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Remember the novel Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley? You have to be pretty bright to create a concept that’s selling centuries later. Well, oddly enough her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), may have been even brighter. If you want to know more about her colourful life look at the Wiki link below.* Suffice to say she was a pioneering and accomplished writer, best known today for her Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792). She did one for men too. After a madcap early life as a single mother dodging the guillotine in the French Revolution, she settled down and found true happiness when she married the philosopher William Godwin, father of her second daughter, Mary.

Happy ever after? Afraid not. As Mary the elder gave birth, her placenta ruptured and septicaemia (sepsis) soon set in. There were no antibiotics in those days, and she died. It was a fairly common fate for women in the eighteenth century, always had been, and always would be, until the advent of modern antibiotics. Men can get it too, so we include a list of the more or less famous who have gone this painful and unpleasant way.*

Sepsis* is what happens when you get an infection, and your immune system overreacts, causing an inflammation throughout the body. Obviously the best way to avoid it is not to get the infection, But if you do, try not to be: over 75; under 1; diabetic; have a weak immune system; get pneumonia, an abdominal infection or live in a world without effective antibiotics or vaccines. These last two are the biggest risk factors, so next time someone tries to spiel you with some anti vaccine propaganda, just remind them of Mary Wollstonecraft. As for antibiotics, there is a real danger they won’t be with us much longer, and the fate awaiting millions of mothers is grim.

Howver, someone is really trying to help. That someone is Professor Garner and the Charity Antibiotics Research UK http://www.antibioticresearch.org.uk. We beg you to visit their site, and donate if you can. Women around the world will thank you for it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wollstonecraft

https://www.ranker.com/list/famous-people-who-died-of-sepsis/reference

What is Sepsis

https://www.bing.com/search?q=antibiotics+research+uk&form=ANNTH1&refig=c656529095bc43c9a4a4cff31f02ef28&s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sepsis

#marywollstonecraft #rightsofwomen #antibioticresearchuk #vaccines #childbith

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Champagne quiz

1 How many bottles of champagne were shipped in 2018?

A 203 million   B 302 million   C 906 million    D 23 million

 B 302 million

2 Theobald II was the brother of which English King?

A Henry B William C Stephen D Richard

C Stephen

3 What are the ingredients of a Cheshire Cat?

Brandy, Sweet vermouth, Champagne, ice, orange juice

4 What does CM Mean?

Cooperative de manipulation

5 How many Jeroboams is one Melchizidek?

Ten

6 Pick the odd one out

Pinot Grigio   Pinot Noir    White Chardonnay    Pinot Meunier

Pinot grigio-not used in champagne

7 According to Etymologists, the name “champagne” is related to which Italian region?

Campania

8 What was the vintage year and brand of Champagne used at the wedding of Price Charles and Lady Diana Spencer?

Dom Perignon 1961

9 What is the connection between the popular musical singing group Queen and Formula 1 racing?

Moet et Chandon   Lyrics to Killer Queen and used as prize for winner

10 Which of the following is not used in a traditional champagne cocktail?

A Brandy B Sugar Syrup C Angostura Bitters   D Sugar lump

B Sugar syrup

#cocktails #champagne

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Something for you to do with Friday Night Cocktails. Answers tomorrow.

1 How many bottles of champagne were shipped in 2018?

A 203 million   B 302 million   C 906 million    D 23 million

2 Theobald II was the brother of which English King?

A Henry B William C Stephen D Richard

3 What are the ingredients of a Cheshire Cat?

4 What does CM Mean?

5 How many Jeroboams is one Melchizidek?

6 Pick the odd one out

Pinot Grigio   Pinot Noir    White Chardonnay    Pinot Meunier

7 According to Etymologists, the name “champagne” is related to which Italian region?

8 What was the vintage year and brand of Champagne used at the wedding of Price Charles and Lady Diana Spencer?

9 What is the connection between the popular musical singing group Queen and Formula 1 racing?

10 Which of the following is not used in a traditional champagne cocktail?

A Brandy   B Sugar Syrup    C Angostura Bitters   D Sugar lump

#champagne #cocktails

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Something for you to do with Friday night cocktails.

