• 

• 

• 

Attentive readers of this blog will recall us searching for the sources of the following quote on the purpose of education , which we here reproduce in full:

[to turn out young men] who would be acceptable at a dance and invaluable in a shipwreck

The originator was the first Headmaster of Stowe School, JF Roxburgh

We thank Mr Peter Seymour of Hertfordshire, who sourced it for us in Prospect magazine

At this point, we feel that our overseas readers may require a little explanation as to what Stowe School is. The Educational system in England is divided into two. There are State Schools, which attended by 93.5% of the population. Then there are Public Schools, which are attended by 6.5% of the population. Confusingly, they are also known as Private Schools and the Independent Sector. Stowe is very much in this second category.

There is a myth current among some that these Public Schools foment the development of a tiny and exclusive elite which selects itself again and again across the generations. 65% of Judges, 52% of Ministers, 44% of News columnists and 43% of cricketers come from this 6.5 per cent they say- and they go on to give many other examples. These critics go on to allege that this is somehow unfair, unusual and economically inefficient.

To which we at LSS repost: nonsense! Absolutely anyone can become a pupil at a public school and join the elite. They are open to everyone who can pay the fees.. The following figures demonstrate how easy this is.

At Stowe for example, the fees are a mere £12,697 per term. There are things like registration fees and acceptance deposits, but these are a one- off . And so a year’s education at Stowe will only set you back a mere £39 491. Of course most people have two children, so a fairer average might be £78, 982.Naturally, you will have to find things like uniforms, sports equipment and pencils on top of that, but you may well get change from £100 000 per year.

And Stowe is cheap compared to some! Take Eton, where the fees are £14,167 per term, plus estimated extras of £500-£1000 per term. David Cameron and Boris Johnson went there, so you can see it must be value for money. Or Dulwich (Nigel Farage) which will set you back £14 782 per term.

The great advantage of these schools is that they are run as private sector businesses, subject to the same market disciplines as for example Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, Ryanair or Tesco. Why they are given the same tax status as charities such as Cancer Research or the RSPCA is however a mystery which we at LSS cannot fathom.

In 2019 the UK average salary was £36 983 per annum for someone in their thirties. The median was £29 400.

https://www.stowe.co.uk/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-48745333

#stowe #publicschools #stateschools #educationalapartheid

• 

• 

• 

There’s an old Spanish poem by Jose Asuncion Silva, which in our translation goes :

Old things, sad and faded, without voice or colour// know secrets of long dead epochs// of lives which no one conserves in memory…. and which when touched and looked at by unquiet men// tell in passing anguished voices//stories unusual of past times.

Well, that’s the gist of it. It tells of someone going through an old attic and finding things which had been put down centuries before. Have you ever looked at an old coin in a museum and wondered what the Roman soldier was thinking when he dropped it-the last thought to catch on the coin before today? Even finding an old video cassette or calculator in a garage can bring back the you of another time, before you had imagined anything that is happening now.

If that’s true for us, and things lost only a few decades or centuries ago, how much harder it is to imagine the life of something that died 425 million years ago. We read in Nature Briefings of the discovery of the very first animal which walked on land in what is now Scotland. (see link) It was a bit like a millipede, although apparently it wasn’t a millipede. But read it for yourself, there are some excellent photos as well with this one.

But what happened on the day it died? Was the weather warm and sunny, or overcast with showers?What day of the week was it-a Thursday? Were this creature’s plans for the weekend permanently ruined by The Grim Reaper? If it were brought back to life today, would it resent the fact that we vertebrates have claimed all the credit for conquering the land, even though that only happened fifty million years later?

Magazines like Nature and Science and their many competitors are filled with learned accounts of fossils and finds, bits of pterosaur and bits of pottery. We must respect their tireless examinations, exhaustive detaillizations, and voluminous expositions. But sometimes take time to step back and try to imagine the lives of forgotten soldiers or things that swam in warm vanished seas.

nature summary:

An inch-long critter similar to a millipede looks to be the oldest animal known to have lived on land. Fossil imprints of Kampecaris obanensis from the island of Kerrera in Scotland have been radiometrically dated to around 425 million years ago, in the Silurian period. The arthropod probably fed on decomposing plants on a lakeside. Even earlier land animals, from the Cambrian era, are known to have existed, but only indirectly, from their tracks. CBC | 3 min read Source: Historical Biology paper

read:https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/oldest-land-animal-1.5592917?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=da1c13e10b-briefing-dy-20200601&utm_medium=em

#kampecarisobansensis #joseasuncionsilva #silurian

• 

• 

• 

It is the end of one month, and the start of a new one. We could not resist a line to say thank you to all who have read, contributed or “followed” our little blog. The following list is not inclusive, and if you are not there, then we beg you to forgive our sad oversights and poor IT skills. Also we cannot begin to include twitter and facebook lines-there are too many. So to all mentioned below, and anyone else. Thanks again.

