.

How did as shrewd a politician as Mr Obama find himself stalemated? If not checkmated, so early in his presidency?

He is a democrat through and through.

His various appearances before congressional committees resembled nothing so much as the clubbing of a baby seal.

Even Major League Baseball is considering relocating its 2011 All-Star Game, the first ever slated to be played in the state. To Arizona's conservative machos, this one hurts – especially since it recalls the National Football League's decision in 1991 to move the 1993 Super Bowl to punish Arizona for not making the birthday of Martin Luther King a holiday.

For the Democrats, this is a great opportunity. For years, they have enjoyed a consistent advantage over Republicans on «mommy» issues, such as education and health care. But Republicans have trounced them on «daddy» issues, such as killing terrorists and defending the homeland. The Democrats have lost a lot of elections because they are easy to caricature as the party that thinks «there are no enemies, just friends whose grievances we haven't yet accommodated».

Republicans and Democrats differ sharply as to which mighty institutions pose the greatest threat to the little guy. Democrats, by and large, think big corporations are the problem. Republicans think big government is.

But the protection offered by a cradle-to-grave welfare system hides a dark underside.

British government has been running, using nursery rhymes: «Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. There was none as extreme weather due to climate change had caused a drought.»

But as Messrs Dornbusch and Edwards pointed out, «at the end of every populist experiment real wages are lower than they were at the beginning».

Behind a fig leaf of constructive engagement.

Mr Steinberg, a professor of modern European history at the University of Pennsylvania, is fascinated by Bismarck's complex personality. He started writing about him because he wanted to understand how his hero led three wars and unified Germany without commanding a single soldier, without a big political party backing him, without any experience in government before his nomination as minister-president of Prussia in 1862 and without great oratorical skills. Bismarck had near-hypnotic powers over William. He manipulated him with temper tantrums, tears, hysterical outbursts and frequent threats of resignation. «It is hard to be king under Bismarck,» sighed the sovereign.

What should really worry policymakers is the unknown unknowns.

“ Law, justice, rules

I would rather be judged by 12 than carried by six.

Last year America shut down a fake embassy in South Africa, complete with the Stars and Stripes and a photo of President Barack Obama, that had been operating in Ghana for a decade. It had been selling fake visas to America for $6,000 each.

The less people know about how laws and sausages are made, the better they sleep at night (Bismarck).

Arkansas has an unhappy history of multiple executions: in 1923 a man was taken from his coffin and put back in the electric chair after he was found still to be breathing.

Imagine a traffic-light regulation that says: «On green the driver may cross the road, unless, under the given circumstances, a reasonable person would consider this to be risky, inadequate or reckless. We now need a lawyer as a co-driver.»

Does a bill that does nothing actually do something?

Perhaps half of America's private-sector employers ask job applicants to declare their criminal records, and two-thirds routinely run checks before taking people on. They see it as necessary due diligence. Unfortunately, checks that individual firms believe to be prudent are collectively bad for the 7m Americans who have spent time in prison and the 70m with a criminal record.

Fish are slippery characters, with little regard for international agreements or borders. The speediest, such as crescent-tailed bluefin tuna, can slice through the ocean at 70 kilometres per hour. Their routes take them beyond areas that come under the jurisdiction of individual coastal states, and into the high seas.

Oilmen groom the politicians; politicians do their best for the oilmen. Corporations grease the legislators, legislators return the favors.

«The moon was in its seventh house and Jupiter lined up with Mars,» said Mr Chambers after senators overwhelmingly voted for the ban.

The thicker the rule book, the bigger the headache when it drops on you.

Many talk of being sovereign as if it were like being pregnant: one either is or is not.

Prison is an expensive way to make bad people worse.

Mathew, an Irish judge at the turn of the 20th century, is said to have quipped that justice in England is open to all, «like the Ritz Hotel».

Sophisticated legal services are somewhat like luxury cars and handbags, in that a high asking-price is taken as a sign of quality. No one wants to have hired the cheaper firm in a high-stakes lawsuit.

