False Sense of Maturity

Readers Digest conducted a study to help determine how rude we are as humans and compare the results by city. They conducted three tests with several people in each ‘test’ to get the results from 36 of the worlds largest cities.

We sent out undercover reporters—half of them men, half women…in 35 countries to assess the citizens of their biggest cities. In each location we conducted three tests…

Canada was the only country where they tested two different cities; Montreal and Toronto.

…it was the world’s biggest real-life test of common courtesy, with more than 2,000 tests of actual behaviour.

The interesting part is what city came out on top. New York!

Everywhere I look this week, I keep seeing stories about the Muslim head scarf, and this story is no exception. In Turkey, it appears that wearing the head scarf is a national form of teen rebellion:

So at 16, she did something none of her friends had done: She put on an Islamic head scarf.

In most Muslim countries, that would be a nonevent. In Turkey, it was a rebellion. Turkey has built its modern identity on secularism. Women on billboards do not wear scarves. The scarves are banned in schools and universities. So Ms. Yilmaz dropped out of school. Her parents were angry. Her classmates stopped calling her.

Like many young people at a time of religious revival across the Muslim world, Ms. Yilmaz, now 21, is more observant than her parents. Her mother wears a scarf, but cannot read the Koran in Arabic. They do not pray five times a day. The habits were typical for their generation — Turks who moved from the countryside during industrialization.