You have waked me too soon…

BRITAIN’S health department calls it “the silent killer”. Others have labelled it “the new smoking”. Lack of physical activity has crept up the list of global causes of death to fourth place, after high blood pressure, smoking and high blood sugar—not least because it helps waistlines expand.

Even a little exercise has a huge health effect, whether or not people shed their extra pounds. Research presented on August 30th at a cardiology conference in London suggests that walking fast for 25 minutes a day can buy three to seven years of extra life. A bigger study by a team at Cambridge University tracked 300,000 Europeans over 12 years, and found that a brisk daily 20-minute walk, or the equivalent, cut the annual death rate for people of normal weight by a quarter, and for the obese by 16%. Getting everyone sedentary to do this would save twice as many lives as ending obesity, says Ulf Ekelund, the lead researcher.

Walking 20 minutes a day falls just short of the minimum exercise that the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends. Adults, it says, should do at least 150 minutes weekly of moderate exercise, such as walking...

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Streetwise

AT 6am on a sweltering Sunday the centre of Gurgaon, a city in northern India, is abuzz. Children queue for free bicycles to ride on a 4km stretch of road that will be cordoned off from traffic for the next five hours. Teenagers pedal about, taking selfies; middle-aged men and women jog by. On a stage, a black-belt demonstrates karate; yoga practice is on a quieter patch down the street. Weaving through the crowd dispensing road-safety tips is a traffic cop with a majestic moustache.

Gurgaon’s weekly jamboree is called Raahgiri, (“reclaim your streets”). Amit Bhatt of EMBARQ, a green think-tank, started it in 2013, inspired by Bogotá’s ciclovía, pictured above, for which Colombia’s capital closes 120km of streets on Sundays and holidays. Such events are part of a movement that is accelerating around the world.

From Guangzhou to Brussels to Chicago, cities are shifting their attention from keeping cars moving to making it easier to walk, cycle and play on their streets. Some central roads are being converted into pedestrian promenades, others flanked with cycle lanes. Speed limits are...

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Journalist wanted

Journalist wanted: The Economist is looking for a journalist to write about global public policy, based in London but travelling everywhere. First-rate analytical and writing skills essential; sense of humour a plus. Salary negotiable. Applicants should send a CV and an original 600-word article on any subject, written in the style of The Economist, to econjob@economist.com by September 4th. For more details, see http://ift.tt/1NsKdAT

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Travelling light

10,000 airmiles away from home

A TOURIST flying economy class from Britain to Kenya and back generates around a tonne of carbon emissions, according to the International Civil Aviation Organisation. No matter how many times he reuses his towels or sits on a composting toilet when he is there, he could never hope to offset the burning of all that jet fuel. Does that mean the very notion of “sustainable tourism” is an oxymoron?

The phrase has three possible meanings. The first is ecological. Given the contribution that transport, especially by air, makes to global warming, on this definition it is almost guaranteed to fall short. The only truly sustainable holiday would be camping in the back garden eating berries, says Harald Zeiss of the Institute for Sustainable Tourism at Harz University in Germany. The second is social. Ideally, when cultures meet and gain in mutual understanding the long-term benefits will be intangible, but real. The final one is economic. Tourists who step off the beaten track have a chance to help lift the poor out of poverty and encourage them to preserve their environments for financial gain. The...

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A place to lay your bread

AT THE Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai, one of the world’s most luxurious (pictured), guests can avail themselves of 24-carat gold iPads and caviar facials. The cheapest rooms cost $1,000 a night; those interested in the royal suite can expect to pay nearer $25,000. Such ostentation is not to everyone’s taste. But it illustrates a trend: the way that the rich spend their money is changing.

Once, the well-heeled bought fancy stuff. Nowadays they spend more on things to do and see. A report last year by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) found that of the $1.8 trillion spent on luxury goods and services worldwide in 2012, nearly $1 trillion went on “luxury experiences”. Travel and hotels accounted for around half that figure.

This partly reflects the growing weight of rich folk from developing countries. Wealthy Chinese spend 20 days a year travelling for leisure, according to ILMT, a travel agency. The most popular destination was Australia, and nearly half made it as far as Europe. On average, affluent Americans went on holiday 3.9 times in 2014, says Resonance, a consultancy, up from 3 times in 2012. Around half travelled more than 1,000...