Parliament was so quiet you may hear a bill drop.

A generation ago Saadallah Wannous, a Syrian playwright, famously lamented that his people were «sentenced to hope».

Asking the justice system to reform itself was like tying up a dog with a string of sausages – the legislative sausage machine.

What happens to our digital property after we die?

Every oil spill has a silver lining – if you are a lawyer, that is.

Winston Churchill thought Parliament should meet for no more than five months a year.

A former kangaroo skinner faced a kangaroo court.

The hangmen job advertisement, published only in the state-owned Sinhala-language newspaper, drew 178 responses. Applicants included a man with one eye, autorickshaw drivers, retired military men, labourers and a university student whose many attempts at securing other employment had failed. Ten aspirants were rejected, mostly because they were too old or too young. One woman was turned down on the ground that her gender would make her too emotional. No other qualifications were required, beyond a basic school education. Officials worried that a more erudite class of executioner might be tempted to chuck in this job for another. Two (anonymous) candidates have been chosen to fill the vacancies. But since neither of the two previous executioners hanged anybody during their tenure, and one has since died, training the new recruits poses a challenge.

Suppose you want to buy a table. But you care about orang-utans, indigenous peoples and carbon emissions, so you don't want it made with illegally harvested logs. Or suppose you run a chain of furniture shops, and you don't want to go to jail for buying illegal timber. Either way, you face a snag: how to tell if a log is legal?

Rape laws also determine whether consensual sexual activity involving young people is legal. The first recorded law on this was in England in 1275, which made it an offence to have sex (with or without her consent) with a «maiden within age». This was interpreted as meaning below the age of marriage, at that time 12 (Shakespeare's Juliet was 13 at the time of her romance with Romeo). A 17-year-old and a 15-year-old can have legal sex in one European Union country (Denmark) but commit a crime if they canoodle in Britain (though in practice the risk of prosecution would be minimal).

Some prisons in Brazil are so chaotic that inmates are not released once their sentences are over. Other prisoners, such as Marcos Mariano da Silva, a mechanic arrested for murder in 1976, are victims of mistaken identity. He spent six years in jail in Pernambuco before the real culprit was arrested and he was released. Three years later he was stopped by traffic police who rearrested him as a fugitive. He spent 13 more years in jail, contracting tuberculosis. He died last year, hours after hearing that the state government had lost its appeal against paying him compensation.

Mr Zuma himself once faced corruption charges, escaping trial by the skin of his teeth on a legal technicality.

Was the ball over the goal-line? (Note to German readers: maybe not at Wembley in 1966, yes in Bloemfontein in 2010.) Was that sending-off deserved, or a gross miscarriage of justice? Was the referee brilliant, blind or bribed?

International Criminal Court has no gumshoes or handcuffs of its own – members must help to bring in the accused.

The lord's right to make the peasants, after working all day, sit up and whip the ponds all night with boughs, to prevent the frogs'music from disturbing my lord's slumbers.

Instead of finding a needle in the haystack, they are making more.

If not the land of the free, America is certainly the land of the ingenious lawyer.

“ Love, marriage, family, sex, friendship, children

According to myth, Eros carried arrows tipped either in gold or in lead: the gold ones incited extreme desire; the lead ones killed it.

Why are adult men in India so eager to have their wives breastfeed them?

Male prisoners look for bits of wire to make weapons and stab each other, she says. «Women look for wire to curl their eyelashes.»

When Mr Trump divorced the first of his three wives, Ivana, he let the New York tabloids know that one reason for the separation was that her breast implants felt all wrong.

Egypt was once at the forefront of contraception. In ancient times women inserted a paste made with crocodile dung into their vaginas to prevent pregnancy.

Never give money to an online paramour, however charming.

Be nice to your kids – they choose your nursing home.

Some results are both disturbing and perplexing, such as the prevalence of searches on pornographic sites for videos depicting sexual violence against women, and the fact that women themselves seek out these scenes at least twice as often as men do.

