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Children growing up in former communist CEE countries during the 1980s were subjected to horrific amounts of industrial pollution, including extreme levels of prolonged lead exposure. Since lead is theorized to be a primary culprit in exacerbating violent crime, you would assume there would be a sizeable discrepancy in the homicide rate between, say, former East Germany and West Germany, or Western Europe and Eastern Europe as a whole. But the difference in the homicide/violent crime rate is negligible, with many former communist CEE countries having a lower homicide rate than Western Europe. I suspect the same is true when comparing the rate of mental disorders, which is another malady that is supposedly influenced by exposure to high levels of industrial pollution.

When asked "Where are you from?" almost no one would answer "Europe," because after 50 years of assiduous labor by the eurocrats, Europe remains a continent, not an identity. As Matthew Yglesiaspoints out, an EU-wide soccer team would be invincible -- but who would root for it? These sorts of tribal affiliations cause problems, obviously, which is why elites were so eager to tamp them down. Unfortunately, they are also what glues polities together, and makes people willing to sacrifice for them. Trying to build the state without the nation has led to the mess that is the current EU. And to Thursday's election results. Elites missed this because they're the exception -- the one group that has a transnational identity. And in fact the arguments for the EU look a lot like the old arguments for national states: a project that will empower people like us against the scary people who aren't.

"I think a lot of institutions, festivals, and venues here are ghettoising themselves by looking at only Singapore, Southeast Asia and Asia. This makes no sense to me. One cannot consider Asia without looking at America and Europe and other parts of the world. For example, what's happening in Tokyo is as much affected by what is happening with ISIS, and what's happening in Europe or New York with the rise of populism and conservatism worldwide. For me, these parts of the world don't just function as a region. The regions are interconnected; we have to see them in a larger context. Therefore I feel that this kind of perception that we must program Southeast Asian or Asian arts is a very misguided way of thinking - you have stunted visions of Asia if you don't consider Asia or Southeast Asia as part of the world."

with so many people in so many countries demanding far-reaching change, the politics of gender is very much in play - in Europe and beyond. The main question is whether the growing number of women in politics will deliver the different perspectives and modes of leadership that many voters (or protesters) now seem to crave.

One group of moral attitudes roughly corresponds to individual freedom - people who who believe that abortion is morally wrong are also likely to believe that  homosexuality, prostitution, and suicide are wrong. - See more at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/epiphenom/2016/02/the-decline-of-religion-in-europe-did-not-lead-to-a-decline-in-moral-standards.html#sthash.56T7Xx1E.dpuf

Soccer is a relatively inexpensive game to play.  Yes, I realize that for you parents whose kids play on select and travel soccer teams, you probably disagree with my assertion.  But if you take that out of the equation for a minute and if you think about the operational logistics, all you need is a ball and some space.  This might, in part, explain why soccer is the world's most popular sport (and for similar reasons, why basketball may be number two).  You don't need much to play, so the expense of playing either is rather minimal. The two most prominent soccer continents are unquestionably Europe and South America, but they may have obtained that status for different reasons.  In South America, where there is generally speaking a greater degree of income inequality, a real gulf exists between the poor and rich.  And what sport is economically feasible for the poor masses?  Soccer.  In Europe, where soccer is the unquestioned number one team sport for youth to play and the masses to watch, reams of money exist to support player development, stadium construction, and retention of the world's best players. In the United States, despite the nation's size and wealth, young athletes have too many other sporting choices - and more lucrative ones at that - if they prefer to work professionally in America. 

Although most Swedish women work, the country has one of the highest birth rates in Europe, thanks to generous laws on parental leave.

"The United States is home to the most obese population in the Americas, Asia and Europe, has the fattest kids by a wide margin and is tops in poor health for teenagers, according to the latest measure of well-being from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In its "How's Life 2015?" report released Tuesday, the United States is also among the nations with underperforming students and second in murders and assaults."

Posing as a fully fledged humanitarian is not that difficult. Much harder, these days, is for a politician - especially one who claims to be conservative, patriotic and Christian - to show a compassionate human face and at the same time soothe his worried voters. Compassion is a minimal requirement: Even if you don't have it by birth, you must learn to fake it.

Why pick on the super-thin minority without addressing our collective slide into the realms of the super-fat? The average BMI for French women is 23.9, while for Brits it is 26.9 - technically overweight - making us one of the fattest nations in Europe. The body beautiful is neither fat nor thin, but nourished. It is time to act upon our cultural body dysmorphia at both ends of the spectrum.