1 How many bottles of champagne were shipped in 2018?

A 203 million   B 302 million   C 906 million    D 23 million

2 Theobald II was the brother of which English King?

A Henry B William C Stephen D Richard

3 What are the ingredients of a Cheshire Cat?

4 What does CM Mean?

5 How many Jeroboams is one Melchizidek?

6 Pick the odd one out

Pinot Grigio   Pinot Noir    White Chardonnay    Pinot Meunier

7 According to Etymologists, the name “champagne” is related to which Italian region?

8 What was the vintage year and brand of Champagne used at the wedding of Price Charles and Lady Diana Spencer?

9 What is the connection between the popular musical singing group Queen and Formula 1 racing?

10 Which of the following is not used in a traditional champagne cocktail?

A Brandy   B Sugar Syrup    C Angostura Bitters   D Sugar lump

answers tomorrow

#champagne #cocktails #fridaynight

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Don’t say it out loud, but the current wave of racial disputes sweeping through western societies is missing the point. Of course people feel their identities deeply, and want justice for themselves (not others, of course), but that is exactly the problem.

Anyone who did a little police or forensic work back in the last century will have been familiar with the anonymous letter rant. Pages of hate-filled invective defending the imagined superiority of one racial group over another, and why mixing with them would lead to degeneration. One anxiety was the sickle cell gene, which evolved in some west African populations as a defence against malaria. We wonder what our anonymous correspondents would say now to the news that CRISPR technology is developing so fast that it can wash away sickle cell problems with the same ease that penicillin washed away tuberculosis. (well, until now!)

Nature Briefings has a delightful story of how a brave lady called Victoria Gray has become the first successful recipient of a CRISPR treatment for sickle cell. This link is packed with good scientists and companies, too numerous to name here. The point is they all think hard, unlike haters. Here are the precis and the links:

As the one year anniversary of her receiving a ground-breaking treatment for sickle-cell disease approaches, it’s good news for Victoria Gray — the first person in the United States to undergo CRISPR gene therapy to treat a genetic disorder. It’s too soon for scientists to reach firm conclusions about the long-term safety and effectiveness of the approach. But for Gray, life is very different from the severe pain attacks and frequent blood transfusions she experienced before. “It’s hard to put into words the joy that I feel — being grateful for a change this big. It’s been amazing,” said Gray.NPR | 7 min read or 6 min listen
Read more: Gene therapy is facing its biggest challenge yet: sickle-cell disease (Nature | 13 min read, from December)

So if CRISPR can modify our genes, what price racial identity in the twenty first century? Except maybe this. One day, people will colonise Mars and the Moon, Both bodies have very different gravitational fields, making it hard for them to return to earth. Humans being what they are, they will start breeding among themselves. And that could very quickly produce new races,maybe even new species.

Species which will regard all the races of earth as amazingly similar. And hostile.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR

#crispr #sicklecell #npr #davidaltshuler #vertexpharmaceuticals #crisprtherapeutics

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It is easy to laugh at nostalgia addicts, who bury themselves in the past because the present is bewildering and the future fearsome. Well, we think they are absolutely right. Because coming down the tracks is a piece of future so awesome that it puts the invention of bronze tools on about the same level of significance as the June 1973 edition of Smash Hits. It’s called quantum computing and it could give us computing abilities millions of times faster than today’s supercomputers.

We assume most of you will know the basics. It’s all based on everyday run of the mill quantum mechanical phenomena like superposition and entanglement, which will let us solve those tricky little problems like integer factorization and RSA encryption. Alright, we haven’t got a clue either, so here’s a link to a splendid Wikipedia article which does*

Writing in El Pais (attention all Brits, Catalans, Basques and Galicians- you’ll need your translator) Patricia Fernandez de Lis* describes how the heat is on. In Santa Barbara, Google have actually got one to work, if only foe three minutes and twenty seconds. But hey, wasn’t that longer than the Wright brothers? While over in New York, IBM are hard at it too. Governments are also being busy bees-the usual suspects are China, the USA and the EU via CERN. So we get faster downloads of your favourite movies like Footloose and Ice Age XXVI. What’s not to like?