A common myth in Sudan is that an uncut clitoris will grow into a third leg.

If diamonds were to cease being a way to signal a man's marriageability, what might take their place?

In Egypt and Palestine, over half of men and women say that if a woman is raped, she should marry her rapist. In at least three of the countries, more women than men say that women who dress provocatively deserve to be harassed.

In the 1920s even respectable ladies began painting their faces, and the cosmetics industry exploded.

Children are said to have «six pockets»: two from their parents, and four from their grandparents.

A lioness may mate up to 100 times a day with different lions during oestrus.

Dating is a treacherous business. There may be plenty of fish in the sea, yet many are unhygienic, self-absorbed, disconcertingly attached to ex-fish, or fans of Donald Trump. In a sense, searching for a mate is not so different from hunting for a job.

Family feuds are discouraged when no relative can dream of running off to Bahamas with all the loot. «There are no family fights,» says one Wallenberg. «No one understands how it works, but it works well».

If you can't find love change your appearance.

Peacocks strut; bowerbirds build lovenests; spiders gift-wrap flies in silk. Such courtship rituals play an important role in what Charles Darwin called sexual selection: when the female of a species bears most of the costs of reproduction, males use extravagant displays and gifts to demonstrate their «reproductive fitness» and females choose between them. For human males, shards of a crystalline form of carbon often feature. A diamond engagement ring signals a man's taste, wealth and commitment, all to persuade a woman that he is a good bet.

De Beers can no longer control the market. Though it is the biggest producer by value, it accounts for only a third of global sales, down from 45 % in 2007. Meanwhile the source of the demand that drives sales – the link between diamonds and love – looks weaker than it used to. The ancient Greeks regarded diamonds as the tears of the gods.

Saudi Arabia lavishes cash on suspected terrorists who co-operate with its deradicalisation programme, setting them up with jobs, cars and even wives.

It is a status symbol, demonstrating that even as a man approaches the expenses of married life, he can still splash out on a bauble.

Procter & Gamble roared into the disposable-nappy business with Pampers in 1961.

The progenitor of Japan's imperial line, supposedly 2,600 years ago, was female: Amaterasu, goddess of the sun. But for most of the time since, all emperors have been male.

Chopsticks come in pairs.

Divorce is still common – more than 800,000 marriages were annulled in 2014 – and it is often costly and protracted. A survey by Nolo, a legal publisher, suggests the average American couple spends $15,000 and 10.7 months untying the knot.

A procedure called mitochondrial donation, which would result in a child with DNA from three people: its mother, its father and a female donor sometimes dubbed a mitomum.

How a woman can love a daughter born of rape?

More than 10m Americans are estimated to date digitally, and as an industry in 2013 it reached $2 billion in revenue with over 2,500 dating sites in the United States.

«The best countries», Fourie wrote, «have always been those which allowed women the most freedom.»

Love, it turns out, is not innocent hanky-panky, but something noxious, corrosive – even deadly.

The menopause is a puzzle.

A country's GDP falls when a man marries his maid.

The most important career choice a woman makes is whom she marries. A supportive spouse can help you excel; a jealous or lazy one may hold you back.

In the mid-1800s, before the advent of negatives and half-tone printing, a photo of a naked prostitute cost more than engaging her for sex. Not until 1953, when Hugh Hefner launched Playboy with a nude photograph of Marilyn Monroe, did porn go mass-market.

When men announce they are about to have a child, they are simply congratulated; when women do, they are congratulated and then asked what they plan to do about work.

50 % of marriages end in divorce, the other 50 % end in death. So take your pick.

How do robots have sex? By swapping software «genotypes» via infrared communications, ideally when facing each other 30cm apart. Not exactly a salty punchline.