Peter Seymour chittasakrewadi cooking without limits Gary Herbert soundeagle Lindsay Charlton ambitiousblonde Mike Mooney politics with Cw Hannesvon Eeden HLInglese alexmarkovich Steve Day calatorcuintrebarea lluisbusse shevra dest kaye ray dr bogden Jill Lee lovethe001 Martin Ottewill America on coffee wandering ambivert alanrubens and Vivek, whose idea this all was

The list is starting to grow quite large . We do not wish to sound conceited, or, as our Spanish chums might say engreido, but this will be the last time we do nominated thanks. But we will continue to push out something like this every few weeks, because we appreciate your time.

#learningscienceand society

• 

• 

• 

There’s a lively debate on both sides of the Atlantic about the decline of western nations from their former dominance, and the rise of other powers as serious rivals for the first time in centuries. This declinist anxiety is said to be behind the victories of Trump and Brexit, and many other things. Certainly, declinists have a point; western nations such as the USA and Britain are no longer the automatic role models they once were. But they were so big once- why the big decline, like old boxers going to seed?

Historians usually point that the key advantage to the western nations came with the Enlightenment in the early eighteenth century, when the culture of reason and evidence began to be exalted above all else. Science is simply the practical application of reason and evidence, and it led to crucial advances in industrial production, navigation and education that left other cultures far behind. Well, they’re not behind anymore, as fumbled responses to Covid-19 demonstrate. It feels like Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, continually asking himself: when did it all go wrong?

One strong contender has to be December 1953 at the Plaza Hotel in New York, where a meeting of the top CEOs of the tobacco industry was convened to decide their response to the terrible mess that they were in. Because it was in these years that the first scientifically researched, peer reviewed studies were appearing that showed the link between their products and lung cancer. It looked as if the game was up. Did they apologise and close down their companies? No. Decide to pay compensation? No. Go into educational publishing? No. They hired a PR firm instead. And what a PR firm all that tobacco money could buy-Hill and Knowlton, the best of the best. These are the basic steps they took, and they have formed the basis of many a commercial response to science ever since.

What follows is a summary of an academic paper so well written that it can be taken with your evening cocoa, like a thriller: Inventing Conflicts of Interest: A history of Tobacco Industry Tactics by Allan M Brandt. So please, please read it for your self on the link below.

1 Decide your overarching strategy, which was- If the culture doesn’t like your product, change the culture. So that any attempts of practical litigation or legislation to mitigate the activities of your industry are so hampered that they become negligible.

2 Appear objective and compliant; the best PR leaves no fingerprints

3 Manufacture sufficient doubt, or impression of doubt, that your enemies’ aims become mired in confusion in the minds of the public.. Thus natural differences of opinion can be manipulated to produce “skeptics”, whose noble appearance of “dissent” may mask the motives of other interests

4 Use the skeptics to control the media agenda; one skeptic can represent balance and controversy to lazy journalists, however many reasoned exponents are lined up on the other side

5 Using all your money create an industry research body, to move the focus of research safely away from your product. Feed the public lines like: “we will get more facts as soon as possible.” “There are many possible causes of cancer”. “There is no conclusive proof of the link between smoking and cancer.” (personal note: we remember a relative of ours replaying that line in 1971. He died many years ago of cancer)

6 Continue to use your financial muscle to associate your product with such perceived virtues as being grown up, manliness, sex, wealth and the Great Outdoors. (this is our own, not Brandt’s, but we liked it so much it had to go in)

Surely all this didn’t work? Surely human beings are rational, independent creatures who can look at the evidence and decide for themselves? In 1954 the industry sold 369 billion cigarettes and had a per capita consumption of 3344 cigarettes annually. By 1961 these figures were 488 billion and 4025 cigarettes respectively. And some people say there is no such thing as progress.

Outside the industry, things were less rosy. Aside from all those pesky deaths from cancer. emphysema and the like, all that money up in smoke, and sad lives cut horribly short, there was a long term cultural damage which we at LSS believes explains much of our present plight.

For the first time, the normative processes of science had been significantly disrupted for commercial gain. The honest concepts of scepticism and doubt had been manipulated into weapons to confuse and deny. The emotional genius of PR now trumped the rational spirit of science. And people in industry, business and politics had learned that it could be done again. And again.

