A few days ago we published a post likening the recent assassination attempt on Donald J Trump to the events at Harpers Ferry in 1859. It was a naive, Sunday post which we fondly imagined would be mainly aimed at the History Fans among. You know-sort of elegiac, reflective, that sort of thing. Instead it has brought down a torrent of comments and replies upon our unsuspecting heads. Not all of them objective nor favourable. So, briefly here are our responses in the hope they may afford light where formerly there has only been heat.

1 Yes, we are English, goddammit! But that surely doesn’t vitiate our right to observe the doings of another country, particularly one with which our own land has such close links, culturally, diplomatically, sartorially and in many other ways.

2 With regard to that last point, any more abuse from that guy in Ohio and we will boycott Brooks Brothers. What will that do to your economy-mate?

3 Donald Trump stated that he will be a Dictator on day 1 of a new administration. No candidate has ever claimed that intention before [1] A majority of Americans may want this. Which is their business. But isn’t it the sort of statement which raises tensions to say the least? To, er, like they were round about 1859-ish?

4 Come on, Americans, when have you ever openly hated each other as much as you do now?

5 We didn’t say another Civil war would happen. We hope it won’t. But if Americans carry on playing with fire……

6 China is laughing at you

We hope now to o back to Science and economics. Somebody somewhere has to find a way of saving something from the Civilisational-sized wreck. That is where we shall start.

[1]https://www.politifact.com/article/2023/dec/07/donald-trump-was-asked-if-he-will-be-a-dictator-if/

#donald j trump #united states of america #election 2024 #democrat #republican

“It’s the economy, stupid.” That was the phrase attributed to Democratic strategist James Carville, who helped mastermind Bill Clinton‘s unlikely win over Republican incumbent George HW Bush in 1992. Whatever the candidates’ other achievements might be, people would, in the end vote with their wallets. As a belief it’s far, far deeper than 1992. The central case of all the heirs of the enlightenment, both of Right and Left was that humans are essentially rational animals, who would consider their immediate economic interests above all else.

Just how wrong that might be is demonstrated in this eye-opening piece from Deepak Bhargava, Sharzad Sams, and Harry Hanbury from Democracy, which we earnestly entreat you to read. Far from us to steal the authors’ thunder. But by careful reasoning they tease out an entirely new factor which influences the political choice which people make. For want of a better word, they call it “unhappiness“. We’ll let them explain what they think that is. But here’s their killer quote

The causes of rising unhappiness are complex, but they surely have roots in the failures of a neoliberal economic regime that has fostered insecurity, isolation, anxiety, and fear……loneliness and social isolation are major drivers of unhappiness. We are experiencing a crisis of what French sociologist Émile Durkheim called “anomie,” or normlessness, arising from the dizzying pace of social, economic, political, and technological change in our times and the weakening of institutions that foster social cohesion.

Who is more likely to vote for populist parties than angry frightened men, on their way down in the world, who above all need someone to blame. Authoritarians, who l provide quick and easy answers, and all times offer a diabolical other to hate can always tell a better story than the careful, complicated reforms of the democrats. If Biden were judged on his economic record. he would have been romping the polls since 2022. But he is not; and the rest of us must learn to live with the consequences of his defeat, for however much life we have left. Unless we find ways to tell our story, and soon, that may not be very long.

We found the link to the Democracy piece in a Guardian article from the admirable Rafael Behr [2], in which he discourses on the relevance of the trope in a UK context

[1]https://democracyjournal.org/arguments/the-death-of-deliverism/

[2]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/10/keir-starmer-plan-populist-tide-britain-allies-nato

#biden #trump #unhappiness #prosperity #democracy #populism

A few years ago we started drawing your attention to the potential of bacteriophages as a potential second technique to overcome antibiotic-resistant microorganisms. Not to replace antibiotics, you understand. But to give clinicians another reliable component on their pharmacopeia, confusing the target organism with an attack from a different direction (LSS 21 9 20 et seq ) We seemed to have been riding a wave, as this discipline has excited growing interest.

Entirely unconnected, in another part of the forest so to speak, we have twice praised the work of awesome polymath Melvyn Bragg. (LSS 9 6 22, 21 9 23) His BBC series In Our Time is the go to portal for the greatest human achievements of all time-in the Arts, Sciences, and Letters) and should be compulsory listening for all those who consider themselves to have even a fleeting acquaintance with learning.

Imagine therefore our surprise when the great Melvyn has brought our two preoccupations together! Yes, that’s right, gentle reader, In Our Time today, July 4th 2024, has a whole programme with no less than three (count ’em, three!) Top Experts . All set for you to bask in the light of their learning. Which to make matters easier, you can obtain by clicking on the link below[1] or going later to BBC Sounds, which will post an update podcast with free extra minutes after about 11.00 BST. What’s not to like?

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0020pf0

#bacteriophages #antibiotic resistance #medicine #health #pandemic # microbiology

Fifty years ago, Paleontology was mired in a series of unanswered questions. When did humans first walk upright? What came first-a big brain, or two legs? Where did it happen, and above all, when? The oldest Australopithecines seemed to date less than 2 million years BP, but the first intriguing signs of molecular evidence (it was proteins, bless ’em!) suggested origins back before 5 million. Then one day in 1974 a team led by Don Johannsen in the Afar region of Ethiopia changed everything.

