The Pornic Pranks of the Elite: Newspapers as they once were

Newspapers have changed a lot over the years. The front pages of modern-day newspapers are rich with photographs, whereas 50 years ago they were often filled with dispatches from around the country and around the world — stories about the crisis in Berlin, events at the U.N., details about a plane crash in a faraway land, and so on.

Years before that, the newspaper filled two roles. It served as the primary method of relaying news from the outside world, and for sharing gossip about what everyone in town was up to. It wasn’t so much news you can use as news about you and everyone around you.

Much of what was printed then wouldn’t be printed today. No modern day newspaper would report that someone found a lost parcel on a street corner, or publish a letter to the editor from someone who threatened to blow up the editor, a matter which presumably would be forwarded directly to police these days.

Yet it was often the things that wouldn’t get published these days that fueled demand for newspapers.

Even very little news could be turned into some kind of news, as this report on a relatively quiet 24 hours on Mar. 16-17, 1922 in Windsor, Ont. illustrates. During that 24-hour period, Windsor Police had little difficulty maintaining law and order in Canada’s Motor City, with their only calls being three reports of family quarrels and a report that someone had thrown a dead cat on the lawn of police court interpreter William Englander’s home at 222 Wyandotte St. E. It’s now the site of a shabby low-rent building that’s home to a “psychic reader”.  Perhaps he or she knows who the (presumably long-dead) culprit was.

The last tango in Paris would have taken place in 1914 if the Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Leon Adolphe Amette, had had his way in the final months of peace prior to the outbreak of World War I.  On Jan. 13, the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix reported that the Cardinal had been “distressed by the persistence of the vogue of the tango” but “felt it his duty to now to intervene formally”. Thus, the newspaper reported that dancing the tango was now “a sin which must be confessed and for which penance must be done”.

“We condemn the dance imported from abroad known under the name of the tango, which, by its nature, is indecent and offensive to morals and Christians may not in conscience take part therein.”

At the time, it was predicted that the prohibition of the tango “would produce profound emotion and dismay in Parisian social circles.”

Mental health issues were as much a problem in the olden days as they are today. On Friday, Dec. 17, 1926, residents of Hornell, N.Y. were shocked to see a 30 year old man in front of a local hotel, dressed only in his underwear and babbling incoherently. The next day, a wire service report identified the “mystery man” as Dr. Knute Houck, a “prominent Washington physician” at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. He had reportedly left Washington in search of his 28-year-old wife, Gladys, who had gone missing.  Her body was found in the Potomac river about three months later. Her husband was detained for a time, but then released from custody after a coroner’s jury found that she had died by “drowning in an unknown manner”.

After several months as a nationwide sensation, the Houck case then faded into the mists of history.

The articles immediately to the right of the “Street Singer in Underwear” article illustrates how newspapers covered even the most minor of local events in 1926. Under the headline Cuts His Hand, we learn that 24-year-old George A. DeHart of 419 North Ninth Street received four stitches for a laceration he suffered on the forearm while cutting down a tree in Reading, Pa. Below that, we learn that “Policeman Lloyd found a box containing a child’s dress at Fifth and Washington streets. It was taken to [the] police station and will be turned over to the owner if proper claim is established.”

And thus ended another exciting day in Reading.

They just don’t write letters to the editor like they used to. In 1912, the entire town of Waihi, New Zealand, a mining community on the country’s North Island, was on edge as a miners’ strike moved closer to boiling over. One newspaper publisher, a certain Mr. McRobie, took a pro-management stance which at least one miner took exception to, as this letter to the editor illustrates:

Waihi, Oct. 16

Mr. McRobie, proprietor of the local newspaper, yesterday received the following letter:

“You dirty, black, trimmed-whiskered mongrel, if you don’t alter your hostile tactics toward the Waihi Miners’ Union in your leading articles in your dirty, gutter-snipe rag, I inform you candidly that I have 250 plugs of gelignite, 100 detonators, and six coils of fuse, of which you shall swallow some if you keep on at the rate you are going. Now, McRobie, I have warned you; so beware. I am in earnest, ‘Only a Striker’.”

