Of all the countries of the world, surely Italy has made the greatest contribution to Civilisation. Most nations only get one go at the top, as social cultural and economic leader,-but Italy did it twice (Roman Empire, Renaissance) And the food’s not bad by the way. So to celebrate this marvellous achievement, we are going to offer you a look at not one, not two but THREE great Italian cocktails.. We won’t include the Limoncello Spritz as we have covered that twice (LSS 24 6 22; 9 8 24) But do include three others that would have undoubtedly delighted Dante, pleasured Plautus or Charmed Camilleri
Negroni A delightful blend of gin and those classic Italian ingredients of vermouth and Campari The orange slices make it thrice as refreshing Our recipe is from Jack Wakelin of the BBC
Bellini Our recipe comes from the erudite Nick Polotninko of the marvellous cocktail wave website So simple, largely peach puree and prosecco, making it easy to scale up for receptions, soirées, weddings, christenings and the like:
Aperol Spritz Jack Wakelin strikes again! Dead easy, just Aperol and prosecco essentially, and plenty of ice. Quite the in-drink with the pub crowd lately, probably because its so easy to make, that you don’t even need a shaker
And so we hope you’ll join us in saying Salute to a great country and its achievements in Art, Science, Religion, Music, Philosophy, Gastronomy, Literature, Architecture, Design-and some great drinks.
Paleolithic passions We’ve known for some time that Homo sapiens sometimes liked a bit of rough trade,such as Neanderthals and Denisovans. But not until now that Denisovans in turn were having hank panky with that much older species, Homo erectus, as El País explains:
Exmoor Eagles Exmoor National Park in Southwest England has just taken a massive stride forward by re-introducing the magnificent white tailed eagle(Haliaetus albicilla) into its majestic landscape. Has to be a hit for tourists and everyone else who wants to see a thriving economy in the region (Bird of prey extinct for over 200 years returns to southern England The Independent via MSN
Cleaner, Greener, Richer One of the tropes you still hear trotted out in the local pub is that green technologies will somehow vitiate economic growth. Rubbish, as this piece from Nature Briefing called The cities getting ‘richer and cleaner’ makes abundantly clear
Thousands of cities are decoupling economic growth from the burning of fossil fuels. Researchers compared levels of the greenhouse gas nitrogen dioxide (NO2) with information on gross domestic product (GDP) to track the green development trajectories of more than 5,000 of the world’s biggest cities. About 2,000 cities showed improvement in both metrics between 2019 and 2024 — most of them in China. Nature | 6 min read
Clear New way to Mars We remember discussions about nuclear powered ships powering the way to Mars nearly 60 years ago, following the heady excitement of the Apollo Programme. Then the idea shrivelled and died. Now it’s back, more practicable than ever, according to this article in The Conversation
Killing Kelp? We’ve always supported valiant efforts now being made to restore the UK’s coastal seaweed orests, even contributing articles to local newspapers and websites to help this worthy cause. Progress has been made, especially in our own area of Sussex. But now sewage and agricultural run off may be starting to slow the general advance, as this piece from the BBC makes clear
One thing we like about Larry Elliott of the Guardian: he always looks for deeper reasons behind the news stories flashing across our screens. For him, they’re often economic reasons. .[1] Today he examines the plight of UK Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the sea of troubles against which he has tried to take arms. Brexit,(“not done properly” Elliott asseverates ) globalisation (“has mainly benefitted the South East”), too much financial services ,and of course de-industrialisation. Especially in the old manufacturing areas like the Midlands, the North of England and the Scottish river valleys. Where Starmer and his party received such a kicking in the recent local elections. It was that last one that caught our eye, gentle readers.
For what was the Labour Party but a Party of the mass industrialised workers? From its foundation, in deep partnership with the Trades Unions and Co-Operative movement, but a Party of workers, who had been torn off their farms and thrown together into mass agglomerations in things like factories, mines and ports? Whose consciousness and very lives were collective, where sharing was a more certain way to survive hardship. But now those factories are gone. And the industrial unions with them. (for the benefit of foreign readers, Britain has an atrophied group of unions, but they now largely represent small groups of white collar workers and count for little in the balance of power).
For us the clue is in the name: the party of Keir Hardie grew from an organised, industrial membership. The Party of Keir Starmer exists in a very different nation. The politics of the 20th century were all about economics Those of the 21st about Identity. No wonder Labour got such a kicking. No wonder the Conservatives did too. A very different road now lies ahead. In every country.