Well, up to now, we, that is to say Homo sapiens, have been the cleverest thing on the planet. We come out top on IQ tests, not those smelly chimps and cuddly killer whales. Remember the one about the stupid farmer, the sack of grain and the goose, or something? No parrot could solve that! And what about adding the next three negative integers in a fibonnacci sequence- can you see an eagle handling that? No we’re Homo sapiens, buddy, the wise ones. Look at us, and admire. Please?

In his rather readable book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century *Israeli futurologist Yural Noah Harari gives many pages to his disquiet about the arrival of artificial intelligence. It’s quicker than us. It knows more. It learns better. Governments can use it to spy on you in the toilet. Combine that with the new superpower of quantum computing, and we could start to look very past it indeed.

Anyone for a return to nostalgia?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing

https://elpais.com/elpais/2020/06/16/eps/1592305195_758219.html

Yual Noah Harari 21 Lessons for the 21st Century Vintage

https://www.bing.com/search?q=song+the+heat+is+on&qs=n&form=QBRE&sp=-1&ghc=1&pq=song+the+heat+is+on

#quantumcomputing #artificialintelligence #nostalgia #encryption

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We at LSS have always suffered from mental collapse when confronted with Immunology. The proliferation of entities, processes and concepts is just sheer too much for us. All those different T cells, lymphocytes, feedback loops, and molecules! Then one thing starts if something else doesn’t, but doesn’t if a third one infects you on a Wednesday with an R in the month……..

But one person not so fazed is Sophie Goodchild of the Mail.* She has combed through an enormous quantity of experts and journals, including the formidable Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology *to ask the question “are people with allergies less likely to get a Covid-19 infection? And if so why?” There’s a lot of fascinating stuff here, so we will get out of Sophie’s way, inviting you to the link. However, we would note that the key seems to be in the number of ACE2 receptors on the membranes in the lung cells of allergy sufferers. But please read it for your selves.

Meanwhile, an extra ration of tuna for our favourite pet on Saturday night, with thanks?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8448447/Could-cat-allergy-save-severe-case-Covid-19.html

https://www.jacionline.org/

#sophiegoodchild #allergy #cat #covid19 #coronavirus #ace2

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In our last blog, we discussed how many people are drawn to ethnic tribalism because it offers many substantial rewards to them in the here and now. And that to override and dismiss these feelings can lead to disastrous consequences, as the Labour Party found out. But the phenomenon is not unique to the UK. Parties of the left are failing to engage across the whole world. Where are the mighty French Socialists and German SPD now? Where the powerful Democratic Party and Trades Unions that once stood behind Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman? We at LSS believe that tribalism will have fatal long term consequences in a nuclear-armed world. To ask people to abandon it there must be a better offer. We believe that is Justice: but to explain it we must beg your forgiveness for diving into the past; but that was where we were educated.

In his masterly History Of Medieval Europe Professor Davis described how the Romans’ success in uniting the Mediterranean Basin into a single economic unit had produced centuries of peace and prosperity. To do it, they distinguished between Custom, which was local, and Law, which being linked to reason and justice, was universal . Once law was universal, trade and learning could be practiced over larger and larger areas. No one can deny modern examples; the various states of the USA such as Virginia or Rhode Island have prospered far more by pooling their sovereignty than if they had remained independent polities, as have the nations of Europe or the different states of India. The trouble for the Romans came when the barbarian tribes intruded into this empire because of

..the determination of the barbarian invaders to prefer the law of their ancestors to the law of reason, since that preference implied the superiority of one’s own race over loyalty to the civilised world

A contemporary, St Augustine, realised the disastrousness of this (we transcribe Davis’ quotes)

Set aside Justice, and what are kingdoms but great bands of brigands? And what are brigands’ bands but little kingdoms? The underlings are directed by the same commander, they swear a confederacy, and the takings are shared out by law among them.

