mordant wit

<$BlogRSDUrl$> <body style="background-color: #FEFCF1"><script type="text/javascript"> function setAttributeOnload(object, attribute, val) { if(window.addEventListener) { window.addEventListener('load', function(){ object[attribute] = val; }, false); } else { window.attachEvent('onload', function(){ object[attribute] = val; }); } } </script> <div id="navbar-iframe-container"></div> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://apis.google.com/js/platform.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> gapi.load("gapi.iframes:gapi.iframes.style.bubble", function() { if (gapi.iframes && gapi.iframes.getContext) { gapi.iframes.getContext().openChild({ url: 'https://www.blogger.com/navbar/6395693?origin\x3dhttp://mordantwit.blogspot.com', where: document.getElementById("navbar-iframe-container"), id: "navbar-iframe", messageHandlersFilter: gapi.iframes.CROSS_ORIGIN_IFRAMES_FILTER, messageHandlers: { 'blogger-ping': function() {} } }); } }); </script>

July 18, 2006

Flesh Trade
Weighing the Repugnance Factor How's this for a repugnant situation? Take someone you love, perhaps your spouse or your sibling, and find a stranger who will accept a really big bet that your loved one will die prematurely — and if indeed that happens, you pocket a few million dollars. This, of course, is how life insurance works. And most Americans don't find this idea repugnant at all. They used to, however. Until the mid-19th century, life insurance was considered "a profanation," as the sociologist Viviana Zelizer has written, "which transformed the sacred event of death into a vulgar commodity." # posted by masquerader @ 10:58 ::

Comments: Post a Comment

a wanderer,
a searcher,
in a quest
for inner peace