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At LSS, we’ve always been good Keynesians, which means we don’t think that the State is always beastly and horrible, nor that government spending is always an evil sin. In time of downturn, Keynesians believe that government spending can be used to reflate the economy-with the proviso that it is paid back at some point. Keynesians are not socialists.

Keynesians boasted that their policy gave the world its longest period of growth and stability in the period 1945-1975. Factories hummed; markets of all sorts grew; living standards rose; inequality was mediated. Yet there was always a valid criticism, made by free marketeers, of whom Mrs Margaret Thatcher was the representative. Their key point was- If your factory is idle, is it because no one wants to buy the things which you make? In which case government stimulus of the economy won’t really help, it’s just a drug to keep over paid workers making shoddy, overpriced goods that no one wants. Think British Leyland. The result is ballooning government deficits, dodgy balance of trade numbers and inflation. People moving around doing things is not the same as a healthy economy.

Since March, Rishi Sunak has basically followed the Keynesian playbook splashing the cash on numerous schemes, including the famous “eat out to help out” Up to a point it has worked, as the economy seems to be growing again. Yet at this point, the Devil whispers in our ear, as he often does “What is the long term point of borrowing all that money only to blow it in the local pub? Shouldn’t we have spent the money on infrastructure, like the old-style Keynesians of the nineteen thirties did?

It is a telling point that the British Aviation industry is screaming for help, whereas the Germans have coolly extended help to theirs, ensuring the long term survival of a job creating industry. Britain blew North Sea Oil-will it make the same mistake again?

Larry Elliott, a writer who is at once erudite and succinct, covers all these issues and potentialities in his excellent Guardian piece What Now For Britain’s Economy. We say two cheers for Mr Sunak-but a lot of careful thinking needs to be done.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/03/britain-economy-coronavirus-decline

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54004169

#larryelliott #jmkeynes #margaretthatcher #eatouttohelpout #furlough #britisheconomy #rishisunak

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Racists, racialists, ethno-nationalists and whatever they want to call themselves of all colours can stop now; they’re wasting their time. Because quite soon a new race will be rising among us whose differences and potentialities will be so profound that our own petty differences will be small indeed. This race will be a fusion of human tissue and AI made possible by a breakthrough in materials science described by Anthony Cuthbertson in the Independent.*

Up to now, attempts to produce stable interfaces between human neural tissue and AI systems depended on the use of metals such as gold. The problem is that these produce scarring in the human tissue, leading to profound interferences in data transfer.. Now a new material called Pedot developed by Dr David Martin and his team at the University of Delaware, seems to provide the missing link which will allow a stable interface. And it can’t come a moment too soon. Experts like Elon Musk believe we have at most five years before the capability of the human brain is overtaken by AI computers. Unless we find a way to incorporate this power into ourselves, we will be history.

Imagine creatures who no longer need spend ten years learning a language; they simply download it and several others into their neural circuits. Now imagine the same process for all skills sets from cookery to astrophysics. Will they really have ancestors whom they can call a race? Will they care?

We thank Mr Peter Seymour of Hertfordshire for the link to this article; he has been bringing new things to our attention for more than fifty years.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/artificial-intelligence-brain-computer-cyborg-elon-musk-neuralink-a9673261.

#artificialintelligence #racism #ethnonationalism #cyborg #humanmachineinterface

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As you pass through our words, gentle reader, the more successful candidates for a Covid-19 vaccine will be moving to stage three trials. It’s likely that one of them should be in production by spring next year. Even problems like reinfection and declining immune response can be dealt with by booster programmes. However, if you think that after that “everything’s gonna be alright“, to quote the words of numerous songwriters, think again.

Because the potential plague caused by an antibiotic resistant superbacteria just haven’t gone away, as Daniel Mediavilla makes clear in his latest piece for El Pais.* You can read Daniel’s article below, we won’t over- reprise it here. How quickly the problem spreads in a globalised world can be seen from one gloomy fact. In 2008 doctors in New Delhi discovered that a protein which conveys antibiotic resistance had evolved in their hospitals. By 2013 it had spread to 100 countries, even as far as the remote Svalbad archipelago. It’s that quick.

