Chance News 40

Quotation

When I worked at the Labor Party think tank, trying to talk about these issues [oppression of Muslim women], people always accused me of failing to back up my arguments with data. But hard numbers were completely unavailable. When I tried to find out about honor killings, for instance-how many girls were killed every year in Holland by their fathers and brothers because of their precious family honor-civil servants at the Ministry of Justice would tell me, "We don't register murders based on that category of motivation. It would stigmatize one group in society." The Dutch government registered the number of drug-related killings and traffic accidents every year, but not the number of honor killings, because no Dutch official wanted to recognize that this kind of murder happened on a regular basis.

Aayan Hirsi Ali
Infidel, Free Press: New York NY
pages 295-296.

Suggested by Steve Simon

Forsooth

From the Independent, 13/09/08:

Last week, a formatting error led to us inadvertently suggesting that there was a one in 1,019 chance of the world ending before this edition. That should have read, er, one in 10¹⁹ – rather less likely. Sorry. Feel free to remove the crash helmet.

Suggested by Gareth Hagger-Johnson

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From SEED Magazine (October 2008)

If you play golf, you could be adding five years to your life. A new study

shows that the death rate for Scandanavian golfers is 40% lower than for those who don't golf. The reason may be simple: Golfers walk, spend time outdoors, and developing social relationships. The social interaction can be especially important for the older age groups. Researchers have not ruled out the possibility that golfers simply live healthy lives in

general, but they believe that the game itself does have health benefits.

Submitted by William Montante

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==Understanding Uncertainty==