The rise and fall of nations is as much about technologies as demographics. Brains can often prevail over numbers. If a society becomes blind to its real sources of strength, its fall cannot be long delayed.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3490543/

https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/tobacco_related_mortality/index.htm

#allanmbrandt #tobaccopr #edwardbernays #cancer #smoking

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Our weekly look at stories we didn’t have time to fit in-with a great deal of help from our readers. Thanks.

Is Herd Immunity the answer to Covid-19? Was it ever? According to Nature Briefing, commenting on a New York Times article, no, we’re not anywhere near it anyway:

Even in the hardest-hit parts of the world, many fewer people have been infected than would be needed to achieve the herd immunity that might slow — but not stop — the outbreak. Serology surveys in places including Wuhan, Madrid and London have tested a cross-section of the population for antibodies against the disease. So far, the highest rate of infections found is around 20%, in New York City. That is well below the required level — something more like 60% (maybe) — to achieve herd immunity. There are many caveats around how the surveys are done and the accuracy of the antibody tests. And we don’t know for sure whether a past infection will give a person immunity, or to what extent.

The New York Times | 8 min read

briefing@nature.com

Mr Peter Seymour of Hertfordshire thinks that the Swedish experience is directly pertinent to this. Here he gives us Wired‘s take on it. The clue is in the headline: “Sweden’s Coronavirus Experiment has well and truly failed”. Read it. It’s hard-hitting stuff

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/sweden-coronavirus-herd-immunity

And the same Mr Seymour has not been idle elsewhere. Here CNN report on how Vietnam has joined other successful Asian countries, only more so, with a death toll of zero.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/29/asia/coronavirus-vietnam-intl-hnk/index.html

We think CNN is a great station, and are particular admirers of Mr Adam Charlton and his brilliant contributions to journalism.

Still can’t find the source of that quote

“the purpose of education is to produce people who are acceptable at a dance and indispensable in a shipwreck”

Can anyone help?

And finally-Nature recommends these five books to get you through the weekend. Happy reading

Andrew Robinson’s pick of the top five science books to read this week includes rehabilitating the Vandals, the bearded ladies of geology and how to get a job in academia. Nature | 3 min read

#nature #sweden #herdimmumity #adamcharlton #vietnam

• 

• 

• 

We at LSS are an international blog, and we can’t afford to take sides. But anyone with eyes to watch a TV cannot have missed the growing tension between China and Western countries over the status of Hong Kong. Britain is at the heart of this, partly as the legacy of its history, and partly because of its close relationship to the USA. Everyone agrees that this will bring problems; but can they be resolved?

The heart of the matter is Britain’s diplomatic gambit: the potential offer of “a path to citizenship” for up to 2.9 million Hong Kong Chinese residents*, if China continues with its present policies (our guess is that they will). Whatever your views on immigration, that is a lot of people, equivalent to the populations of the current cities of Birmingham, Glasgow, Liverpool and Bristol.

Now, we at LSS are proud to call ourselves realists. Whatever one’s personal views, only fools would deny that immigration is a number one issue in the UK. All agreed that it was the decisive issue in the 2016 Referendum campaign on EU membership. Whatever the roots of peoples’ concerns, ignoring them is just not viable. Above all, a sudden influx seems to be a psychological tipping point for many people. And if the new UK government policy is activated, the 2.9 million may have to be admitted very quickly. as were the 60 000 Ugandan Asians in 1972. If the policy is to work, the Government will need the consent of its people. And so we call for a UK wide referendum on this issue, as the only means to look for that consent. In General Elections, there are always many issues: if ever there was a one-off, done-and-dusted, this is it. There are precedents; not just the EU referenda, but also the devolution and independence ones in the various countries of the UK. And above all, the whole thing could be done quickly as the arguments are well rehearsed on both sides. For the sake of balance, we offer both sides here, plus links which you can follow up on.

Anti- immigration campaigners will point to the enormous difficulties of trying to suddenly integrate so many newcomers. Net immigration is now at its highest ever, and rising (270 000 in 2019, as opposed to a decade average of 256 000 per year) The population has already risen by six million since 2001. There will need to be an enormous increase in the provision of housing, welfare and health services to say the least. These arguments are summarised by migrationwatch*

A representative view of the other side can be found at the free market Adam Smith Institute. As might be expected, their arguments are always of the classic economic efficiency mode. Abolishing migration caps to allow the best qualified workers leading to faster economic growth. But read it for yourself -they certainly go into detail. In a way the culture of Hong Kong- hard work, high levels of education, and a strong entrepreneurial spirit at all levels is a tribute to the free market ethos which the Adam Smith Institute expounds.