India is the only country in the world which is trying to become a global economic power with an uneducated and unhealthy labour force. It's never been done before, and never will be done in the future either. There is a reason why Europe went for universal education, and so did America. Japan, after the Meiji restoration in 1868, wanted to get full literate in 40 years and they did. So did South Korea after the war, and Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and China. The whole idea that you could somehow separate out the process of economic growth from the quality of the labour force is a mistake against which Adam Smith warned in 1776. It's an ancient danger, and he might have been right to think that the British government at the time did not pay sufficient interest in basic education for all. Unfortunately that applies today to government of India as well. It doesn't acknowledge the relevance of the quality of human labour.

" in the French labor market, anti-Muslim discrimination exists: a Muslim candidate is 2.5 times less likely to receive a job interview callback than is his or her Christian counterpart. A high-n survey reveals, consistent with expectations from the correspondence test, that second-generation Muslim households in France have lower income compared with matched Christian households. The paper thereby contributes to both substantive debates on the Muslim experience in Europe and methodological debates on how to measure discrimination. Following the National Academy of Sciences' 2001 recommendations on combining a variety of methodologies and applying them to real-world situations, this research identifies, measures, and infers consequences of discrimination based on religious affiliation, controlling for potentially confounding factors, such as race and country of origin."

The economic problem is that companies can run out of patients as they're cured. Or they may not have enough of them in the first place, if the gene therapies treat exceedingly rare diseases. For instance, only a couple of dozen kids each year in the US and Europe are diagnosed with the type of "bubble boy" disease that Strimvelis treats. So even at a price of $665,000, Glaxo didn't see that the drug was going to be much of a business.

" 23 September 2016 Balled Over by the Empire In our "Rise of the anti-intellectual, illiberal left" category, the question is: Which of the following did not happen this week? A. Social Justice Warriors waging war on pie. Empire Pie. I miss fafblog and its pie jokes. B. Social Justice Warriors waging war on a museum. It put on a fundraising dinner called the Empire Ball to kick of its curated exhibition of the Tate's edgy, critical, anti-colonial take on Empire and Artists (co-branding yay or nay?). They object to the word empire, of course. C. Social Justice Warriors waging war on Fox's Empire. The word empire is imperialist (duh) and triggering. The UK exports Empire Pie all over Europe. Why are Euroleftist then not triggered by Empire Pie?! But let's talk about the National Gallery Singapore's little tiff with the SJWs. Of all three cases, it is the most tragicomic for several reasons. To whit: The National Gallery Singapore (TNGS) has been building its reputation as a Curator's gallery. Nothing that happens, happens without the careful and deliberate choices taken its curators. Unofficially, we can say their operational motto is The Curators Are God. I cannot confirm or deny if they say that too in private, within the gallery itself. As is clear from its publicity material, TNGS is very clear on the critical stand it takes on the issue of Empire (i.e. Mostly A Very Bad Thing). The protesters (including some of the artists participating in the exhibition and okay with its theme and approach) have chosen to ignore that stand to insist that the use of the word EMPIRE in its fundraising Empire Ball is triggering, etc. Of interest to us is this particular denunciation from ArtHop, a soi dissant intellectual rag to explain to its artistic audience, the Southeast Asia artworld. Note the intellectual poverty and posturing, the attempt to use a badly-quilted patchwork of academic jargon to advance what is essentially a classic SJW argument of ideological purity a

In the slow-growing, hierarchical societies leading up to the 20th century, he said, the most important factor determining your economic prospects was the class into which you were born; from Italy to India, the poor stayed poor and the rich stayed rich. By the mid-20th century, though, the most crucial factor was the country of your birth. In the U.S. and Western Europe, rags-to-riches stories became common, if not routine. Maybe, Zucman warned, the 20th century was an egalitarian anomaly and inherited wealth would again dominate. The question, he said, is "how to have a meritocratic society when so much of wealth comes from the past."

"There is systematic abuse of the family members of insurgents," Ekaterina Sokirianskaia, an analyst at the International Crisis Group, and an expert on the Caucasus, said in a telephone interview. "There can be short-term results, but I wouldn't call it success," she said. "You can prevent some episodes of violence at the moment, but you are radicalizing whole communities." "When innocent Muslims are targeted for the expediency of security services, this legitimizes the jihadist cause," she said.