Magic Statistics

Last November, Michael Richards, who played Kramer on the Seinfeld show, got into deep trouble after shouting racial epithets at black hecklers during a live comedy appearance.  A video of the exchange circulated around the world, and Richards soon grovelled apologised to all and sundry.  He hasn’t been seen or heard from since.  Where have you gone, Kramer?

He’s traveling in Cambodia with his fiancée Beth Skipp, and has become involved in a Hindu sect.  It gets worse: he says he’s retired from comedy!

Richards and Skipp have been travelling to remote temples including Angkor Wat on a tour sponsored by the Los Angeles-based Nithyananda Foundation.

After Richards' outburst he started attending meetings with the sect which follows the teachings of 29-year-old Hindu monk Nithyananda, an avowed "enlightened Master and modern mystic". The tour features daily spiritual seminars designed to help followers understand Nithyananda's mission to 're-establish the science of inner bliss on planet earth'.

Richards says he has no plans to return to stand-up comedy. "That night, when I was insulted and disrupted, I lost my heart; I lost my sense of humor. I've retired from that."

If his heart’s not in it anymore, maybe he should retire.  But Hinduism?  Are you sure?

Dutch MP Joel Voordewind says he has confirmed accounts that Muslim extremists have crucified Christians in Iraq.

Several Iraqi Christians "are nailed to a cross and their arms are tied up with ropes. The ropes are put on fire," Voordewind said.

Voordewind described how a person, who "survived" a crucifixion, "even showed holes in his hands," apparently from nails. Voordewind said victims of the crucifixions are “in most cases Christian converts who abandoned Islam or people who, religiously speaking, are involved in mixed marriages."

Mr Voordewind heard the original accounts from a source at the United Nations, which is expected to put forward an official report.  The parliamentarian is a member of the centrist governing coalition’s junior party Christian Union and will present his findings to the Dutch foreign affairs minister.

Many thousands of Christians have fled Iraq in the past few years as they have become targets of Islamist threats and violence.

Previous related posts:

• Iraq added to US religious freedom watch list
• Baghdad Islamists terrorise Christians
• Jihadists campaign to wipe out Assyrian Christianity; West does nothing

The policies and personality of Hugo Chavez have so polarised the people of Venezuela that they are in a state of “cold civil war”.  It could go hot at any time.

The whole population has been politicised; it has also been polarised into two ferociously hostile camps, Chavistas and the derogatorily named opposition of "esqualidos" ("squalid people"). The tone of debate is so angry that the situation is often described as a "cold civil war".

With a power-crazed Chávez at the helm, the fear is that it may not remain cold.
. . .
William Ury, a conflict resolution expert at Harvard, identifies three typical symptoms of a country on the brink of civil war. The first is that the population begins to arm itself; the second is that each side begins to dehumanise and impute evil intentions to the other; and the third is the politicisation of the media. Contemporary Venezuela has each of these conditions in abundance.

Earlier this week, El Presidente accused the country’s Roman Catholic bishops of meddling in politics after the Venezuelan Bishops' Conference objected to constitutional reforms being drafted with no public involvement.

Chavez — a close ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro — lambasted the clergy of "lying" about his plans for the reform, warning Venezuela's Catholic Church leaders they were "sinning" by spreading falsehoods.

El Salvador’s leaders said the same of Oscar Romero in his day.  (I hope Chavez doesn’t view Romero’s assassination as a precedent for dealing with Catholic critics.)

In the near future, Chavez is expected to propose a bill authorising him to remain president indefinitely.  If he does that, he will validate the bishops' objections.

h/t for New Statesman link: Times Online Comment Central

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• Chavez replaces Virgin Mary with Che Guevara
• “Oh, no! Chavez won’t go!”
• Hugo Chavez banishes imperialist horse

A major brawl started outside a pizza place in east Anchorage after a man misinterpreted American Sign Language being used by a deaf person in an adjacent vehicle.

Raymond Keith McWain (we know the instigator’s full name thanks to a written police report) was driving down the street, obviously not minding his own business, when he noticed three men in the truck next to his.  One of the men was deaf and using sign language to communicate with his companions.

Guess what happened next.

McWain thought the sign language gestures were some sort of slight or "disrespect" toward him, police said. So McWain began doing some gesturing of his own. He honked and cut in front of the truck before pulling into the Papa John's pizza store on Boniface, police said. The men in the truck followed.

In the parking lot, McWain and the three men from the truck began pushing and shoving, police said. McWain's cousin, Daniel Harris, 20, who works at Papa John's, came out and began beating the deaf man as the deaf man's companions pummeled McWain.

At some point, a gun was fired.  Police speculate that it might have gone off as Mr Harris was pistol-whipping the deaf man.

Mr McWain was beaten so severely that he had to be hospitalised.  The deaf man was also treated in hospital.

One arrest was made after police found methamphetamine and a glass pipe in Harris’s  possession. Sounds like he wasn’t the only one on drugs that evening.

Canada’s population contains a higher proportion of seniors than ever before, according to 2006 Census data released today by Statistics Canada.  Those aged 65 and over made up a record high 13.7% of the total population, while the proportion aged less than 15 reached a record low of only 17.7%.  If the most recent population projections are borne out, seniors will outnumber under-15s in less than ten years, as shown in the chart below.

Population aging is attributable to two demographic factors.

First, the fertility rate, which has averaged 1.6 children per woman over the last 30 years, is below the replacement level. Second, the life expectancy of Canadians increased appreciably during the 20th century and now stands at 82.5 years for women and 77.7 years for men. As a result of that increase, an increasing number of Canadians are reaching the age of 65, and once this age is attained, they also live longer.

Canada’s high immigration increases the overall population growth rate but, because the average immigrant is about 30 years old, has a negligible impact on aging.

The median age of Canadians in 2006 was 39.5, almost 50% higher than the median age of 27.2 seen in the 1956 Census.

Nevertheless, Canada is one of the youngest countries in the G8.  Only the United States has a smaller proportion of seniors.  (See chart below.)

Because Canada has a significantly lower fertility rate than the US, however, Canada’s population is set to age at a much faster pace than that of our southern neighbour.

Today’s Census release corroborates labour force projections released last month indicating that labour force participation is set to drop off quickly within the next decade, as baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1965) reach retirement age much faster than new young workers enter the labour force.

[T]he number of people aged 55 to 64 has never been so high, at nearly 3.7 million in 2006. Today, they make up 16.9% of the working-age population, or about one potential worker in six, compared with 14.1% in 2001. It is expected that the number of people aged 55 to 64 will continue to grow over the next few years and could represent more than 20% of the working-age population in 2016, when more than one in five potential workers will be in the 55 to 64 age group.

With workers generally leaving the workforce between the ages of 55 and 64, Canada has never had so many people close to retirement.

The proportion of seniors, already one in seven—the largest ever seen in Canadian history—will only continue to increase.  This will present huge challenges for our country’s medical care, old age support, and other social welfare programs.

Source:  Martel, Laurent, and Éric Caron Malenfant, “Portrait of the Canadian Population in 2006, by Age and Sex: Findings”, 2006 Census: Analysis series, Statistics Canada, July 2007.
http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census06/analysis/agesex/index.cfm
(accessed 17 July 2007).

Previous related posts:

• Labour force participation expected to drop sharply in Canada
• Canada’s fertility deficit
• Canadian population rapidly aging