We at LSS still marvel in awe at the pettiness of current concerns, parochialisms, and the downright denial of evidence and the scientific method. The erection of financial systems which fetishise short-term profit above all else, so of course we won’t develop new antibiotics, because there’s no money in it. The pay off for this mindset is out there, waiting.

English readers will need their translators at the ready:

https://elpais.com/ciencia/2020-08-29/las-bacterias-superresistentes-el-otro-gran-problema-de-salud-global-frente-al-que-tambien-fuimos-advertidos.html

if you want to join a charity which is trying to parry the threat, try

Homepage with ASK

#antibiotic resistance #superbug #danielmediavilla

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Whisper it if you dare, but we may be witnessing a most profound shift in the geopolitical balance of power. If the authors John Micklethwait and Adrian Woolridge (The Wake Up Call) are correct then 2020 may be marked by future historians when power passed from the elderly white men who have run the globe for so long to other peoples, who turned out to be better organised and more realistic.

Today Micklethwait presents a summary of his work in an article for the Daily Mail, which we link below.* The reasons the article resonates with us at LSS are: firstly it’s in the Mail, normally a staunch friend to say the least of Tory Governments. Yet the article flays Cummings and Johnson alive. When that happens, you know objectivity has trumped partisanship. Secondly, that it coincides with several trends that have been worrying us for years. The endless denigration of all things public, and the exaltation of private luxury, have long seemed a source of collective weakness to us here. The authors cite Britain as their prime case: it does indeed seem to have performed relatively badly. But as the former leading western nation for so long, there is a very strong case to answer. Thirdly, the endless parade of facts which the authors deploy-that’s when you know you’ve hit a good one. Over to you-please?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8675517/How-West-lost-JOHN-MICKLETHWAIT-reveals-coronavirus-making

#declineof west #riseofchina #wakeupcall #coronavirus

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The recent controversies about singing Land of Hope and Glory at the Proms and various posts on things like Facebook have set us at LSS thinking-how can you tell a patriot, someone who truly loves their country, from a fake one? We are filled with admiration for true patriots, those who sacrificed all in war for their community or nation, and endured hardships which we frankly doubt that we could support. We understand why genuine patriots love their flags and want to proclaim their faith in a community which is far bigger than themselves or their families. Just about every nation and religion does it, and so it seems pretty close to human nature to us.

That said, anyone who has seriously got over adolescence will have encountered another type; the tub thumper and flag waver: the ones whose mask of patriotism conceals their own agenda, for whom other people’s sacrifice is a very useful thing indeed. You may need to be able to tell one from the other before you get into a trench with them: otherwise you might find yourself facing an enemy alone, never a good place to be.

We have always found that if people love something, be it a car, a house or a community, they will put money into it. If you love your country, you will be pleased to help pay for things like schools, armed forces, roads, welfare systems and clean air, because they benefit all members of your community. Example: History shows that a good education system is a sure bastion of defence, if only because you get to produce the scientists and technologists who can make the best kit for your armed forces.

There is always room for a healthy argument about the correct level of tax. But flags and badges are cheap, anyone can wave them. A nation is like a house- you have to pay for its upkeep. Surely true patriots are more than happy to pay their share?

#patriotism #taxes #nationalism

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Yesterday (LSS 23 8 2020) we wrote of having discovered kindred sprits at the CNN news programme New Day Weekend. Well today, thanks to the inimitable Mr Peter Seymour of Hertfordshire, we have been shown another set of them.. A cluster so awesome, and so exactly trying to achieve what we here are attempting, only much much better, that we almost decided to pack up and shut down, and hand you over to these people lock, stock and barrel, as they say in the pub trade.