There is no record of McRobie being blown to Kingdom Come, but the Waihi strike turned violent a month later, on Nov. 12, 1912, when striker Fred Evans was killed when strikebreakers and police stormed the miners’ hall. The incident is still remembered in New Zealand as Black Tuesday.

The heat of a July day can certainly make one want to strip down to as little clothing as you can decently wear outdoors. But when a group of Doukhobors got hot under the collar about the arrest of one of their colleagues in Nelson, B.C. in July 1928, the stripping down threatened to turn into full-frontal nudity.

“Fifteen members of the colony, 14 men and one woman, calling themselves the ‘Sons of Freedom’, invaded Nelson Wednesday and vowed they would remain until their imprisoned brother was released,” an AP item published in Kansas’s Lawrence Daily Journal-World reported.

“This morning the city and provincial police loaded them into a bus, took them to the outskirts of town and told them to go home. They declared they would return to Nelson and stage a parade au naturel.”

Four years later, they actually did demonstrate in the nude in the village of Thrums, 16 miles from Nelson, when 33 women and 84 men were arrested for walking around town in the buff. Police restored law and order by spraying the protesters with water and itching power, ultimately herding them into  an orchard to await arrest.

Note above that the Lawrence Daily World-Journal seemed to include a 1920s version of Facebook status updates in its pages: “George Sullivans drove to Topeka July Fourth to see the fireworks.” “Mrs. Jim Jones was shopping in Vinland Saturday evening.” “Earnest George helped Henry Rhoe shock oats Saturday, but became ill and had to come home at noon.” And you thought Facebook was based on a new idea.

“Childless Families, Debauchery of Sex Arouse Clergyman”, was the unfortunate (or possibly mischievous) headline of a story published in the Milwaukee Journal on Aug. 24, 1937. This item, which originated from Buffalo, N.Y., reported on the comments of Rev. Dr. M. R. de Hann of Grand Rapids, Mich., decrying the declining numbers of large families. “Debauchery of sex and the sanctity of the home are driving America toward moral doom,” he told a conference.

Eighty-two years before the release of Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills, Australians waited patiently to watch a real-life production of The Pornic Pranks of the Elite where members of the public lucky enough to get a seat in the court room could take in the details of Wallace vs. Wallace and Strong, Melbourne’s most colourful divorce case of 1907.

To make a long story short, Charles and Ruby Wallace were a couple of means in Melbourne, but certainly not a happy couple. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that Charles had greeted the news that his wife was three months pregnant in 1901 with, “That is impossible, we have only been married six weeks.”

Mrs. Wallace took to partying without her husband, returning home late at night, and rarely waking up before midday. By 1906, she was making regular visits to a Melbourne doctor named Strong, who became the co-respondent in the Wallaces’ 1907 divorce case.

The juicy details of the case — of love letters, clandestine trysts and pornographic postcards — made their way across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand, where they were reported in detail by the N.Z. Truth newspaper (despite its claim to be a “pious family paper”) under the bizarre headline, “Dirty Doings in Divorce. A Stenchful Sassiety Suit in Smellbourne. The Pornic Pranks of the Elite. Wallace v. Wallace and Strong.”

Six resolutions that could help make your New Year a happier one

It’s customary to start a new year with the hope that it will be a happy one, but what exactly can we do to improve the odds of a favourable outcome?

Some of the answers might lie within a well-known global study called the World Values Survey. In 2006, pollsters asked 2,164 Canadians how happy they were with their lives, along with a wide range of other questions about their lives that can help determine what separates the 46 percent of Canadians who said they were very happy with their lives from the other 54 percent.

Based on the strongest differences between those who were very happy with their lives and those who were less so, here are six worthwhile resolutions that could help make your New Year a happier one.*

1. Join a gym or a sports team. The healthier Canadians felt, the happier they were likely to be.  So hit the gym or get involved in a sports team. Not only will the exercise make you feel healthier — it’s an easy way to meet others and strike up new friendships and acquaintanceships.