Cuttlefish are cross-dressers, the male argonaut (a pelagic octopus) has a detachable, projectile penis, dolphins are in flagrante acrobats, and group sex erupts (where else?) on the California coast twice a year when tens of thousands of grunions disport themselves on the beach. Led by the moon and tides, the small fish fling themselves ashore. The female digs a hole in the sand with her tail, backs in, lays eggs, and waits while up to eight males snuggle up and release their sperm.

Loneliness, conversely, can be deadly: one study found it did more damage to health than smoking.

Dogs, unlike people, are capable of pure love – at least according to Freud.

Britain leads the rich world in indicators associated with solitary lifestyles: gym-going (as opposed to team sports), divorce, smartphone and tablet adoption (replacing the family television set), self-employment, online shopping, eating alone, meal-skipping and the declines of both the pub and the nuclear family. Clubs of all sorts, from churches and political parties to golf clubs and trade unions, are shrinking.

If backward time travel were possible, some fool would no doubt try testing the grandfather paradox, another invention of time-travelling fiction writers. In this, a visitor to the past kills his or her grand-father before the conception of the protagonist's own parent, meaning the protagonist could never have been born, and the murder could not have taken place.

In the old days if you wanted a promotion you wore a short skirt, now it's the other way round.

More than 90 % of presidents and prime ministers are male, as are nearly all big corporate bosses. Men dominate finance, technology, films, sports, music and even stand-up comedy. In much of the world they still enjoy social and legal privileges simply because they have a Y chromosome.

What is a «rampant homosexual»? What makes him rampant, and do rampant heterosexuals exist as well?

Well-to-do parents fear two things: that their children will die in a freak accident, and that they will not get into Harvard. The first fear is wildly exaggerated. The second is not, but staying awake all night worrying about it will not help – and it will make you miserable.

Michael Burgess, suggested that fetuses are already masturbating by 20 weeks – although only male ones.

Some transgender people do not go to the loo all day because they have been harassed, assaulted or kicked out of one. This can result in dehydration, urinary-tract infections and kidney problems.

Women are just men with less money.

In 1939, 10 % of American brides received a diamond engagement ring. By the end of the century 80 % did. 26 % of young American brides say they dreamed about their future engagement rings years before beginning a relationship.

A pun, like porn, is defined less by intention than by reception.

Tax reform is always the bridesmaid and never the bridem.

The hijab helps women be treated for their minds, not their looks.

Over Sabbath meals, Israelis who are worried about growing intolerance discuss whether to put their children or their country first.

It's like a big house with only one bathroom, and daddy's been in there too long.

Each suburban housewife, wrote Betty Friedan in 1963, struggles with a single question as she makes the beds, shops for groceries, chauffeurs children about and lies beside her husband at night: «Is this all?»

Confucious said that while a man's parents were alive, he should not travel far afield.

Will fatherhood make me happy?

A husband follows his wife and another man to a hotel room. Through the keyhole he sees the pair embrace. As they fling off their clothes his wife's underwear catches on the doorknob, blocking his view of what happens next – and leaving his faith in her fidelity intact.

Even in Mecca and Medina people have intercourse.

Armpits4August, a campaign, encourages women to grow underarm hair for a month to challenge norms of beauty. Members of La Barbe, a shock troop of French feminists set up in 2008, infiltrate male-dominated meetings wearing beards and derisively congratulate the men on their supremacy.

Immanuel Kant has the best insights into the gay-marriage debate – he argues that, once you have stripped away the nonsense, marriage is nothing more than a contract for the mutual use of the sex organs.

For those not naturally well endowed, breast implants may make economic sense: going from flat-chested to a D-cup increases hourly rates by approximately $40, meaning that at a typical price of $3,700, surgery could pay for itself after around 90 hours.

It does seem that the little darlings really are good for your health – something to remember next time your children's behavior makes you want to scream.

Plato described love as a serious mental disease. Aristotle saw it as a single soul inhabiting two bodies. Tina Turner dismissed the feeling as a second-hand emotion. The nature of love – how and when and why and with whom humans fall for each other – has preoccupied thinkers through the ages.