In these happy, carefree days of 2026, we almost take the success of advanced techniques like CRISPR–Cas9 and CAR‑T for granted. Yet not so long ago they were obscure experimental curiosities, known only inside specialist laboratories. So we asked ourselves: is there something equally obscure in 2026 that will be the stock‑in‑trade of doctors in 2046? We think there might be: programmable cell therapeutics.[1]
The jumping‑off point is the logic behind CAR‑T. Readers will recall how T‑cells are removed from a patient, engineered to recognise the chemical signatures of their cancer, and then reinfused to hunt down malignant cells. Researchers are now extending this idea to a wider cast of immune cells, stem cells, and progenitors, so they can tackle diseases far beyond oncology.
What makes the next generation different is the importation of ideas from electrical engineering. Instead of a single engineered receptor, cells can be fitted with ON/OFF switches, logic gates, multi‑step decision pathways, and feedback loops. In other words, cells that don’t just attack — they compute. They sense the molecular environment, decide what’s happening, and act accordingly.
And thanks to delivery tools such as viral vectors and mRNA‑carrying nanoparticles, these circuits can increasingly be installed in vivo. Rather than the expensive choreography of removing cells, re‑engineering them, and putting them back, the ambition is to program the cell to reprogram itself. Why rebuild the army in the barracks when you can train the soldiers already in the field?
Gentle readers, we are always looking for ways to put you ahead of the curve — not what is happening now, but what will be happening in five, ten, or twenty years’ time. By 2046 we could plausibly see:
cancer therapies that activate only in tumour microenvironments
gene therapies that self‑limit to avoid toxicity
immune cells that make multi‑step decisions
RNA‑based switches that restore gene expression dynamically
All this, of course, depends on continued investment in scientific research and a strong ecosystem of independent universities and research institutes. Hopeful, isn’t it.
For anyone who thinks dinosaurs are extinct you should try living near vast colonies of seagulls, where we do, and try to keep your car clean. But, as every schoolchild knows, most dinosaurs, especially the big scary ones, really did go extinct one day 66 million years ago when a rather large asteroid landed in the Gulf of Mexico(or do we now call it the Golf of Trump?-check before publishing-ed) But what was it like to live through that momentous day in the history of the world? Now erudite Professors Michael J Benton and Monica Grady, writing in the Conversation, have made a stab at recreating the colossal impact, through the eyes of the creatures that lived through it, from the day before until many years later when everything had played out.[1]
Well, imagine it for yourself, gentle reader. A warm Cretaceous day like many others, a Friday perhaps, with the prospect of a sunny weekend ahead…. Ankylosaurs scuttling through the undergrowth, Triceratops and T. rex vying for number one spot at the watering hole, all normal and above board, until…..well, we won’t spoil it, gentle reader. Click on the link and read for yourself.
And remember this thought. However urgent your latest report seems to be, however late the train is for the next meeting, or how long you have to wait to park at Sainsburys, trouble- unexpected, unforewarned, undeserved even- may suddenly come at you from out of a clear blue sky. And change things round more than somewhat. And finally: if we had lived there at that time, it really would have been a Friday, because everything bad happens to us twice.[2]
While we sympathise with the unfortunate passengers and crew of the MV Hondius who may have been exposed to the hantavirus, our first response was rather selfish; “is this a new pandemic, and if so, how bad will it be?” We were not alone: and fortunately, as this excellent summary article from Julia Musto of the Independent, via MSN, explains: humanity seems to have dodged the bullet this time [1] Although utterly dangerous the virus just doesn’t seem to spread with the same facility as others such as SARS-CoV-2, or the influenza group. So that’s alright then.
Or is it? Because as certain as the House always winning, another pandemic will come along. Bringing the same economic, social and physical disruptions as COVID 19 did back in 2020. Or worse maybe. Surely humanity has learned some lessons from that catastrophe? Taken steps, you might think, to mitigate the worst effects and learn to pool our resources so that next time round everything will be different? Not according to Kat Lay of the Guardian [2] whose indefatigable investigations have unearthed another avoidable catastrophe in the making.
Because although a Pandemic Treaty has been signed , it cannot go into effect until a special clause called a Pabs (Pathogen access and benefits sharing) has been ratified. It hasn’t, as regular readers will be unsurprised to learn. The result is:
“If a new pathogen emerged today, the world remains largely unprepared for it. A lack of action to prevent and prepare for the next pandemic threat is a disservice to humanity,”
Kat cites the usual litany of petty squabbles, mutual jealousies and general misinformations which have led us all into this sorry plight and ends her article there.