Percentage describing themselves as “very happy”, by self-assessed health:

In very good health: 61%

In good health:  40%

In fair health: 28%

In poor health: 16%

Percentage describing themselves as “very happy”, by involvement in sport/recreation groups or organizations:

Active member of a group/organization: 52%

Inactive member of a group/organization: 48%

Not a member: 42%

2. Get into better financial shape. The better people felt about their household’s financial state, the happier they tended to be.  So don’t be lulled into buying now and paying later by today’s unusually low interest rates — keep those debts under control.

Percentage describing themselves as “very happy”, by perceptions of household’s financial state:

Finances in good shape (8-10 out of 10): 59%

Finances could use some improvement (6-7 out of 10): 39%

Finances in dire need of improvement (1-5 out of 10): 26%

Percentage describing themselves as “very happy”, by household income:

$100,000 or more: 57%

$50,000 to $99,999: 45%

$20,000 to $49,999: 44%

Under $20,000: 37%

Percentage describing themselves as “very happy”, by statement best describing household finances over the past year:

Saved money: 53%

Just got by: 42%

Spent some savings and borrowed money: 41%

Spent most/all of savings and borrowed money: 39%

3. Be accommodating, but not too accommodating. It doesn’t pay to be a martyr. If you feel that people routinely take advantage of you, it’s likely taking a toll on your satisfaction with your own life. So, if necessary, find an assertiveness training program and start making use of the most potent word in the English language: “No”.

Percentage describing themselves as “very happy”, by how free they feel from being taken advantage of:

Rarely/never taken advantage of (8-10 out of 10): 58%

Occasionally taken advantage of (6-7 out of 10): 42%

Frequently taken advantage of (1-5 out of 10): 35%

4. Keep an eye open for a charitable or humanitarian organization to join. The British philosopher Bertrand Russell once observed that it’s being happy that makes people good, not the other way around. So, if you want to meet up with some people who are happy enough to want to do some good in the world, keep your eyes open for charitable or humanitarian organizations that are looking for assistance.

Percentage describing themselves as “very happy”, by level of involvement in charitable/humanitarian organizations:

Active member: 56%

Inactive member: 42%

Not a member: 42%

5. Take charge of your life — don’t presume that the stars or the spirits have already mapped out your life for you. The more control Canadians felt they had over their lives and the less they felt themselves subject to fate, the happier they felt they were with their lives. So, if you’re involved in any organization or belief system that tells you your options are limited — from astrology to certain religious groups that attempt to micro-manage their believers’ lives — and you’re privately unhappy, start planning an exit.

Percentage describing themselves as “very happy”, by perceived influence of fate in their lives:

Fate plays little/no role (8-10 out of 10): 51%

Fate has some role (6-7 out of 10): 39%

Fate plays a major role (1-5 out of 10): 39%

Percentage describing themselves as “very happy”, by perceived level of choice and control over their own lives:

High degree of choice/control (8-10 out of 10): 54%

Moderate degree of choice/control (6-7 out of 10): 32%

Low degree of choice/control (1-5 out of 10): 36%

6. Tired of the boss always looking over your shoulder? Get a new one! When Canadians were asked how much independence they have in the workplace, it turned out that more independent workers — the ones who were left alone to get on with their jobs without being second-guessed — were the happiest people. Since it takes a happy person to be a good person, organizations with a strong command-and-control culture — such as call centres and airlines — might want to ask what cost this imposes on morale and customer service. So, if you’re in an environment where you’re being constantly micromanaged, consider making this the year that you find yourself a new job or upgrade your education to expand your career options.

