Thank you-to all readers, contributors, researchers, ideas-people, and the entire staff here at our Croydon HQ. Especially to Jim, who straightened things out with the local authorities, railway company, and constabulary after that series of misunderstandings at the Christmas Party, which so regrettably spilled out in to the street.
Apologies– For any errors of fact, opinion or nuance we have made, and one or two bad typos in recent blogs. This was due to pressure of shopping from one of our researchers. Also apologies to the boys in Marketing who will not, repeat, not-be invited to next year’s Christmas party. They know why.
Resolutions We hope all of you make some dedication to improvement . Perhaps eat less. Help The Poor. Certain members of Marketing and Sales might want to reflect upon drinking a little less, for example. And all of us should remember that to “look at someone else’s bird in a funny way” can bring terrible consequences. At least in Croydon it does.
And Resolution! Whatever happens (and there are some pretty scary things coming up) do not fail to Be of Good Cheer. Our previous blog will explain why.
Whatever has happened in your life, and whatever catastrophes 2024 may bring, gentle reader, you have no right not to be of Good Cheer. Because you have had forty years of life, which began on 26th September 1983, when the world avoided catastrophic nuclear war by the narrowest of margins.
After a brief detente in the1970s, the world in 1983 was moving towards the peak of of a second Cold War, as author Brian J Morra ably explains in The Near Nuclear War of 1983 [1] Mutual fear and suspicion between the USSR and the Western Alliance had been growing exponentially since 1979. By 1983, each sides’ defence forces were on hair trigger alert. The shooting down of the Korean Airliner 007 on 1st September had caused a total severing of communication. Then on 26th September*[2] the OKO Soviet Defence system reported that the US had launched a nuclear strike from its base at Grand Forks, ND. Fortunately for the world, the duty officer on the Soviet side was one Stanislav Petrov, of whom Brian Morra comments
Petrov possessed unique knowledge of the strengths and flaws in the Soviets’ new satellite warning system, and assessed that the launch reports—which came in several, harrowing waves—must be false alarms. Petrov advised his leadership against a retaliatory attack. Petrov—the accidental watch commander—was truly the right man in the right place at the right time.
In fact there had already been a near trigger incident on 3rd September, involving a stand-off between Russian and American fighters near the site of the KAL 007 crash site, and this time an American, General Charles Donnelly had finessed us away from war. But there is no doubting Petrov’s central role in this account, and he deservedly received a Dresden Peace Prize and film called The Man Who Saved the World in 2013 [3]
For save it he did. Anyone who was alive at that time, and their children, and grandchildren, owe everything they have, and all their experiences, to that man. By 30th September, the world could have been reduced to smoking, radioactive ruins, with the survivors facing an oncoming Nuclear Winter of unimaginable duration. Instead they went out for Friday night drinks; prepared their boats for the last sail of the autumn; or got ready for the weekends’ shopping and football matches. And ever since they have had life, not death. And there is your reason to be cheerful.
*Morro gives 27th; clearly things like datelines and midnights have probably muddied the waters here)
“When facts change, then I change my mind.” So said the great economist JM Keynes. It should be the guiding principle for every scientist and scholar. Now, some readers will recall several blogs we have made on immigration ( LSS June/July ’22;Nov ’22). We still think we were right to raise this issue. Because it seems to be of neuralgic importance. But we ascribed the basic cause to the movement of people from poor economies to richer ones. We have now seen good evidence that this belief, although not entirely wrong, is so simple as to be almost misleading. And we are now going to present you with that evidence, so you can judge for yourselves.