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The persistence of history

“SPOILS of war,” snaps Dabiq, the English-language journal of Islamic State (IS). The reference is to thousands of Yazidi women the group forced into sex slavery after taking their mountain, Sinjar, in August last year. Far from being a perversion, it claims that forced concubinage is a religious practice sanctified by the Koran. In a chapter called “Women”, the Koran sanctions the marriage of up to four wives, or “those that your right hands possess”.

Literalists, like those behind the Dabiq article, have interpreted these words as meaning “captured in battle”. Its purported female author, Umm Sumayyah, celebrated the revival of Islam’s slave-markets and even proffered the hope that Michelle Obama, the wife of America’s president, might soon be sold there. “I and those with me at home prostrated to Allah in gratitude on the day the first slave-girl entered our home,” she wrote. Sympathisers have done the same, most notably the allied Nigerian militant group, Boko Haram, which last year kidnapped an entire girls’ school in Chibok (pictured above).

Religious preachers have responded with...

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Journalist wanted

Journalist wanted: The Economist is looking for a journalist to write about global public policy, based in London but travelling everywhere. First-rate analytical and writing skills essential; sense of humour a plus. Salary negotiable. Applicants should send a CV and an original 600-word article on any subject, written in the style of The Economist, to econjob@economist.com by September 4th. For more details, see http://ift.tt/1NsKdAT

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Journalist wanted

Journalist wanted: The Economist is looking for a journalist to write about global public policy, based in London but travelling everywhere. First-rate analytical and writing skills essential; sense of humour a plus. Salary negotiable. Applicants should send a CV and an original 600-word article on any subject, written in the style of The Economist, to econjob@economist.com by September 4th. For more details, see http://ift.tt/1NsKdAT

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Caesar’s legions

A YEAR ago a hospital in São Paulo announced that its maternity ward would henceforth only admit clients from 10am to 4pm, Monday to Friday. The message was clear: births by appointment only—that is, by Caesarean section. For Arthur Chioro, Brazil’s health minister, it was equally unequivocal: the country’s attitude to birth “has become absurd”.

In 2009 Brazil became the first country where less than half of babies were born as nature intended. At the last count, in 2013, fully 57% of births were by Caesarean section, in which the baby is delivered through an incision in the abdomen and uterus—almost double the proportion two decades ago. In Brazil’s private health-care system, Caesareans now account for nearly nine in ten births. Brazilian mothers say, only half jokingly, that their obstetricians would not know how to pull out a baby without cutting them open.

A recent study of 21 countries published in the Lancet, a medical journal, estimated that 31% of births were by Caesarean section in 2010-11. The rate is rising almost everywhere. The Dominican Republic and Egypt have joined Brazil in the greater-than-...

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A question of utility

THE Great Exhibition, staged in London in 1851, was intended to show off the inventive genius of Victorian Britain. In doing so it sparked a hardfought debate on intellectual property. On one side were public figures horrified at the thought of inviting the whole world to see the nation’s best ideas, only to have most of it go straight home and copy them. They called for the patent system to be made cheaper and easier to navigate, and for the rights it conferred to be more forcefully upheld. These demands, though, were met with a backlash. Supported by economic liberals who had successfully fought for the repeal of the protectionist Corn Laws a few years earlier, this side of the debate argued that free trade and competition were good for the economy; that patents were a restraint on both; and that therefore patents should be not reformed, but done away with.

The Economist, founded by opponents of the Corn Laws, was an enthusiastic promoter of this abolitionist movement. A leader in our July 26th issue that year thundered that the granting of patents “excites fraud, stimulates men to run after schemes that may enable them to...

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A new age of espionage

CYBER-CAFÉS were once a favoured tool of Western intelligence and security agencies. They were inconspicuous, cheap to establish and highly effective. Set up near an international summit buzzing with targets, or close to a mosque favoured by Islamist extremists, these facilities allowed their masters to monitor browsing habits, obtain targets’ logins and passwords, and plant spyware for future use. This was legal: consent was buried in the terms and conditions which users clicked on without reading. And in a neat twist, security-conscious people trying to avoid using their own computers favoured such places. Some would hop between cafés, unaware that all the convenient ones were run by the authorities.