Percentage describing themselves as “very happy”, by level of on-the-job independence:

High level of independence (8-10 out of 10): 52%

Moderate level of independence (6-7 out of 10): 37%

Low level of independence (1-5 out of 10): 35%

* – Data weighted by province and gender. Source: World Values Survey

Footnote: Other Canadians who tend to have higher levels of life satisfaction include those with strong ties to friends (51%), those with a solid religious faith (52%), those who feel they can trust others in their neighbourhood or people they know personally (52%), active members of professional organizations (55%), married people (54%), people who strongly agree that they seek to be themselves than to follow others (52%), and people who say it is very much like them to help others (51%).

Is Winnipeg friendly, cliquish, or both?

I always thought that Winnipeg merited a solid “B” grade when it came to friendliness. Though never a city of extroverts, there were always the little touches — the barista at Starbucks or The Fyxx who knew what your “usual” was, the friendly bus driver who recognized you as one of his regulars, or the total stranger who stopped you on the street to ask where you got that cool t-shirt or necktie — that made you feel like more than just another face in the crowd.

And indeed, a recent article in the New York Times seemed to suggest as much:

WINNIPEG, Manitoba — As waves of immigrants from the developing world remade Canada a decade ago, the famously friendly people of Manitoba could not contain their pique.

[...]

“Because we are from the third world, I thought they might think they are superior,” said Anne Simpao, a Filipino nurse in tiny St. Claude, who was approached by a stranger and offered dishes and a television set. “They call it friendly Manitoba, and it’s really true.”

Yet, I started to rethink things a bit after a chance encounter two or three months ago on a street corner in south-central Winnipeg.

After exchanging a bit of small talk about whether or not the man running frantically for the bus would make it aboard (thankfully he did), it soon emerged that this fellow commuter with the sunny disposition was a recent arrival from Toronto who moved out here to pursue a job opportunity.

When I happened to mention that Winnipeg was a fairly friendly place, he very politely expressed his reluctance to agree, noting that people didn’t seem to want to talk to him and that there seemed to be an element of cliquishness in Winnipeg. (He was no whiner. Throughout our conversation, he maintained a sunny, upbeat disposition.)

“Thanks for talking to me!” the friendly newcomer called out as we parted ways further down the street.

More recently, I read this, a comment posted on the Winnipeg Free Press web site as part of a debate about whether or not Winnipeg is a friendly city. Given the fact that some parts almost seemed to be a verbatim record of our conversation, I had little doubt the words had been written by that same newcomer I’d met by chance on a street corner during the summer:

Posted by: leveraged.hedging
November 2, 2010 at 9:46 AM

Hello all,

This is my first post, after reading about “treated coldly”, i felt that i had to write something. I am going through the exact same thing right now. I moved here from Toronto last year with just the clothes on my back for a job offer. (Toronto was going through bad times, and being a recent grad, i was the first on the chopping block). It has been very hard for me, and like “treated coldly” i tried everything in the leisure guide, volunteered at the humane society, started helping out at a dance studio and basically did everything to “put myself out there”. Tried online websites, tried networking events, the whole lot. When i went back to toronto for vacation i had no problem meeting new people, the same with vancouver, calgary, ottawa, edmonton, montreal and quebec city.

I really dont know what it is, but i feel that people are very cliquey (sp.) and for the most part hang out with others whom they went to school with or known since junior high, and it has been hard to break into this cycle. I’m not giving up yet though, i know that hopefully, in due time, things will work out. Good luck to you (and to me too)

Always smile

The part about school connections being important well into adulthood in this town particularly stood out.

Winnipeg has never really been a single, unified city. Growing up in Elmwood, the city more or less ended at the western edge of downtown, at Kildonan Place, and at the old Zellers store on Henderson. North Kildonan, St. James and the North End were all definitely someone else’s turf, not ours.

St. Vital and River Heights were so foreign to us that they might as well have been in Australia. (No doubt the kids from Kelvin and Glenlawn high schools felt the same way about us, probably thinking that Elmwood was Winnipeg’s equivalent of Kentucky.)

In a city that is still very much a collection of small cities a generation after Unicity was supposed to put an end to all that, where strong neighbourhood identities come at the expense of a weak Winnipeg identity, maybe there is a problem that needs to be dealt with in terms of bringing newcomers into  long-established social circles.