No one can deny that immigration can bring benefits: Rishi Sunak, Sajid Javeed, Sadiq Khan and Priti Patel all hold, or have held important jobs in national life. It would be hard to imagine a premiership team without its complement of foreign players, or universities without the best scientists. However, the issue for most people is the speed of immigration, and how it is controlled.

Let the People decide.

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3086785/london-opens-door-hongkongers-bno-passports-stay-least-year

https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/

https://www.adamsmith.org/

#Hongkong #immigration #referendum #pritipatel #freemarkets

• 

• 

• 

Since the late nineteenth century, global temperatures have risen by 0.8 degrees centigrade. Two- thirds of that rise has been since 1980. This year, southern England has experienced its warmest Spring ever. So we thought that our readers ought to get used to some real tropical-style cocktails, and enjoy them before we all sink beneath the waves. So this week-the Mojito.

Oh, sorry, did someone at the back just say 0.8 degrees isn’t much? Well, briefly, it’s a truly immense amount of heat in a very short time-and it’s getting worse. It only took a rise of a few degrees in a few short centuries to produce the Permian Mass Extinction, the most cataclysmic loss of life on the planet, that made the little affair of the dinosaurs look like a dust-up in a supermarket queue.

Right let’s get on with the cocktail. This week we are indebted to that excellent source of Civilisation BBC Good Food. We’ll try to keep ’em sourcing from as many different sites as possible. in the weeks to come.

You will need: juice of one fresh lime. 1 teaspoon of granulated sugar. A handful of mint leaves +one sprig of the same. Do make sure they are washed if taken from the garden, especially if you have cats or foxes in the neighbourhood. 60ml of white rum, such as Bacardi.

How to do it: Mix up the mint leaves, sugar and lime juice in a jug. Make the mint small, but don’t macerate the leaves. They are there to add flavour, not control it.

Now put them in a tall glass over lots of ice cubes. Add your white rum. You can top up with icy cold soda water to your taste. Stir, and garnish with the mint sprig.

We have found this to be a most refreshing addition to a late afternoon in many a hot climate, and wish all of you the same. While you do it, here is a quote we saw on the interweb, which we quite fancy. We wish to hell we could source it.

“the purpose of a good education is to produce people who will be acceptable at a dance, and utterly dependable in a shipwreck”

Can anyone help?

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/mojito

https://www.bing.com/search?q=temperature+rise+due+to+global+warming&form=EDNTHT&mkt=en-gb&httpsmsn=1&msnews=1&plvar=0&refig=fd546291c077485edeaa

#bbcgoodfood #mojito #globalwarming

• 

• 

• 

So far we have thought of Covid-19 as a respiratory disease. The symptoms*are pretty well-known to most people by now, as we also know that they vary a lot between different patients. But what if we are missing a trick? What if the thing is zeroing in on our nervous systems? And what havoc could that wreak?

According to a very well-researched article in New Scientist, Jessica Hamzelou* is finding more and more evidence that it could. We all know that many Covid-19 patients are presenting with some neurological symptoms, mainly loss of smell and taste. But Jessica reports that some neurologists are becoming worried by Covid-19 patients who are presenting with more acute brain symptoms such as encephalitis.

Good thinker that she is, Jessica presents a null hypothesis. We at LSS love a good null hypothesis. The damage to the brain is caused not by the virus, but by loss of oxygen due to acute respiratory failure, cytokine storms-all the usual suspects in fact.

Yet the evidence points to a different, and more sinister, explanation. Firstly, we know well that other coronaviruses such as HCoV-OC43 can indeed enter the nervous system and brain. And so can the SARS virus, which we all know is like SARS-CoV-2 ‘s mortiferous elder brother. Once in, what harm can it do? Well, we saw loss of taste and encephalitis above. There is also the risk of post viral fatigue syndrome, and a rather unpleasant disease called Guillain-Barre syndrome, which presents as a creeping paralysis. And never forget that some viruses, such as Herpes simplex virus can lie low in the nervous system for years, only emerging long after the initial infection has passed.