Not any more. Edward Snowden, a fugitive former contractor for America’s National Security Agency (NSA) now living in Moscow, revealed the use of cyber-cafés to spy on the G20 summit in London in 2009. Now people are wary. In many countries the cyber-cafés have been closed. The staff who ran them have had to be moved (and in some cases given costly new identities). As a result, keeping track of terrorism suspects is now harder, spooks say.

...

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Breaking the baby strike

“THERE are no families with many children in this area any more—they all have one or two,” says Hasibe Enc, who lives in the small, affluent city of Urla in western Turkey. That is irksome for her, since she runs a kindergarten called Pink Dreams. But it is also a crisis for Turkey—or so the national government believes.

Although it is the youngest country in Europe, Turkey is no longer delivering enough babies to sustain its population in the long term. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, its president, rails against abortion and tells women to bear at least three children. To sweeten these vinegary exhortations, the government is introducing “birth aid” payments for each baby born to a citizen and longer parental leave for civil servants.

In Singapore couples receive S$6,000 ($4,450) for having one child, another S$6,000 for a second child and a further S$8,000 for a third. Families with babies go to the front of the queue for government housing, in which most Singaporeans live. In South Korea the state reminds lovers that they can marry cheaply, without throwing an expensive wedding. In Russia couples are encouraged to get it on for the sake of...

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Lies, damned lies, and Lysistrata

“OUR women know what to do and when,” crowed Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, after a recent uptick in the country’s fertility rate. A fall in America’s, by contrast, produced gloom. Both reactions were absurd. The conventional measure of fertility is a poor guide to how many babies people produce.

Imagine a Lysistrata scenario in which nobody procreates for a year. The commonly cited “total fertility rate”—the number of births each woman would have, assuming that in each year of her reproductive life she had the average number of children for women of that age in the current year—would fall to zero. Once the sex strike ended, though, it would bounce back, perhaps even rising higher than before, if couples try to make up for lost time. The “cohort fertility rate”—the actual number of children born to each woman in her lifetime—would change little.

Life is not a Greek comedy, yet something like this has happened in many countries. Parenthood now starts later than it used to. The total fertility rate falls as births are delayed; once older parenthood becomes widespread, it rises again. The ebb and flow of babies is a...

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No gutties, more glory

THE winner of this year’s British Open golf tournament, which started on July 16th on the Old Course at St Andrews, will pocket £1.15m ($1.79m). Golf was not always so lavishly rewarded. The first time the Open was played at St Andrews, in 1873, the first prize was £11 (£1,079 in today’s money). There was no sponsorship, no TV (for obvious reasons) and only a handful of spectators braving the blustery Scottish weather. The prize money was a welcome windfall for the champion, a local caddy called Tom Kidd, but he still died poor 11 years later. He is thought to have sold his clubs and his champion’s medal to pay for booze.

It is not only the rewards that have improved. Because the Open has been played at St Andrews—the home of golf—more often than anywhere else, it is possible to measure what has happened to scores over a century and a half. They are vastly better today (see chart). Kidd took nearly 90 shots for each 18-hole round he played. Any competent modern amateur could do that. Louis Oosthuizen, the Open champion in 2010, averaged 68 shots a round, even though the course is now 7,305 yards, up from 6,577 in Kidd’s day....

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Citius, altius, fortius, numerus

WHEN Novak Djokovic beat Roger Federer to win the Wimbledon men’s singles championship on July 12th, he gave his supporters fresh ammunition to argue that he is playing better tennis than anyone in history. It was his 14th victory in his past 21 matches against the Swiss maestro.

Younger fans might presume that only Mr Federer’s superlative run from 2004-09 could compete with Mr Djokovic’s dominance. But those with longer memories could make a compelling claim for Rod Laver, who won a record 200 tournaments from 1956-76, or even Bill Tilden, who dominated the 1920s. Mr Federer’s oft-cited status as the best player ever, and Mr Djokovic’s as the heir apparent, rest on a widely held but hard-to-prove assumption: because the quality of play has increased so much over time, today’s finest sportsmen must be superior to their predecessors.

Cross-era comparisons are easiest in sports like running, jumping and weightlifting, which are measured in units like time, distance or mass. In general, performance in such contests has improved substantially over the years: the average top-ten finisher in the men’s 100-metre sprint has cut his time from...