We don’t need a government program to do that; we just need to talk to them a bit more.

Keep smiling, leveraged.hedging, and thanks for talking to me.

Weekend Update: The latest research on love, orgasms and the benefits of meat

Does this image calm you? Read on...

It’s been ages since the previous Weekend Update, taking in some of the interesting insights into science and the human condition being uncovered by researchers around the world. Here’s the latest on what’s been happening:

 

• High on love? You’ve probably heard people compare the experience of being in love to being high on drugs. There might be more truth to that comparison than you thought, thanks to the work being done by researchers at Syracuse University in New York State. According to research published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, falling in love takes just one-fifth of a second, and involves the stimulation of a dozen different parts of the brain, leading to increased levels of dopamine, adrenaline, oxytocin and vasopressin. The results: a euphoric feeling similar to the effects of cocaine.

 

• Liar, liar… A recent 130-page article in the Journal of Sexual Medicine based on interviews with 5,865 Americans aged 14 to 94 years delved deep into the sex lives of our southern neighbours. One of the most noteworthy findings: when they asked men if their latest sex partner experienced an orgasm, 85 percent said “yes”. Yet when women were asked if they had an orgasm the last time they had sex, only 64 percent said “yes”.

 

• The Peace of Meat. For a lot of Canadians, there’s nothing like a nice, juicy steak done on the barbecue. Now, if the thought of a steak on the barbecue makes you feel more relaxed, there might be a good reason for that. Researchers at McGill University in Montreal showed 82 men a series of images and assessed whether each image made research participants more or less aggressive or had no effect. To their surprise, they actually found that images of meat actually had a calming influence.

 

• Stay focused, be happy. A new article in the journal Science raised a few eyebrows recently when it reported that human beings spend a surprising amount of time daydreaming. According to Harvard University psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert, the average human being spends about 47 percent of his or her time daydreaming — and the more people allowed their minds to wander, the less happy they tended to be. Using a mobile app that allowed researchers to find out what participants were doing and thinking at any one time, and how happy they were when they were doing it, they found that people were both most focused and happiest when making love. Exercise and conversation also tended to boost happiness, while resting, working or using a computer tended to be less happy times.

 

• Branding ourselves. You might have noticed that some people prominently wear clothing or jewellery that readily identifies them by their religious persuasion, while others always wear clothing or carry gadgets with conspicuous brand logos. Are the two practices linked? They might very well be, according to a new study from Duke University. In two completely separate experiments, researchers found that people with stronger religious orientations tended to be less interested in product branding, while the opposite was true for less religious people. Whether it be that piece of religious jewellery or that brand logo on our clothes, it’s all about “belonging” according to Prof. Gavan Fitzsimons: “We’re signalling to others that we care about ourselves and that we feel good about ourselves and that we matter in this world.”

 

• Got a kid with ADHD? Try turning up the white noise. A researcher at a Swedish university might have come up with a way of dealing with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) that avoids both the costs and the side effects of prescription medication. Stockholm University’s Dr. Goran Soderlund studied 51 students in neighbouring Norway. He found that students who normally have difficulty paying attention performed better on a memorization test when there was white noise in the background than in a quieter room — but that the white noise had the opposite effect on students without ADHD. The probable reason: Students with ADHD usually lack adequate levels of dopamine in the brain, causing it to operate at a suboptimal level — and the child to become hyperactive to compensate for that.

 

Torontonians, Calgarians spend the most on looking good

Just coming out of Giant Tiger? Probably not...

“Have you ever been to Montreal?”, an acquaintance asked me recently.

Indeed I had.

“My God, there’s a lot of money in that town,” he continued. “Have you seen how well those people dress?”

It’s true that one of the first things you notice when you arrive in downtown Montreal on a weekday afternoon is how well-dressed many of the locals are. Dare I say it, but between that and the fact that French is the language of day to day life, it’s almost like being in a foreign country.

That got me wondering how Canada’s major cities stack up when it comes to how much they spend on clothing.