The excellent Robin McKie in the Observer tells the story much, much better than we can, and you should read it here [1] Suffice to say that they had stumbled on a tiny, erect walking creature with a brain the size of a chimpanzee. And apart from the bipedal gait it was an ape in all essential respects. They named the species Australopithecus afarensis for science. It it lived at was was, for then, the startlingly early date of 3.2 million years BP. Other specimens have been found subsequently, both of this species and others. Some are older. But nothing sits quite so squarely in the middle of our paradigm of human evolution, around which all other thoughts must revolve.

And the name? Well if you call something Australopithecus afarensis, it doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue of the public. But as the researchers returned exalted to camp and spread out the bones, they turned on their tape recorder. It began to blast out a song called Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds by a musical group called The Beatles, who were popular around that time.[2] As the skeleton was clearly female, they named their little lady “Lucy” And it has stuck, in all but the most formal scientific publications. And so we hail one of the great finds of all time. And remember a lesson from 1974. Whatever you think you know, there’s something buried in the ground that will completely up end it. It’s a lesson we could all learn.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/jun/30/fifty-years-on-how-lucy-the-mother-of-humanity-changed-our-understanding-of-evolution

[2]https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?&q=beatles+lucy+in+the+sky+with+diamonds&&mid=ED669A112ADD84C9D3CDED669A112ADD84C9D3CD&

#paleontology #human evolution #don johannsen #afar hominins #molecular biology #rift valley

The decision of the United States Supreme Court [1] is so nakedly partial that it marks another terrible stage in that country’s decline. Which, all things considered, has been precipitous for the last 20 years or thereabouts. So much so that it has prompted one or two of our religiously- minded friends to wonder if it is in fact Divine Justice. The retribution being  for the Invasion of Iraq in 2003, as clear an example of arrogant stupidity as any latter-day Aeschylus could wish for.  However, we at LSS are cautious about invoking mystical explanations when more prosaic ones might do. We think that when the US triumphed in the Cold War between 1989 and 1991, the seeds of its own destruction were  sown by the economic and cultural processes thereby unleashed.

The defeat of the USSR, it was asserted, marked the final triumph of Liberal Capitalism. All countries would now be open to the free flow of goods, capital (financial and human) and the services and technologies which would ensure a slowly rising tide of prosperity . Yet its architects, optimistically, overlooked one part of the deal. Most people, in most countries, most of the time, don’t like Foreigners. This is a central and ineluctable part of human nature. To deny it is as futile as to deny the urges to breathe, eat or have sex. Anyone with eyes to see and ears to listen was aware of these tendencies building long before the rise of the internet or the Crash of 2007-8.  These things merely provided opportunities, and speeded up, processes of resentment and suspicion which were long in gestation.

That America was the leading Capitalist nation placed it at the forefront of these trends. Which are now playing out in the form of institutions and communities riven along political lines, and where the notion of Objective truth is now almost forgotten. If this was the Enlightenment-founded nation par excellence, what hope for the rest of us?

The task now for anyone with a hold on education, reason or logic to see that those virtues are now preserved in some way, and gifted to future generations. For currently political power is passing to a series of Autocrats who will soon style themselves as Kings and Emperors. In such regimes, what is the precise value of a scientific reading or a tonne of cement, beyond what The Leader says it is? In such circumstances, trade will shrivel, learning become futile and any hope of advancement lost.  But until we confront the truths about human nature (or at least about 99% of it) progressives. will be doomed to failure. Because the autocrats understand it better than we do.

[1] Was Donald Trump a king as president? The US supreme court thinks so | Moira Donegan | The Guardian

#USA #Supreme Court #Liberal #law #enlightenment #trade #objective truth #justice

“What is intelligence?” We have sometimes pondered that question here, but it begs a question: “what is stupidity?” One possible answer is to be so confident of the assumptions of your own group that you discount those of others altogether. Effectively saying they have no worth. It can happen in all classes and at all educational levels. There’s no fool like an over-educated one, in our experience. But our examples today are chosen from a different field.

Nothing reveals the deep inner psychological fixations, obsessions and and assumptions of a society as well as advertising does. Especially those of the power groups to whom they’re selling. The excellent site we bring you day, called Canvas Art Rocks [1] have put together a collection of poster/press ads that are so very crass, offensive and in some cases potentially dangerous that is a tribute to the way their researchers held their noses. However-these ads are not really that old, and we are certain that senior readers will have seen something like them in the colour magazines of the nineteen seventies.

So, hold on to your seat and prepare your sick bag to enter a world of folksy old doctors selling tobacco. Of women depicted as stupid and inferior , so that they can be turned into sex objects. Of cheerful racism. And scariest of all to us, the gleeful promotion of firearms. It’s easy to laugh now. But remember-many of your fellow citizens had their minds formed in the era of these ads, and the culture they floated upon. And what unconscious assumptions do YOU make, gentle reader, as you smile indulgently at the follies of the past? The biggest fool of all is the one who knows, and knows best.

[1]https://www.canvasartrocks.com/blogs/posts/102141062-51-shocking-vintage-adverts-that-would-get-banned-today

#advert #mores #racism #sexism #tobacco #collective unconscious