But we, gentle readers, cannot quite leave you without adding our own thought. Natural Selection tells us that species go extinct when their key survival features are no longer adequate to their environment (what use are flippers to a whale out of water, for example?) Humanity’s key advantage was its intelligence and relatively large brain. Is this clear example of the failure to use this clear cognitive advantage a sign of even worse things to come?
In March we opened a new series called Beyond the Nation(LSS 5 3 26), which suggested that there are a number of practical , and very pressing problems which could be more efficiently addressed if the response were global rather than by the current group of 193 or so mutually suspicious, jealously competing, nation states. In particular we looked at things like pollution, disaster relief, and the economic brakes imposed by creating national identities,
Thinking about it, that last is the very heart of what we’re on about, isn’t it? Because national identities are really, no viscerally, important to people. They have more power over our minds than any alternatives offered by religions, class, sports teams or profession. They not only define who we are: they define the behaviour others expect of us, and more importantly, the behaviour we expect of ourselves. And no one can deny the critical importance they have played at times when freedom was in critical jeopardy. Would Ukraine have sustained the fight against Russia for so long without a crucial sense of its own identity? Or for that matter would the USSR have sustained its own fight against the Nazis without incorporating a strong sense of Russian Nationalism? All this, and more can can be set in the balance for the Nation as the highest form of organising human societies, as we have argued elsewhere. (LSS passim: see our World Government series)
Yet nations are transient, fleeting things. Where are the Spartans or the Akkadians now? Men and women lived and died for their causes, and many like them, across thousands of years of history. Yet the real drivers of existence are huge impersonal things like climate, disease or massive technological leaps such as the Industrial Revolution. Britain spent immense quantities of treasure and lives trying to defend a position it had established in the Age of Sail, only to discover that the Age of Steam made all its efforts irrelevant[1] And so the question becomes “If your identity is so important, what price are you prepared to pay to maintain it?” Because if technologies can change, so can societies, and the identities which they generate.
We shall close the series with a personal anecdote, a thing we rarely do, Many many years ago still trapped in Undergraduate adolescence we were debating the question of Britain’s membership of what was then called the European Community with a fellow inmate, albeit far more intelligent than ourselves Being good Young Socialists we then followed the Orthodox Labour Party Line: that the UK should leave forthwith. Being entirely of independent mind (and far less neurotic) our interlocutor laughed and observed “You would have been against joining up Wessex with Mercia, wouldn’t you?” A quiet wisdom which time has made more memorable than almost any other things we have ever heard or read.
[1]Kennedy, Paul. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000. New York: Random House, 1987. London: Unwin Hyman, 1988. ISBN: 0394546741 (US hardback); 0049230737 (UK hardback). see especially chapter 3
#nation state #society #politics #history #russia #ukraine #USSR #Britain #economics
George Monbiot has been right on so many things-climate change, river pollution, re-wilding- and often so far ahead of the curve, that when he comes up with something new, we take notice. Today he tackles an agonising question: why are the political extremes doing so well, and the messaging of what we used to call rational parties not cutting through? George thinks he knows why, and what’s more, thinks he has a way of making up lost ground. He calls it radical listening. [1]
George notes that just relying on focus groups or turning up on someone’s doorstep and arguing changes very little. Especially the arguing: we’ve noticed that most people will resort to the most twisted verbal convolutions and distortions rather than lose face by admitting that the first thing they said was wrong. Radical listening, according to George, means spending quite a bit of time with people, just letting them talk and giving them space to say what’s really on the minds. He even reports on a variation of the technique which was tried out in the streets of certain small towns in Devon, with remarkable results, But you should read those bits for yourself.
And why do we think George is right? Because we have observed that most of the mistakes in the world are made by Important and Powerful Men(mostly) who are far too busy to listen to anyone, spending their time making Big Decisions quickly, which lets them move on to making the next decision…..Plus: something first observed by another George, this time one called Orwell. Who noticed that what people say, and the political, philosophical or religious opinions they aspire to, are often the result of deep emotional states and preoccupations which are actually quite distinct from the manifestoes and policy positions these philosophies ostensibly adduce. Listening is a skill in all sorts of areas-sales, learning languages, human relationships, even management, occasionally. And its defining characteristic is humility. Perhaps Plutarch says things best of all
“Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly.”
