Nov. 6, 2009 Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes) Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man Nov. 5, 2009 The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes) Nov. 4, 2009 Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered? JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes) Nov. 3, 2009 Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes) Nov. 2, 2009 Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes) Oct. 30, 2009 Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America Oct. 29, 2009 Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity? JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes) Oct. 28, 2009 Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes) Oct. 27, 2009 Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes) Oct. 26, 2009 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes) Oct. 23, 2009 Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure? JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes) Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us Oct. 22, 2009 Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes) Oct. 21, 2009 Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies' JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes) Oct. 20, 2009 Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes) Oct. 19, 2009 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. Is nepotism kosher? JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes) Oct. 16, 2009 Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes) Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost Oct. 15, 2009 Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process' JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes) Oct. 29, 2003 Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Jan. 24, 2006 / 24 Teves, 5766 It's a sick, Thick World By Niall Ferguson http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | And I complain about the weather in Boston! "Be thankful you're not here," a prospective student based in Russia told me last week. For conditions there are truly Arctic. In Moscow alone, more than 100 people have died of hypothermia this winter. This, however, is hardly news. Russia has known colder winters than this, most recently 1978-1979. The real story about life — and death — in Russia today has to do with self-immolation, not snow. Once upon a time, high mortality was a problem peculiar to the Third World. However, a more puzzling trend today is the dramatic deterioration of public health in what used to be seen as developed countries. Russia is the prime example. Over the last 20 years, average male life expectancy there has fallen from 65 years to below 60, compared with 75 in the United States. And Russia is not alone. Take Belarus. Male life expectancy in parts of Minsk is down to 54. There has been a 350% rise in alcohol-related deaths in the last two decades. About 13,000 people die every year because of smoking-related diseases. More than a third of Belarus' 12-year-olds are overweight or clinically obese. Actually, I've played a trick on you. None of those statistics relate to Belarus. They are all from Scotland, which in certain respects really is the Belarus of the West. So whatever became of good old Progress with a capital P? Why, after about a century of sustained improvements, is public health in some developed countries deteriorating? The obvious answer is, of course, that Russians and Scots alike lead unhealthy lives. They smoke too much. They drink too much alcohol. They eat too much high-cholesterol food. And they do not exercise enough. The United States too has plenty of self-made invalids. The people of Kentucky are the nation's leading smokers, and few can beat North Dakotans when it comes to binge drinking. But that doesn't really explain why people choose to shorten their own lives. It's certainly not enough to say "because they are poor." Compared with most Africans, even unemployed Glaswegians are well-off. Nor can one simply blame poor health education. The New Sick know that cigarettes cause cancer, that excessive alcohol consumption causes cirrhosis of the liver and that too much fast food causes obesity and heart disease. Still, they consume all three like there's no tomorrow. Well, that may be precisely the point. In acting like there's no tomorrow, people who knowingly undermine their own health are, in the language of economists, "discounting the future steeply." They are effectively saying: "The pleasure this cigarette/pint/Mars bar will give me right now is worth more to me than the pain and privation I may one