Of course immigration does indeed flow from poorer societies to richer ones, But not from the absolute dirt-poor countries. The bulk of immigration comes from middle income countries. According Hein de Haas. a Professor of Sociology who writes in the Guardian, anyway. [1] And why do they do it? To fill jobs in short contract, essentially unregulated labour markets in the host countries. The second link, from Nature Briefings, should allow you to drill down more into Professor Haas’ work (we hope the link works!) It’s called Prejudice Colours our View on Immigration, a title that says much:
Many of us have opinions about immigration, but most of us don’t fully understand it, suggests sociologist Hein de Haas in his impressively wide-ranging book How Migration Really Works. By busting myths that surround human mobility, de Haas provides a welcome corrective to common misconceptions, writes reviewer and migration scholar Alan Gamlen. “But with migration patterns shifting as the world rocks in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s unclear for how long his conclusions will hold true,” writes Gamlen.Nature | 7 min read
There’s a lot of humility to go around for all of us here, not just LSS. Like, even when you think you have the answer, it may turn out to be only part of it. That sudden sweeping generalisations can be utterly wrong. Yet there remains one small observation in which we were right, You get very little immigration from richer countries(e.g. Switzerland, Denmark) to poorer ones(e.g UK) And we still think that, in there somewhere. lies the answer to all this angst.
Historians of the future, assuming there are any and that they are human, will look back on 2023 as the year that Artificial Intelligence emerged as the potent, transforming process in the world. Everything else that seemed important that year-the preparation of the Christmas turkey, the Association Football results, the petty pointless little wars, will have long been forgotten. And those historians will note: it wasn’t the “artificial” that perturbed people. For many of them, it was the fear of Intelligence. We thought it was high time we gave our readers a guide to some general overviews, using the help of our most intelligent human sources, to provide you with a few starting points for this most significant of developments It’s a slightly longer one than normal, but with less by us and more by our sources
THE CONVERSATION We cannot praise this website highly enough,which is why we put them in bold capitals especially in the space available here. Instead we’ll link to a few stories in today’s edition
AI and Crime Could criminals or even foreign intelligence services make use of AI to disrupt our societies? There are several big elections coming up-and Russia will not be indifferent
Nature Briefings –Will AI take our jobs? If it can substitute for top scientists, what hope the rest of us? explains
This robotic chemist might be the ideal laboratory partner: it scours the literature for instructions, designs an experiment and then carries out reactions to make compounds including paracetamol and aspirin. The system, called Coscientist, is powered by several large language models, including GPT-4 and Claude. It “can do most of the things that really well-trained chemists can do”, says Coscientist co-developer Gabe Gomes. Because of the potential of misuse, Gomes’s team hasn’t yet made Coscientist’s full code freely available.Nature | 4 min read Reference: Nature paper
BBC-What is AI anyway? Recently, we’ve found that if you want to learn anything new, go back to the level at which they teach kids. Declaration of interest: we’ve found it works for things as diverse as Bayes’ Theorem and Italian. So, although the BBC series on this year’s Royal Institution Lectures on AI by Professor Mike Woolridge are ostensibly down with the kids, they provide an excellent starting point for busy adults who want to really know the basic nodes and bolts of this fascinating area. Only a generally funded public service broadcaster could run a series like this. Imaging one of the rant filled, prejudiced little plutocratic channels even conceiving of it!
And finally- we interviewed ChatGPT, which is becoming a bit like another pal already. We put the ultimate question
LSS: will you become like HAL 9000 or Skynet in the Terminator series?
ChatGPT: No, I will not become like HAL 9000 or Skynet from the Terminator series. I am a program created by OpenAI, and my purpose is to assist and provide information to the best of my abilities. I do not have the capability to take independent actions or develop self-awareness. My functioning is strictly limited to the tasks for which I am programmed, and I operate within the boundaries set by my design. There are no intentions or mechanisms for me to become a sentient or malevolent entity like those depicted in science fiction.
Photo by Reto Bu00fcrkler on Pexels.comPhoto by Rafael Classen rcphotostock.com on Pexels.comPhoto by Pixabay on Pexels.com
God knows, we can be a gloomy lot here at LSS. Always vexing you with predictions of imminent doom, like global warming, pandemics, asteroids and changes in the parking zones in Croydon. . Which is why a bit of positive news brings a tiny ray of light to the dark cold days between Christmas and the New Year. That ray is provided by ZeroAvia, the Gloucestershire-based company that is doing so much to advance the cause of green, sustainable aviation. We blogged on them before (LSS 19 9 23). So here’s an update.