Mr Seymour drew our attention to a Wired article describing the solution to the Kellner conjecture, which has been finally solved by throwing massive computing power at it. You can read the piece here.

https://www.wired.com/story/a-fleet-of-computers-helps-settle-a-90-year-old-math-problem/

The point about mathematical conjectures is that they are usually one hundred years ahead of their time. The abstruse conjectures of eighteenth and nineteenth century mathematicians became the stock in trade techniques of engineers and biologists of the twentieth, and so it will go. The real point is that mathematicians have to think, really think, in well defined, exclusive categories. It is this thinking that is so rare in the modern world. There is nowhere so depressing and frightening as the comments section of newspapers, where people hurl out their unexamined emotions, masquerading as opinions, in baroque ecstasies of hate and aggression. Nowhere so devoid of the basic principles of logic, reason and evidence.

Yet Mr Seymour’s tip led us, via Wired, to a site of such obvious intellectual rigour that we, and you, should be eternally grateful to him for stumbling onto it. They are called the Simons Foundation and they publish a journal called Quanta Magazine. What struck us at once was the care and hard work that went into every piece, not just the writer but the researchers they’re reporting on. They think about every word. Compare that with the offerings of tabloid newspapers and the vapourings that appear underneath in” Comments.”

https://www.simonsfoundation.org/leadership

https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematics/

#logic #reason #logicalerrors #emotionalreasoning

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We at LSS are not in the business of advertising. But we do look for kindred spirits across the world. People who not only interested in Science, Current Affairs Political Economy and social progress, but who try to deal with these matters in an adult, evidence- based way. So we surf the media of the world, bringing you thoughts from El Pais in Spain, the Daily Mail in England, and now from The USA, CNN. Just Because these are private companies doesn’t make it plugging. Eclectic is our name, and we cherrypick from everywhere.

What we liked on CNN was the perspective of the show New Day Weekend. A thoughtful mix of politics, news, issues and polemics from an American perspective, which makes such a change from our myopic Anglocentric weltenschauung! We thought American news was all violent polemic and deep bias, but here is a channel at once lively, but balanced and fair. The genial anchors are Victor Blackwell and Christi Paul, but we were surprised to learn that the Executive Producer is Fellow-Brit Adam Charlton. Would you adam-and eve it? Is he any relative of football legend Sir Bobby Charlton? Charlton Athletic? Whoever he is, may his team of investigators long continue!

https://edition.cnn.com/specials/new-day-weekend

https://edition.cnn.com/profiles/adam-charlton-profile

#cnn #newdayweekend #currentaffairs #atlanta

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We at LSS are sometimes depressed by a seeming world- wide trend away from democracy and towards monarchy. Of the world’s three superpowers, Russia, China and The United States, two are already ruled by persons who are monarchs in all but name, and the United States may well go the same way if President Trump is re-elected in November. We suspect that the reasons lie deep in issues such as demographic change, economic inequality and ecological collapse: the storms of emotion unleashed are beyond the power of anyone but autocrats to contain.

However, if democracy is to try to survive, it must address many problems. In the United Kingdom these include deep ethnic and tribal divisions, a bitter unresolved class war, the concentration of media ownership in a few, usually foreign owned hands, and a deep cynicism about the possibilities of reform. Our regular correspondent, the tireless Mr Peter Seymour of Hertfordshire, has always believed that a more efficient system for voting than than First Past the Post must be devised. Here he asks to consider a well-written article from The Independent where radical campaigner Peter Tatchell calls for the UK to adopt a Proportionl Representation system for voting in General Elections.

Confession: we at LSS have always been FPTP guys; it seems as English as Walpole, fine roasts and a good glass of claret. However, the case against is here put with such eloquence that we urge you to read it.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/boris-johnson-pandemic-coronavirus-election-system-fptp-tatchell-a9684791.

#proportionalrepresentation #firstpastthe post #democracy #monarchy #petertatchell

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We have always been interested in the link between stress and people developing cancers, auto-immune and other types of diseases. We realise, gentle readers that this is a tricky, complex area. That stress, however you define it, can come from many places. That there are all kinds of people like immunologists, geneticists, psychologists and many others with far more learning than we at LSS possess. All we can say is: we think it is a very, very live subject, so we think it will get bigger in the months and years ahead. And so we are going to run a series of pieces where we look at the matter from different angles. Always we hope with a critical mind and the help of our dear readers and followers in all continents.