So what can be done? The first thing is to read Jennifer’s article. It is a least a month later than most of the other literature, so it’s bang up to date. Secondly-we are not medically trained. But it’s common sense to think that, if you are going back to work or socialising again, to still be very cautious. Our last thoughts- that this is the tip of an iceberg. If the virus has a neurological action, its effect on the growing brains of young people could be very dangerous. So, perhaps a little more spending on this, and a little less on road by-passes might be a very good investment indeed.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24632842-800-coronavirus-seems-to-reach-the-brain-what-could-this-mean-for-us/

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/check-if-you-have-coronavirus-symptoms/

#newscientist #jessicahamzelou #SARS #SARS-CoV-2 -covid19 #encephalitis #neurologist

• 

• 

• 

New movements in history start as attempts to address the dreadful wrongs of their times. Christianity began as a movement protesting against the cruelties and callousness of the Roman social system. Socialism was an understandable response to the inequalities and squalor of the Industrial Revolution. At first their adherents were clear; their cause was just, and together they would change things for the better. Which, on the whole, they did. But the unity of such movements never lasts for long. Students of the early Church will recall the Ebionites and Gnostics. Later there were much larger schisms as Athanasians battled it out with Arians, or Monophysites with their Orthodox co-believers. The divisions in the socialist movement were soon chronic: there were Social Democrats, Socialists, Anarchists, Communists, Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, Trotskyists, Maoists, and many others, as each little group realised that their vision of the future was not to be quite the same as that of their Comrades.

What may be very loosely termed the Green or Environmentalist movement will soon face the same iron laws of History. The movement began as a very understandable response to the destruction of the planet in a reckless and utterly unsustainable manner, which will undoubtedly destroy us all. At first a whole plethora of groups like Greens, Friends of the Earth and Green Peace could rub along with the same goals, the same general actions Their efforts have been beyond praise. If anyone has given this narcissistic species one last chance, it was them. Yet success brings the need for hard choices and the following article by Harry Cockburn in the Independent shows how this will play out again and again in the years to come. We are grateful to Mr Peter Seymour of Hertfordshire who has drawn our attention to this dilemma.

The UK Government is expected to give the go ahead to a remarkable new solar park project at Cleve Hill in the Thames Estuary. It will generate 350 MW of clean energy from 880 000 panels, no less. It will kick £1000 000 a year into local authority revenues. Patriots should rejoice, as it will be the world’s largest energy farm, leading the way to a zero carbon future. The company building it claim there will be a 65% increase in biodiversity. Understandably, Friends of the Earth support it.

Equally understandably, Greenpeace, The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the Kent Branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England do not. All have done incredible work to protect what little is left of nature from barbarism and who have also earned the right to be taken seriously. They point to the danger of the storage system, which will cover 25 acres, and the general visual impact of a huge new industrial installation in the melancholic beauty of the marshes.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the dispute it points to the increasing dilemmas which will be faced by the Green or Environmentalist movement. Dilemmas which its enemies will rush to exploit. Out there are some very rich unpleasant men, hooked on addiction to money, who will stop at nothing to wreck the growing movement for environmental responsibility. They are the common enemies of the groups named above. They fund denialist groups and fake science. They hire journalists and trolls to spread disinformation. They will use every trick to spread distrust and discord among environmentalists and progressives. They trade in paranoia, greed and despair.

Dilemmas and difficult decisions cannot be ducked or evaded. There will be defeats, splits and bitter personal animosities. But if everyone who cares about the environment always remembers why they are right, and that their cause is essential, they will still find the resources to win.

#harrycockburn #independent #clevehill #greenpeace #friendsofthe earth #solarpower

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/cleve-hill-solar-farm-kent-biggest-uk-environment-battery-storage-safety-government-a9531361.html

• 

• 

• 

We at Learning, Science and Society must now offer our first correction to a mistake, and offer our first apology. In a previous Blog (Professor Brian Cox…LSS 27 May 2020) we described our correspondent Mr Gary Herbert as being Mr Gary Herbert of Bedfordshire.

In the course of our many conversations listening to Mr Herbert, we came under the impression that he and his family held lands on both sides of the Buckinghamshire-Bedfordshire border. A bit like one of those old Anglo-Norman lords, who had holdings in many counties in England, Normandy and Anjou. Big on wine, cheese and killing the lower orders. You know the ones.

Mr Herbert and his Legal People have advised us that in fact the vital Bedfordshire-Buckinghamshire border abuts, adjoins and therefore borders his lands. He should therefore be known as Mr Gary Herbert of Buckinghamshire, not Mr Gary Herbert of Bedfordshire, as he has been hithertofore described in these annals. We apologise to Mr Herbert for any hurt, distress and inconvenience to him, his family and friends which we have inadvertently caused. In future he will be referred to at all times by his correct title, which is, as attentive readers will recall, Mr Gary Herbert of Buckinghamshire.

We know that many people have referred to him by other terms in the past, but we will not use them here as this is a family blog.

#garyherbert #bedfordshire #buckinghamshire