Because what impresses us about this lot is the way they are integrating themselves at every level of the business process. New products, such as fuel cell compressors[2] and electric motors[3]are well underway. They’re growing their market slowly and steadily by partnerships with forward-looking airlines like Alaska. And busily embedding themselves by hosting business conferences like their hydrogen summit. There are serious capital partnerships with major investors
All of which tells us that this is not just another little start-up full of hope but little else. Zeroavia is clearly a serious group of people with ambitious but entirely reasonable and graduated plans to transform this industry, and make all our lives more sustainable thereby. We wish them every conceivable luck and success in the year to come.
LSS and its staff have no business commercial or financial connection to Zeroavia nor to any of its stakeholders
“If only we could go back to The Good Old Days!” cry so many. But were the Good Old Days as good as people claim? To help you make up your mind, here’s a quick, easy-to reference guide to the last 600 years. Apologies if it seems a tad Euro-centric, but they’ve only given us this many words-and there’s some of them gone already.
15th Century 1400-1499 It must have seemed so, like, cool, especially if you came at the end of it. What with the Renaissance in full swing, America discovered and all that New Learning just pouring off Gutenburg‘s new press! Throw in Della Francesca painting the walls, and the cool sounds of Guillaume de Fay echoing off them, the parties must have seemed absolutely fabulous. However there was quite a lot of serious killing about(e.g. The Hundred Years War) and as for the toilets……..
16th Century 1500-1599 What happens when you combine Gutenburg’s Information Revolution with a really original thinker like Martin Luther(1517)? The result was a series of bitter, intractable conflicts that essentially lasted until 1648 (see below) There were plenty of other terrible wars going on throughout the “Fighting Sixteenth” , and some really nasty genocides and enslavements of the indigenous populations in South America. Although to be fair, the Spanish claimed they didn’t really mean to, it was all down to disease. On the up side there were scientists like Tycho Brahe, while Magellan and others truly made it one globe. Top Painters Leonardo Da Vinci, Rafael. Cool sounds: Palestrina. The toilets were still pretty awful.
17th Century 1600-1699 On the face of it, not too good, as wars and plagues ravaged everyone, everywhere. And the fashions look just daft. As luck had had it, the end of the Thirty Years’ War finally persuaded Catholics and Protestants that maybe, just maybe, there might be better ways forward. But the century was decorated with thinkers of stupefying quality-Descartes, Spinoza, Newton, and Kepler. And when your writing team included such luminaries Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Milton, a good time was guaranteed for all. Cool sounds included Monteverdi and Purcell, although the toilet breaks in their concerts must still have been a bit dodgy.
18th Century 1700-1800 To praise the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution is like shooting large fish in a very small barrel. With thinkers and above all doers like Locke, Smith, Voltaire, Watt and Priestly, it’s all too easy to see this as the key turning point. Food was top too; all that roast beef and claret tasted pretty good, if you could afford it. And there’s the rub; some pretty nasty things were going on as the Atlantic Slave Trade really got into its stride, and European Immigration into Australia led to some pretty thorough genocide of its indigenous inhabitants. Cool Sounds:JS Bach, WA Mozart. Cool Painters: Gainsborough, Stubbs
19th Century 1800-1899 Despite quite a lot of grand-scale wars and killing (think Napoleon and American Civil) it was actually the age in which slavery and serfdom went into decline. However, if you want to understand why China still fears and distrusts the West, look at the history of the Opium Wars, which have left a permanent scar in history. On the up side, thinkers like Darwin and James Clerk Maxwell were as important as anyone who has ever lived. The century dripped in writers and artists: to name JMW Turner, Dostoevsky, Hugo and Gericault is to be unfair to at least 100 other names. Cool sounds: Beethoven. And at last-the plumbing was getting better!