Sure enough, Statistics Canada came through with the answer. Their 2008 survey of household expenditures (posted online) provides a city-by-city analysis of how much money the average household spends on clothing.

Surprisingly, Winnipeg and Montreal were virtually tied in terms of how much the average household spends on clothing — $2,562 in Montreal, versus $2,573 in Winnipeg.

The biggest spenders on clothing were Torontonians, where the average household spent $3,832 on clothing — nearly 50 percent more than what the average Winnipeg household spent. Calgary households, at $3,680 per year, outspent Winnipeg households by more than 40 percent.

The lowest spenders: Saint John, N.B. ($2,459) and Charlottetown, P.E.I. ($2,362).

Data, unfortunately, were not available for Ottawa, Quebec City, Victoria, Whitehorse and Yellowknife.

So, what does this mean for The Elms?

Average annual expenditures on clothing (Source: Statistics Canada)

Toxic Alaska, and other findings from the world of research

• Alaska the most toxic state in the U.S. It’s a favourite destination for the cruise ship lines because of its rugged wilderness, but it’s hardly unspoiled. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxic Release Inventory, Alaska was home to the largest amount of toxic waste in the United States in 2008 — nearly 567.8 million pounds (257.5 million kilograms) of toxic releases. This put America’s northernmost state well ahead of runners-up Ohio, Utah, Indiana, Texas and Nevada. The least toxic state: Vermont (with lower counts registered in Guam, D.C., the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa, which are not technically ‘states’).

• The Meh Generation. A study from University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research came to the conclusion that today’s U.S. college students are more likely to be indifferent to the feelings of others than those of 20 or 30 years ago. The findings arise from “standard tests of this personality trait” undertaken in 72 studies of U.S. college students between 1979 and 2009 according to researcher Sara Konrath. This included lower levels of agreement with statements like ”I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective” and “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.”

• Cannabis leaving people “dim and demented”. Researchers at the University of Wollongong in Australia have found further evidence that cannabis use has long-term negative effects on the brain. Despite finding evidence that cannabis users sometimes perform some tasks better than non-users due to the brain’s ability to adapt to changes caused by drug use, the buildup of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) that is associated with ongoing cannabis use makes even simple tasks more difficult to perform, and puts users at greater risk of developing dementia in later years. “It is kind of like if you are driving your car down a freeway and the freeway is the most efficient neural pathway,” explained clinical psychologist Robert Battista. “[Cannabis users might find] the road has potholes or there is fog so that it is more effortful, more resources have to go into doing that same task.”

• Outdoor breaks better than indoor breaks. Pity the poor industrial park worker who has nowhere to go for a walk on his or her break. A test of 537 students at the University of Rochester found that those who took a short break in natural, open-air surroundings were more refreshed by the experience than those who took indoor walks or who had more sedentary breaks. “”Often when we feel depleted we reach for a cup of coffee,” said University of Rochester psychology professor Richard Ryan, “but research suggests a better way to get energized is to connect with nature.”

• The one European city guaranteed not to be overrun by tourists. Parisians might be perpetually fed up with their city being overrun by les touristes, but it’s not a problem in Minsk, the capital city of Belarus. One critical reason: Mercer, the global human resources corporation, ranked Minsk as Europe’s worst city in a 2008 study, out of a total of 183 cities examined. The study, which looked at 39 factors for each city, was denounced as “pure political vileness” by one Minsk resident, a professor at the city’s National Technical University. Another resident, however, tended to agree with the study’s findings. “Here, the only places open at night are the casinos and train station,” the unnamed woman said.

As Annie’s 86-year run ends, which should be the next comic strip to bow out?

She remained a constant in a world that changed radically over the course of her lifetime. She started fighting the bad guys during the Roaring ’20s and was still at it during the Internet Revolution. Her career spanned 15 U.S. presidents, 14 Canadian prime ministers, 11 Manitoba premiers and four British monarchs.