Augustine cited the case of Alexander the Great, who captured a small time pirate and demanded “why do you plague the seas-how dare you?”

To which the pirate replied ” Because I do it with one little ship, I am called a pirate. But you do it with a whole navy, so they call you Emperor. How dare you?

It is clear that states can be based on ethnic tribalism. But they can never be Just. Once Justice is rejected, then corruption and favouritism become endemic. The essential question asked of every new thing is not “Is this Just?”, or “Is this reasonable?”, but rather: “Does this shore up the defences of our society?” The enemies of that society are everywhere, usually in league with Foreign Devils. Universities become an international joke. The arts shrivel into sterile conformity. Scientific research becomes distorted and eventually fails. The list of artists and scientists banned by the Nazis was very long. But the principles of Relativity are not Jewish, as there are no Jews in other Galaxies. Eventually the presence of other gangs and Foreign Devils becomes unendurable, and war breaks out. This time with chemical, biological and nuclear consequences.

If we cite the ancient example of the Romans, it is because their idea worked, for a while. And we have tried to show limited examples of more modern successes. The counter offer to the tribe must be a shared prosperity. That working together alone will solve the common problems such as global warming and antibiotic resistance. And that justice is the reasoned set of rules which will let that happen.

St Augustine’s vision of the future was “The City of God” Perhaps that is a little dated.

But future of radiant, prosperous communities is graspable, perhaps not only on Earth. Think then of Justice as an insurance policy as well; and it will sell.

RH Davis A History of Medieval Europe Longman

#justice #ethnictribalism #staugustine #USA #EU

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The report on the recent defeat of the Labour Party in the recent general election makes melancholy reading for “progressives” in this country.* A whole tradition, centuries old, of people who who have called themselves variously Whigs, Liberals, Socialists, Social Democrats, Methodists, and Trades Unionists has been effectively closed off, perhaps for ever, as the report makes clear. The reasons for the defeat are twofold. Firstly the inept leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and his clique. About whom we find the report’s language to be surprisingly mild and forgiving. It is hard to confine our opinion of this man within the bounds of decent language, so we will conclude by saying that personal feelings of moral righteousness are a poor substitute for thought and reason, and leave it at that.

The truly worrying trend is the way that Labour has ceased to speak to, and for, the mass of older, less educated but essentially decent people who were once its bedrock. It is now a party of the young, the educated and the city dweller. Admirable as they are, they are never going to be enough to win any election, or provide the long support for a government, as for example the Trades Unions did for Clement Attlee.

The Left and progressives have always held that economic causes, and their class concomitants, were the organising principles of society. The Right has always had a different view; that beyond the immediate overwhelming drives of food and sex, it is ethnic tribalism that is the real organising principle of human groups. This view is rigorously explored by Amy Chua in works such as Political Tribes, *and Eric Kaufman in Whiteshift.* If that alone does not make it worthy of serious examination, then its current success in country after country (USA, UK, Hungary, Poland, Russia, India) should at least tell objective thinkers that something is happening that resonates with people.

Societies based on ethnic tribalism are a response to feelings of profound insecurities about fast economic and social change.* The feelings behind them are found in all ethnic groups and races around the world. Societies which take this course can be stable for decades (Northern Ireland, Nationalist South Africa). Often they can only be overthrown by powerful enemies or sustained insurrections (Nazi Germany, Rhodesia). Internally they can provide a fair level of emotional order and even some limited freedoms for the in-group. Northern Ireland and South Africa always had Parliaments and elections, as did the southern states of the USA. It is arguable that the formation of strong stable in groups may have had powerful evolutionary advantages for their members, as a defence against enemies and the spread of contagious disease. Above all it provided a sense of identity. To dismiss any of the above, with a condescending Marxist smear of “false consciousness” would be folly indeed.

And that is essentially what Labour has done. In its rush to accommodate every possible notion of identity in a shifting. cosmopolitan urban population, it disastrously neglected the same feelings among those who lived slower lives in town and field. Immigration is a purely capitalist phenomenon, brokering the supply of labour to demand. For a party that has always been suspicious of unregulated markets, it was an obvious target to call out for strong regulation and control. The principle of universalist solidarity is very admirable. It is also hard to communicate. And the other side controlled the media.