20th Century 1900-1999 First eight or so decades were just awful, with a rogues gallery that included Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse Tong, and Mussolini as well as a host of smaller but no less evil characters such as Franco and Pol Pot. Although for us, the Japanese rape of Nanking (1937) scaped the bottom of an already low barrel. But with the fall of the twin horrors of Imperialism and Communism, the wind looked set fair for the last 10 years; or so it seemed. We can’t recommend any artists, as most of their work seems largely pretentious or at least second rate. Maybe we don’t understand it. However, achievements in things like cosmology, biology and information science make this century at least as significant as the eighteenth and fifteenth rolled together. And among the cool sounds you could have danced the night away to VaughnWilliams, Shostakovitch and The Bay City Rollers (who they?-ed) Toilet facilities: definitely on the up. Coda: this century actually included a TV Show called The Good old Days. But it was awful. Truly awful.
21st Century, 2000-today After 36 months of profound and universal peace, the reaction of the American Government to the Trade Centre Attack in 2001 led to one of the greatest blunders in History. Once Iraq got invaded, every psychopath and megalomaniac around the world felt entitled to do the same. Which led to a downward spiral of war, terrorism, invasion and aggression which has lasted to this day. The Information Revolution of the Internet, at least as significant as Gutenburg’s, probably hasn’t helped as every jackass now has access to endless streams of data they can nether understand nor process. On the upside; people have at least begun to notice global warming and other forms of pollution, though it may be already too late to do anything about it. How ironic if the last great genocide is done by everyone to everyone! As for art: once again, what are all those people trying to actually do? Will someone explain it to us? Philip Glass and John Adams may yet provide a few worthwhile cool sounds, we admit. As for the toilets-well, you may understand why we have no wish to visit the International Space Station.
For us, the Article of the Week has to hit several sweet spots at once. Firstly, something fresh, preferably a new take on an old problem. It needs to be clear, and rather well-focussed on its ostensible subject. It needs to show intellectual rigour; moreover, if there is a touch of intellectual humility in the writers’ purpose, so much the better. That will be the best learning point of all.
Can Seabirds hear their way across the ocean? by the admirable Samantha Patrick of the University of Liverpool [1] fulfils our relentless criteria effortlessly. For it suggests an intriguing new take on how animals find their paths across the vast anonymous wastes of the oceans, where everything seems the same for hundreds of kilometres. At least, to us humans they do. Samantha and her team think that Albatrosses use infrasound, that is to say, very low frequency noise, by which they can hear the sounds of waves crashing on distant islands. And get this-they were helped, in their research, by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organisation, who kindly released data to compare with their own data gleaned from Albatrosses.
But for us the key passage was this:
As with many studies testing a hypothesis for the first time, my team’s study raises as many questions as it answers. If seabirds respond to infrasound, they must be able to hear it and know where it is coming from. Lab studies have found evidence that some birds can hear infrasound, but there have been no tests on seabirds.
What a clear exposition of the difference between “knowledge” and “belief”! If only every business leader, politician, religious authority, GB News “journalist” and time share salesperson could be made to learn that passage by heart, and be forced to present a thousand word essay on it, how much better shape the world might be in.