Today, the Little Orphan Annie comic strip (or simply Annie as it has been called since 1979) ends its long run, nearly 86 years after it was first published on Aug. 5, 1924.

With that, one of history’s longest running comic strips now fades into history along with the likes of John Darling, Sally’s Sallies, Secret Agent X-9, Agatha Crumm and The Far Side — and, of course, Calvin and Hobbes.

Now, here’s a controversial question to mull over: Which major comic strip should be the next to say “thank you and goodbye”, and why?

A few possibilities:

Baby Blues (Jan. 7, 1990)

Blondie (Sept. 8, 1930)

Crankshaft (June 8, 1987)

The Family Circus (Feb. 29, 1960)

Garfield (June 19, 1978)

Hi and Lois (Oct. 18, 1954)

Feel free to add others.

Is it a matter of peace leading to secularism, or of secularism leading to peace?

As an interested observer of world affairs, it has always struck me as ironic that peace has always seemed so elusive to the so-called Holy Lands of the Middle East, and yet always seemed to come naturally to countries like Denmark and New Zealand, where faith tends to be treated as a personal matter.

That curiousity about how religion influences human behaviour led me to do a little experiment when the latest results of the Global Peace Index were released recently. I decided to test my suspicion that countries with a greater overlap of religion and politics were more prone to conflict and social unrest than countries with more secular governments.

To do this, I compared each country’s score in the Global Peace Index to the percentage of respondents who expressed “strong agreement” that it would be better if there were more people with strong religious beliefs in public office according to the latest wave of the World Values Survey.

Sure enough, there was a significant relationship between the two.

The graph below shows the nature of the relationship between the degree to which religion and politics overlap and a country’s vulnerability to conflict and social unrest.

The higher up a country’s icon was positioned, the more intense the demand for more people with strong religious beliefs in public office. The further to the right the icon was positioned, the greater the propensity for conflict and social unrest.

It still doesn’t quite answer one important question: Is it that peace (and often prosperity) leads to secularization? Of secularization leading to peace? Or a bit of both?

The relationship between social peace and the overlap between politics and religion (Sources: World Values Survey/Global Peace Index)

Sources: Global Peace Index 2010, World Values Survey 2005-08

How seeking to destroy rivals can turn into political suicide, and other findings from the world of research

It’s time once again to go around the world to do a round-up of researchers’ latest insights into the human condition.

• Politicians bent on crushing their rivals likely to end up hurting themselves, too. A study conducted by the Nottingham University Business School in the U.K. and the university’s Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics might help explain what’s behind the old saying that “all political careers end in disappointment”. Staging a game in which two players stood to win a £10 cash prize, the researchers found that the rivalry became so intense in many encounters that players even went as far as to undermine their own chances of winning, with four-in-five encounters ending in mutual defeat. The implication: bitter rivalries between two people or organizations could allow a third party to come up the middle and humble them both.

• When the stress is on, women pay more attention, and men pay less attention, to facial expressions. A study conducted by the University of Southern California found that men tend to respond to stress by becoming less sociable, while women try to become more sociable in these instances. One possible reason: researchers noticed that, under stress, the male brain tends to dedicate less energy to evaluating facial expressions, while the female brain tends to devote more energy to this effort.

• Spiritual children tend to be happier.A study conducted by researchers at the University of British Columbia found that, among children aged 8 to 12 years, a higher level of spirituality — such as belief in a higher power — tended to be associated with a stronger feeling of happiness in their own lives. The researchers also found, however, no relationship between children’s attendance at religious services and their level of happiness, suggesting that “children’s spirituality and religiousness can be separated, even though many adults have trouble with the concept,” according to an April 5 report in the Vancouver Sun. “We think it might be a component of whether it’s voluntary or not that’s important,” UBC prof. Mark Holder said.

• Social networkers nearly the majority in the U.S. A study released this month by Arbitron and Edison Research found that 48 percent of Americans aged 11 years and over have profiles on at least one social networking web site. According to the study, the percentage of Americans using social networking sites has doubled since 2008, when only 24 percent had online profiles. Not surprisingly, social networking was most common among teenagers (78%) and 18-24 year olds (77%).

