Ishmael's joke

Rory Stewart in the October 1 Times Literary Supplement:

At the beginning of Moby-Dick, Ishmael imagines himself appearing on a bill, sandwiched between two great events. One is the “Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States”; the other is the “Bloody battle in Affghanistan”.

The joke lies partly in incongruity: the lack of any connection between the United States and a landlocked country 7,500 miles away, a country so exotic that Herman Melville gives it the double letters that he elsewhere reserves for cannibals – Feegeeans, Tongatobooarrs, Erromanggoans and the rest.

This is a place that could have no conceivable relevance to a Presidential election in the United States.

Over a century and a half later, Afghanistan mattered to presidents. It had become the theatre for “the longest war” in American history and, at $3 trillion, perhaps the most expensive.

The investment in Afghanistan alone dwarfed in real terms the entire Marshall Plan for Europe after the Second World War. Over one million US servicemen – and more civilian contractors – passed through Afghanistan on tours.

Every anthropologist, political scientist, journalist or linguist with the slightest connection to the place, or even to the idea of intervention, was guaranteed generous employment....

Steven Pinker on the risks of riding a bike

From the NY Times Magazine:

....Steven Pinker's latest book, “Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters,” takes on another provocatively large subject and will be published on Sept. 28. 

“Many philosophers that I know,” says Pinker, “think that the world would be better if more people knew a bit of logic.”

Are there aspects of your own life in which you’re knowingly irrational? 

The answer is almost certainly yes. I probably do things that morally I can’t justify, like eating meat. I probably take risks that if I were to do the expected-utility calculation could not be justified, like bicycling. 

If I were to multiply the probability of my being killed by the value placed on my life, it would certainly be less than the same sum for getting my exercise by hiking or swimming. 

But nonetheless I enjoy bicycling. I try to mitigate the risks and to adjust my behavior to make it more ethically defensible. I have reason to believe at a meta-self-conscious level that whatever adjustments I do make are probably less than what would be optimal.

See also Another old guy dies riding a bike, Most dangerous areas for San Francisco bicyclists and The irresponsible bike hype.