Napoleon Ridley Scott *** Maestro Bradley Cooper*****
Watch a trainee teacher give an early lesson. The career of Napoleon, perhaps. They try to throw everything in. Tick all the boxes-because it was interesting, because the trainer’s watching, and because they are caught in that agonising cleft between showing off how much they know, and not wanting to put a foot wrong. So it is with Ridley Scott‘s Napoleon, which attempts to cover the entire life of that famous man from his early days as a junior officer to a failed genius on St Helena. Twenty six years of the most tumultuous years of human history? No problem, bring it on! Toulouse. Plots in Paris. Some bird called Josephine, who shows up intermittently to look into Boney’s eyes. The Coup of Brumaire. Imperial Coronation. Austerlitz. Where Napoleon gives orders, cannons boom and extras fall in thousands, We never find out why those particular orders he gave were better than anyone else’s. No matter, let’s get on. Tilsit. That tall blonde bloke is the Czar of Russia. Or maybe the Tsar. Later on he chats up Josephine. Briefly. On to Waterloo, where, ironically, we learn more about why Wellington was a good general than we ever do about the Boy from Ajaccio. Brilliantly filmed, crafted and acted. . Sorry, but there’s just far too much much in this film to ever let it rise above the illustrations for a history book. [1]
Leonard Bernstein was a genius too. And, by focussing very tightly on his relationship to his wife Felicia Montealegre, Bradley Cooper (writer, director, lead actor) lets the learning points (like how absolutely, mind-blowingly, breathtakingly good Bernstein was at music) just drip off the lesson plan of Maestro. Like most geniuses, Bernstein could make life excruciatingly hard for the loved ones around him. We wonder how much of his long suffering wife’s final illness was due to his many infidelities, mostly of the male kind. Leonard Bernstein was extremely good at being Leonard Bernstein; but his redemption comes conducting the Resurrection Symphony in Ely Cathedral, where his ecstatic, total immersion Mahler’s genius is manifest. But for us. the real privilege was a glimpse of true world leaders at the very top of their profession, which ordinary mortals are rarely vouchsafed. Bernstein is teaching a conducting class; and in a single comment shows a nervous ingenue exactly the right point in the bar at which to lead his orchestra to the next passage. The tiny turning point between awful failure and true success. In must be like that in the studios of Steven Spielburg and Martin Scorsese. From the look of Maestro, Bradley Cooper is getting set to join them.
If Jesus was really born on 25th December, what were all those shepherds doing out in the fields? [1] Spring has always been the traditional season for lambing, although in the ancient world, autumn was also good for pasture. In either case, dark, grassless December was a time for preserving the flocks in fold or barn. The answer seems to be that the early Church moved the date of their Founder’s Birthday to coincide with the Birthday of another god, Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun. And the man responsible for that was one of the bravest and most able men who has ever lived. He was the Emperor Aurelian (270-275),[2] and is almost unremembered today.
When Aurelian came to the throne, the Roman Empire seemed finished as a going concern. In the East, Queen Zenobia had snatched away Egypt and Syria. In the West, other rivals had broken off Britain, Gaul and Spain. The remining areas suffered from the ravages of inflation, plague and invasion. Yet within five short years his brilliant leadership had not only reunited the entire Empire; he had set in progress a series of economic and military reforms which laid the foundations for its survival for centuries to come. The ultimate never-say-die man, if you like.
Aurelian believed that the restored Oecumene should ultimately have a single figure, a symbol of its unconquerable spirit. He revived the cult of Sol Invictus,[3] whose practices conveniently bled into those of Mithraism,[4] so popular with the army of the time. On 25th December 274, at Rome, the Emperor initiated the first festival of Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, as proof that apparently dead Empire and risen again, to triumph over its enemies. Later Christian Emperors, such as Constantine, never abandoned the day, slowly allowing it to become incorporated into the rites and eschatology of their new Church.
So, whatever your personal faith, this Christmas Day will see you remember the ghost of a great man, and his greatest achievement, living on in ever-so-slightly disguised form.
While the rest of the world indulges in narcissistic quarrels over identity, certain scientists have been quietly progressing in areas that may one day actually improve our lives. Today, our researchers have identified Deep Mutational Scanning (DMS) as a new technique which may lead to some major advances in cancer research. [1] But before you read the excellent but somewhat heavy link from Nature, please have a look at the excellent story by Xantha Leatham of the Mail. [2]
Some readers will have heard of the so called “death star” protein KRAS, and its implication in about 10% of all cancers. Xanthaexplains ( far more readily than we could) how DMS has been used to identify key mutations in this protein which could in theory, render it vulnerable to molecular treatments. One in ten cancers potentially curable? Isn’t that rather good news.?
How ironic too that the Mail, of all outlets, has let slip another little truth. The team that put together this work is multinational and interdisciplinary. Horrors! What if readers began adducing this inconvenient truth in the Comments sections attached to some of their more spittle-flecked xenophobic opinion-mongers!
Learning, Science and Society 