• Extended unemployment benefits only lead to “modest” reduction in desire to work. A study released this week by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco found that extending the amount of time that recipients could continue to receive unemployment benefits has had only a “modest effect” on the U.S. unemployment rate. The research by economists Rob Valletta and Katherine Kuang concluded that “our analyses suggest that extended UI benefits account for about 0.4 percentage point of the nearly 6 percentage point increase in the national unemployment rate over the past few years.”

Were the good old days really so good?

As a somewhat compulsive reader, a weekly tradition of mine is to read the Winnipeg Real Estate News. In addition to taking a glance at a historical piece about the violent 1906 streetcar strike of a century ago, and marvelling at how a condo on William Avenue near the Health Sciences Centre costs more today than a condo in far more desirable River Heights or Charleswood cost a decade ago, my eye happened to wander across Allen Willoughby’s column.

This week, Allen took readers down Memory Lane with tidbits about life in the “olden days”.

All your male teachers wore neckties and female teachers had their hair done every day and wore high heels

You always got your windshield cleaned, oil checked and gas pumped

It was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents

They threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed — and they did

No one ever asked where the car keys were because they were always in the ignition and the car doors were never locked

Willoughby’s article was, of course, for entertainment value and was in no way meant to be a comprehensive look back at the old days.

Were the ”good old days” really all that great, though?

I can’t speak to that personally, not having lived through that era. There is reason to believe, however, that in many ways we’re better off today.

• Remember when we had more funerals for people killed in automobile accidents? Road transportation is safer today than it has been in many years. For example, Japan Today reported on Jan. 2, 2010 that, for the first time since 1952, fewer than 5,000 people were killed in motor vehicle accidents in Japan in 2009. That’s less than half the number of people killed on Japanese roads in 1959 (when fatalities topped 10,000 for the first time) and less than one-third the 1970 number (when 16,765 people were killed in their worst year on record).

 

• Remember when First Nations people living on reserve didn’t have the right to vote? Until Mar. 31, 1960, most First Nations people living on reserve were barred from voting in federal elections unless they had served in the armed forces, or waived some of their rights under the Indian Act.

 

• Remember how repressed society was? In 1953, it was illegal in areas of Canada to sell liquor or foreign newspapers on a Sunday, to hunt or fish, to sell a restaurant meal to anyone but a traveler or to show a movie, which led the Milwaukee Journal to conclude that “next to Glasgow, Scotland there is no place deader than the average Canadian city on Sunday.” Until 1969, it was a Criminal Code offence to engage in same-sex relations or to sell or promote contraceptives.

 

• Remember when travelling overseas was only for the rich, or a once-in-a-lifetime excursion? In October 1956, Trans-Canada Air Lines (the forerunner of Air Canada) advertised a seat sale that, if you booked quickly, allowed you to fly Montreal-London round trip for the rock-bottom price of $416 — the equivalent of $3,410 in 2010 dollars. Today’s best price for a non-stop Montreal-London round trip, departing July 3 and returning July 17: $1,176 rising to $1,583 after taxes, fees and surcharges. Or you can make the round-trip today in Executive Class for $3,225 after taxes, fees and surcharges – $185 less than TCA’s lowest inflation-adjusted 1956 price.

 

• Remember when the only choice you had on television was “on” or “off”? The CBC held a monopoly on television in Winnipeg until 1960. Cable television didn’t arrive with its bounty of seven channels to watch — yes, only seven! — until the late ’60s.

 

• Remember when a woman could be fired for being pregnant?

If you were born in the ’70s, ’80s or ’90s, it’s not likely that you would remember any of these things — or even heard of them until now.

Let’s face it: every decade and every era had its problems. It will be interesting to be alive in 40 years time and to see how people look back on our times.

Certainly, our times are not perfect. Our standard of living, however, is still generally very, very good compared to the past.

Let’s hear it for life in the year 2010!