In any cultural war the Right will have many advantages. The Left can only say “vote for us, give up your current privilege, and things should get much, much better for everyone(but we can’t guarantee it)* To which the right can point to symbols of order, continuity and identity which are dear to many hearts. And so it has always been, because groups that do it this way thrive and prosper.

Then would it be better to surrender to the inevitable, to accept that ethnic groups are our destiny, and retreat into flag waving and parades, while awaiting the inevitable, probably final, war? Is there any alternative? In the next piece we hope to show that there may be.

Click to access Labour%20Together%202019%20Election%20Review.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_by_country

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/8/18250087/the-reactionary-mind-trump-conservatism-corey-robin

Ami Chua Political Tribes Bloomsbury

Eric Kaufman Whiteshift Penguin Books

#ethnictribalism #labour #amichua #erickaufman #Left #Right

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Our weekly round up of news that didn’t have time to go in the blog

Our first story comes with thanks to our inimitable Hertfordshire correspondent, Mr Peter Seymour. It is a real tale of moral courage. Older readers will recall the first anti- racist protest at the 1968 Mexico Olympics, when John Carlos and Tommie Smith demonstrated from the winners’ podium. Well, there was a third, white, man who insisted on joining them, Peter Norman of Australia. It was a brave decision, and one that was to cost him dear. Are we really prisoners of our ethnic identities, doomed to hate and fight for all time? Or can the courage of people like Norman change the world? Read below:

https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/the-white-man-in-that-photo/?fbclid=IwAR10Md8zR8Q0G_Zyf

Perhaps ethnic tribalism once had a selective advantage, but we doubt that it does today, if global warming is to be avoided. Here, a gloomy summary from Nature Briefings looks at how emissions are bouncing back. Never have we needed the old Canned Heat song Let’s work together so badly!

Emissions surge back to bad old days

In early April, the international response to the coronavirus pandemic slashed daily global carbon emissions from fossil fuels by roughly 17%. Now emissions are rebounding, with China almost back to pre-pandemic levels. The European Union is leading the way to a green recovery with a proposed US$826-billion recovery package aimed at expanding renewable-power generation, retrofitting old buildings and investing in cleaner fuels. Experts estimate that 2020’s global emissions will be down around 5% compared with last year’s — the biggest drop since the Second World War, but still not nearly enough.The New York Times | 5 min read
Read more: How the coronavirus pandemic slashed carbon emissions — in five graphs (Nature, from May)
Reference: Nature Climate Change paper & latest update to the supplementary data

All along the Eastern edge of Europe, democracy seems to be fading. which will gladden the heart of a Certain Person a bit further east. Our indefatigable Buckinghamshire correspondent, Mr Gary Herbert cites this example from the excellent Open Democracy Website, about the sinister events in Bulgaria.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/how-dismantle-democracy-case-bulgaria/

It is so easy to be misled by numbers. Look at this quote from Nature Briefings “Mathematical Pitfall plagues antibody tests”

Even if a screening test is very accurate, if it is not 100% perfect then it will deliver some false positives and some false negatives. And the lower the infection rate, the more likely it is that a positive result is wrong. An imperfect antibody test for COVID-19, for example, could leave a lot of people thinking that they are possibly immune to the disease, when they have never even had it. Scientific American explains, with a very handy graphic, how this mind-bending fact arises.Scientific American | 3 min read

We read it, gentle readers, and it is a tour de force of how to present scientific concepts in an easy to understand way. Science teachers, take note!

And finally…our heartwarming animal story of the week concerns that marvellous organisation the WWF (the animals, not the wrestlers) and their efforts research and protect the beautiful snow leopards of the mountains of Asia. Remember what will happen to us all if those glaciers melt. How many gin and tonics will be needed to catch all that ice?

https://www.wwf.org.uk/learn/wildlife/snow-leopards

#opendemocracy #bulgaria #peternorman #wwf #snowleopard #covid19 #globalwarming