nationalise the oldest profession

SIR – Given that some countries have already nationalised the world’s second-oldest profession (banking), why not nationalise the oldest? The industry would become fully regulated; the prostitutes could then work decent hours under close supervision, have regular holidays and be free from abuse by pimps.

Governments could use the huge revenues that prostitution generates to bail out even more banks (the vice industry in Australia alone is growing at a rate of 8% a year: the country spent $11.3 billion on prostitution and strippers in 2007). As well as being the oldest profession perhaps prostitution is also the most honest, given the recent shenanigans by all those involved in the credit crunch. We are all civil servants now.

Mike Gallagher
London

Hercules And Love Affair - Blind

As a child, I knew
That the stars could only get brighter
And we would get closer
Get closer
Oooooh

As a child, I knew
That the stars could only get brighter
That we would get closer
Get closer
Leaving this darkness
Behind

Mmmm-mmmm
Oooooooh

Now that I’m older
The stars should lie upon my face

When I find myself alone
Find myself alone
Oooooh

Now that I’m older
The stars should lie upon my face
And when I find myself alone
I feel like I
I am blind

Feel it
Feel it
Feel it
Feel it
Like I am blind
I am blind

I wish the stars could shine now
For they are closer
They are near
But they will not present my present
They will not present my present

I wish the light could shine now
For it is closer
It is near
But it will not present my present
It makes my past and future painfully clear

To hear you now
To see you now
I can look outside myself
And I must examine my breath and look inside
Ooooooh

To see you now
To hear you now
I can look outside myself
And I must examine my breath and look inside
Because I feel blind
Because I feel blind

I feel it
I feel it
I feel it
Like I
Like I’m blind
Ooooooh
The movie will
Mmmm, and feel it
Oooooh, I feel it

R-word index

"The Economist's informal R-word index is also sounding alarms. Our gauge counts how many stories in the Washington Post and the New York Times use the word “recession” in a quarter. This simple formula pinpointed the start of recession in 1981 and 1990 and 2001."

Nice lamps

Cool!

The Fifty Worst (and Best) Books of the Century

Here. Enjoy!

On innovation

T.S. Eliot, Selected Essays, 1917-1932 (1932, 1950). Here, one of the century’s foremost literary innovators insists that innovation is only possible through an intense engagement of tradition


Somos grandes copiadores, sin imitación no habría cultura. Hacemos como los viejos pintores: iban al taller, la bottega del artista, aprendían y luego desarrollaban su estilo. ¡Veamos los primeros cuadros de Picasso! Una vez interiorizado, mejoramos, inventamos. Ahí llega la originalidad. Giacomo Rizzolatti interviewed on his research by Publico.

Conjecture vs. Truth

"Gray is entitled to his gloomy Weltanschauung. But he is wrong to accord it the authority of science. The fallacy is an old one; it is the fallacy of 19th-century materialism. Gray mistakes conjecture for certain truth, heuristic principles for insights into the ultimate nature of reality. Darwin did not "show that humans are like other animals". He - or rather his successors - assumed that human beings are in some respects like other animals, hoping by means of this assumption to reveal their organisation and behaviour, a hypothesis that may yet prove fruitful. But the supposition that humans are like other animals is just that - a supposition. Gray, like so many before him, has surreptitiously elevated it to a metaphysical truth. Science has been transformed into mythology.

The Taoist ideal of spontaneous, animal existence is alluring but ultimately dangerous. Its secret promise is to free us from the irritating constraints of conscience and responsibility. Hence its appeal to Nazis and modern management gurus. Gray's approving summary of Taoist doctrine could also stand as the formula of modern totalitarianism: "The freest human being is not one who acts on reasons he has chosen for himself, but one who never has to choose." (from here)