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Time to quit

FOR many Egyptian Muslims it is not the forgoing of food and drink during daylight hours that makes the holy month of Ramadan a difficult time: it is the corresponding restriction on smoking. Take Sayed, the manager of a modest Lebanese restaurant in Cairo. He has not eaten for nearly 16 hours and is surrounded by food. But after the muezzin calls out at sunset, he reaches for a cigarette. So does his staff. Of his 28 employees, only three do not smoke.

In much of the rich world, smoking seems to be doomed. In America, Australia, Britain, Canada and Italy, one in five or fewer people smoke (see chart). The better-off have mostly given up, and the poor are following. There’s a lag between a fall in the smoking rate and a fall in deaths from smoking, but even so in America and many other rich countries, smoking-related deaths are in decline.

But in many poor countries, mostly in Africa, more people...

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By the book

Cruel, but not unusual

MUSLIMS the world over are horrified by the executions carried out by Islamic State (IS) in the name of their religion. On June 28th the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an NGO based in Britain, said it knew of more than 3,000 in the past year. More than half were of civilians—and 74, of children. Yet the self-declared caliphate is not the only Muslim “state” keen on the death penalty and other brutal punishments. At least nine countries have stoning as a judicial sentence, and five have amputation. All are Islamic.

Why? Islam’s sacred texts are not more bloodthirsty than those of Judaism or Christianity. The Old Testament names 36 misdeeds, including using magic and striking a parent, as meriting death; the Koran just two: hiraba (“spreading mischief”) and murder. It says that the family of a murder victim may forgive and therefore spare the killer. Death, stoning, amputation and lashes are reserved for a small number of serious crimes, including theft and adultery, collectively known as hudud.

Under the Ottoman empire, just one...

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On the way out—with grisly exceptions

DEPENDING on where you are, the death penalty may look as if it is in rude health. On June 29th America’s Supreme Court upheld Oklahoma’s use of midazolam, a sedative, in executions—despite evidence that it can fail to cause unconsciousness, leaving those being killed in agony from the lethal drugs with which it is combined. Meanwhile some countries in the Muslim world, notably Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, are executing people with increasing enthusiasm. Several others, including Nigeria and Egypt, are sentencing large numbers to death, though most of those sentences are unlikely to be carried out.

Indonesia has executed at least 14 people this year for drug crimes, most of them foreigners. Between 1994 and 2014 it executed at most 30. Using figures from official and human-rights sources, Amnesty International, a watchdog, counts 352 executions in the first four months of this year in Iran, which for its size probably executes more people than anywhere else. The true figure may much higher. Since ending a moratorium in December, Pakistan has hanged or shot at least 150 people. Saudi Arabia has beheaded or shot 100 already this year,...

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Migrant brainpower

 

Many countries say their diasporas are valuable. But is this fact or flattery? One measure comes from the World Intellectual Property Organisation. Before September 2012 scientific and technical patents recorded not just where an inventor was working but also where he or she was born. It is thus possible to measure expats’ brain power. By this yardstick Britain, Canada, China, Germany and India have the most talented diasporas. Relative to their home populations, though, expats of African countries such as Ghana and Nigeria are the most accomplished. Between 2007 and 2012 more than nine-tenths of patents filed by people born in those countries were registered by expatriates. Surprisingly, a higher proportion of Brits who register patents are working abroad than is the case for Chinese people (20% v 17%). China’s liberal patenting system is one reason; another, perhaps, is the British talent for melting into other countries and thriving there.

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Gone but not forgotten

IF YOUR surname is McNamara and you live outside Ireland, expect a letter. Ireland Reaching Out, a non-profit organisation financed largely by the Irish government, has pioneered what it calls “reverse genealogy”. Rather than waiting for people to trace their Irish ancestry, it constructs family trees from root to branch, tracking down the descendants of those who left for America, Australia and other countries. Volunteers then invite them to visit the homeland. It is a mighty task: Mike Feerick, the outfit’s founder, wants to build a database of the Irish diaspora containing 30m or 40m names.

Last year Ireland appointed its first minister for the Irish diaspora; this spring it unveiled a diaspora strategy. As well as Ireland Reaching Out, the government supports hundreds of groups that serve needy Irish emigrants or court successful ones. One of them, Connect Ireland, uses the diaspora as spies for inward investment: it pays for tip-offs that lead to foreign companies creating jobs in the country.

In the early 1980s barely a dozen countries had a ministry, a government department or some other official institution dedicated to their...

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