day suffer from premature disease and death." An alternative interpretation is that individuals are simply miscalculating the probability of their dying young. Either way, this can hardly be regarded as intelligent behavior. I would therefore like to suggest a new designation for these parts of the world where people are deliberately opting for ill health. To distinguish such places from the Third World, where people have maladies thrust upon them by nature and by poverty, I propose referring to them collectively as the Thick World — as in thick-headed. (Note that the Thick World is also the Fat World, just as the Third World is also the Thin World.) Now I have to confess my own sins. For I recognize only too well the Russian-Scottish-Dakotan traits. True, I don't smoke. I abjure illegal narcotics. I don't even eat Mars bars, deep fried or otherwise. Nevertheless, like a good many other writers and historians, I do abuse both caffeine and alcohol. So how can I possibly criticize those whose range of vices is merely wider than mine? I used to say facetiously that people who die around the retirement age are behaving with admirable social responsibility, thereby helping to solve the impending pension crisis. Alas, the reality is that such people tend to die slowly and expensively, running up a substantial bill for taxpayers from the moment they first claim disability benefits until the day they finally expire. So the growth of the Thick World poses a grave fiscal challenge for the First World. Worse, the rise of the self-made invalid is symptomatic of a more general decline of Western civilization, not unlike the fall of the European birthrate below the natural replacement rate. It is surely not without wider significance that by 2050, Russia's population is projected by the United Nations to be less than that of Egypt. As the snow falls on Russia today, it is burying a society that is literally moribund. But Moscow is only the capital city of the Thick World. The disturbing thing is just how many northern European and North American towns are already headed in the same dumb, downward direction. Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. BUY THE BOOKS Click HERE to purchase it at a discount. (Sales help fund JWR.). Click HERE to purchase it at a discount. (Sales help fund JWR.). Niall Ferguson is a professor of history at Harvard University. He is the author of "Empire" (Basic Books, 2003) and "Colossus" (Penguin, 2004). Comment by clicking here. 01/17/06: Tomorrow's world war today 01/03/06: Scotland, it's over, but keep the accents 12/20/05: History, democracy and Iraq 12/20/05: History, democracy and Iraq 11/22/05: Ghost of Napoleon haunts Tony Blair 11/22/05: Can it happen in Britain too? 11/15/05: Red plus blue equals purple 11/10/05: The fires of disintegration 11/01/05: Triumph of an über-wonk © 2006, Los Angeles Times Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate

Arnold Ahlert  Mitch Albom  Michael Barone   Dave Barry  Tony Blankley  Andy Borowitz  David Broder  Stratfor Briefing  Mona Charen  Linda Chavez  Ann Coulter  Greg Crosby  Larry Elder  Suzanne Fields  John Fund  Frank J. Gaffney  Lloyd Garver  Jonah Goldberg  Julia Gorin  Jonathan Gurwitz  Paul Greenberg  Lewis Grossberger  Victor Davis Hanson  Betsy Hart  Nat Hentoff  David Horowitz  Laura Ingraham  Cheri Jacobus Jeff Jacoby  Paul Johnson  Jack Kelly  Ed Koch  Ch. Krauthammer  Michael Ledeen  John Leo  David Limbaugh  Kathryn Lopez  Rich Lowry  Michelle Malkin  Jackie Mason  Dick Morris  Bill O'Reilly  Jim Mullen  Clarence Page  Kathleen Parker  Dennis Prager  Wesley Pruden  Tom Purcell  Jonathan Rauch  Celia Rivenbark  Robert Robb  Cokie & Steve Roberts  Pat Sajak  Debra J. Saunders  Culture Shlock  Roger Simon  Michael Smerconish  Thomas Sowell  Mark Steyn  John Stossel  Cal Thomas  Bob Tyrrell  Diana West  Dave Weinbaum  George Will  Walter Williams  Byron York  Mort Zuckerman  Robert Arial  Chuck Asay  Baloo  Chip Bok  Dry Bones   Lisa Benson  John Branch  Gary Brookins  John Cole  J. D. Crowe  John Deering  Brian Duffy  Everything's Relative  Mallard Fillmore  Jake Fuller  Bob Gorrel  Joe Heller  David Hitch  Jerry Holber  Steve Kelley  Jeff Koterba  Dick Locher  Chan Lowe  Ranan R. Lurie  Jimmy Margulies  Rick McKee  Michael Ramirez  Kevin Siers  Jeff Stahler  Ed Stein  Danna Summers  John Trever  Gary Varvel  Kirk Walters  How 2  Lori Borgman  The Savvy Consumer  Elder matters  Fixit  Dr. Peter Gott  GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko  Richard Lederer  Tech Maven  Every Monday Matters  Nutrition Myths  Bookmark These  Bruce Williams  How Stuff Works