Nations gather to end fossil fuelsReports Nature Briefing. Jolly well about time time too, we say, when the petty, spiteful quarrels of Iran, Israel and the United States have the rest of us over a barrel.
At the annual United Nations climate conference (COP30) last year, Colombia stepped up to host a new conference, alongside the Netherlands, to create a roadmap for countries to transition away from fossil fuels that doesn’t require consensus between all of the world’s countries, as the COP process does. At the conference, which just finished in Santa Marta, one of the first orders of business was to launch a panel of scientists that will advise willing countries to shift to clean energy. A separate group of researchers released a report listing 12 high-level actions that nations can take to support a fossil-fuel phaseout. “We’re not trying to replicate the [UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] here. We’re trying to give some practical policy insights” based on science, says climate-change economist Frank Jotzo, who was part of the editorial team. Nature | 7 min read Reference: Santa Marta Action Repertoire (SMART) Summary
Cancer progress(1) Our first today is from the indefatigable Nature Briefing
The benefits of vaccinating young women against human papillomavirus (HPV), which can cause cancers of the genitals, head and neck, have been known for at least a decade. Data from the United States published last month now reveal the positive impact of vaccinating men against the virus4.
Researchers compared the rates of cancer among 510,000 boys and men aged between 9 and 26 years old who were vaccinated against HPV, and another 510,000 who were unvaccinated. They found that vaccination was linked to a 46% reduction in the risk of developing cancers of the oesophagus, head, neck, penis and anal tissue. The HPV vaccine is “an absolute winner” for cancer prevention, says Jarad Martin, a radiation oncologist at private health-care provider GenesisCare in Newcastle, Australia.
Cancer Progress (2) From the Mail, which is surprisingly good on things like science and medicine, so we’ll quote them verbatim:
“Tens of thousands of patients could benefit from a new jab on the NHS which ‘rapidly’ treats more than a dozen cancers in just 60 seconds……” an injectable form of immunotherapy called pembrolizumab….effective for 14 different types of cancer”
A few months ago,(LSS 13 1 26) we published a rather plaintive blog in which we wondered if it were possible for some people to get recompense from Oil companies for damage that may have been caused by global warming. Now Alexander Hurst of the Guardian goes much, much further, as you will see if you read this article
Spanish warning from 1976 Only a few months after its birth, prestigious Spanish Newspaper EL PAÍS was already warning of impending climate disaster, in the shape of an article by Alfonso García Pérez.
Few of us have not met someone who is suffering from Multiple Sclerosis, that terrible wasting disease wherein the immune system seems to turn on its own body, especially in the fatty sheaths around the neurons. Leading to a progressive deterioration in mobility before confining victims finally to a wheelchair-or even worse. The experience for families and victims was extra-bad because for many years the cause seemed unknown, making hope of any cure quite unlikely. Michael Marshall of the New Scientist has been covering this story most assiduously. And so we are pleased to showcase it, because it celebrates achievements in two our our favourite fields-big data and molecular biology-and the benefits which accrue when scientists from both work together.
We urge you to read Michael’s article either by buying the hard copy mag (there’s tons else to read inside it) or paywalling past the link below [1] Suffice it to say:#1The molecular evidence that the Epstein Barr virus (which can cause glandular fever) is involved. #2 That this has a strong effect on both B cells and T cells in the immune system, which ,when they go rogue, are essentially responsible for the terrible lesions of MS #3 That not all hosts of Epstein Barr virus go on to develop MS, because the chances of that depends on certain genetic propensities and variants and, best of all #4 the above and more, which we report so glibly, has been elucidated by the use of huge data studies : 10 million people in one, 617, 186 in another, even 471 000 B cells in another-how’s that for numbers, folks?-which were only possible because: #5 places like the UK and USA have worked to build big collaborative things the the UK Biobank and All of us. Well some of the people in those countries have anyway.
All of which leads us to few reflections, some of which will not be uncongenial to regular readers. Firstly, it seems a pretty good idea to spend money on science, especially basic research, instead of cutting it. Secondly scientists these days work best in large teams whose members come from all sorts of backgrounds and this is especially true when you throw multidisciplinarygroups of them together. And that this also seems to be true of football teams: how far would Arsenal FC. for example, have enjoyed their current success if they had insisted on retaining a staff entirely composed of plucky British lads? [2] The implications in turn for visa systems, cultural openness and plain common sense are clear in turn.
Learning, Science and Society 