Who better to start us off than our old friend Gaynor Lynch of London, whose short piece below has so many talking points that we don’t know where to begin. So here is the piece, and then some key questions.

Gaynor: Stress and cancer. Stress has been recognised by many immunologists as having a significant factor in the onset and progress of autoimmune diseases. The etiology of autoimmune diseases is in many cases is poorly understood but is recognised to be multifactorial: genetic, environmental, hormonal, stress, and immunological. I have a very rare autoimmune disorder. It started when I was in my early teens (hormones) but was not diagnosed until I was an adult when I had a significant breakdown in my health which was triggered by a traumatic event (stress).
Cortisol, the stress hormone, plays havoc with your body. It has a lot of negative impacts including heart disease, increased blood pressure, digestive system problems and very significantly supresses the manufacture of lymphocytes which play a key role in the immune system. They detect, infiltrate and destroy abnormal cells, viruses and bacteria. If your immune system is compromised you may be at risk of developing cancers It doesn’t cause the cancer but effects the bodies ability to detect and kill abnormal cells which then reproduce and lead to a cancer. So stress may not be a direct causal factor of cancer but the stress hormone cortisol definitely impacts on the autoimmune systems ability to deal with abnormal cells.

1 etiology of autoimmune diseases is in many cases is poorly understood Never was a truer statement made! We have known about things like MS for over fifty years. And despite the heroic efforts of a few charities and researchers, our understanding is weak. When you consider what we have been able to do with things like DNA and space science, by comparison

2 Cortisol…..significantly supresses the manufacture of lymphocytes which play a key role in the immune system. We are starting to come across this in our own humble investigations. Why does that worry us?

3 Because: cortisol definitely impacts on the autoimmune systems ability to deal with abnormal cells.

And, as Gaynor points out, you can see where that is going. But is it just cancer?

Obviously, different people respond differently to stress. But as working ours go up (if you have a job) and salaries stagnate, as markets and currencies fluctuate wildly, it looks like we’re all in for more of it, like it or not. So what do you think? Do you know someone who has “worked themselves to death!”, as they say? Or someone who drinks to beat the stress, which only ends up by killing them indirectly? Come on, LSS folk, let’s hear your tales!

#stress #cancer #autoimmunedisease #worklifebalance #trauma

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Heard the one about the man with a long term happy marriage and successful career who left his wife for the office harpy? Eight years later he was dead, ravaged by chronic illness-but why? Was it guilt at what he’d done, gnawing away at his immune system? Or the one who ran into financial difficulties who then worked his fingers to the bone in high stress jobs to save his wife and family, and succeeded-only to be stricken by cancer? That’s as sad as it gets. Or even the fool who loses his business, the family home and his children’s future, who then develops a wasting disease like Multiple Sclerosis-again, is it guilt, or what? We all know stories like this, and doubtless many of you can tell others.

So what is the link between stress, cancer and other illnesses? We think there is a lot of stress coming to a lot of people in the next few months and years, largely due to the coronavirus crisis in the economy. So-can it kill you? If so how? What are its causes, and are some people more vulnerable to stress than others? Is it in our genes, or our life experiences? Or are you just living too close to a long forgotten lump of lead? Over the next few weeks we shall be returning to this theme, looking at learned articles and trying to find the best scientific answers to the questions above. But above all, we want YOU, gentle readers to help. What are your experiences, anecdotes and discoveries? Who do you trust to give the best answers? Contact us please, and let’s make this a joint enterprise.

To get you started we have reproduced the thoughts of Cancer Research UK, a marvellous body, to whom we have been regularly contributing since 2003. You should do likewise. And, although we respect their considered thoughts (see link) we can’t help wandering that, even if they are right in general terms, is something else going on at a more subtle level?

https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-cancer/cancer-controversies/can-stress-cause-cancer

#stress #illness #cancer #genes #environment #trauma