The folly of misogyny We have always been strong evidence of female emancipation here. So it’s interesting to find further confirmation of our cherished beliefs on how systematic misogyny is holding back Japan’s economy. From The Conversation

https://theconversation.com/how-gender-inequality-is-hindering-japans-economic-growth-206537?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%2

Spirit Level still dazzles after 14 years The Spirit Level by Wilkinson and Pickett was one of those books that, once you’ve read it, you’ll never think the same again. And still after 14 years it informs and guides, as Nature Briefings shows Why reducing Inequality is so Hard

In 2009, The Spirit Level, a book by epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett lit a fire under world leaders inspired by its analysis of the benefits of reducing economic inequality. But that objective — enshrined as United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 10 — is slipping further away. There is some good news: overall income inequality between countries is dropping. But income inequality within countries is rising and workers around the world are keeping a smaller slice of the economic pie that they produce. A Nature editorial examines what’s gone wrong and how to fix it.Nature | 6 min read

Rouble Rumblings When Russian tyrant Putin smashed his way into Ukraine, he thought it was a Sure Thing. Not so fast, Pooters-looks like your economy is starting to crumble. Here’s Larry Elliott of the Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/15/interest-rate-hike-just-a-sticking-plaster-for-russias-war-fuelled-economic-woes

Found it! There’s trend in certain circles to snark at Bono for being just a bit too good and right on and concerned. Maybe. But U2 were firmly in the tradition of really good Irish bands and at their best could chuck out real thrills. Here’s our favourite, I still haven’t found whht I was looking for, with the old boy in fine voice See you next week

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=u2+still+haven%27t+found+what+i%27m+looking+for&view=detail&mid=F9077750F7440572218DF9077750F7440

A while ago we attended a showing of No Time to Die…….yes, that James Bond film, where he finally-No! We won’t spoil it for those who have not yet seen it. But those who have can imagine our feelings as we stood watching the credits role, shouting futile protests at the projection team, who weren’t there because such people don’t exist anymore.

Fortunately, our companion led us, still in mourning, to an agreeable Italian Restaurant, where we could sample the high life, just like he used to, before………enough said! And fortunately these people were party to a scientific discovery of such magnitude, and yet of such simplicity, that it completely restored our spirits and general belief in the world. For sitting on the menu for pre-dinner cocktails was a brainwave which took a simple gin and tonic and transformed it, completely transformed it, into something wondrous and new. What do you think it could have been, gentle readers?

Add a shot of Campari

Yep, that old red fluid, so beloved of under age drinkers in 1980s discotheques added such a zing and spice to an otherwise mundane tincture, that we were quite restored and ready to face the hurdles of the main menu and wine list (we nearly always go for a nice Primitivo, for the record) Soon our sorrow and despair for poor old James was transformed into a kind of “well, poor old chap, but he’s gone to a better place, etc etc, who’s for a spot of tiramisu?” When the evening was rounded off by the arrest of a ghastly old man for abusing the waiters, our happiness was complete.

So there you are. Try it. Campari and gin and tonic. Give it a whirl. James Bond would have thanked you for it.

#cocktails #james bond #campari #gin #tonic

In case you didn’t realise, educating women benefits everyone.[1] Somehow the bunch of primitives, maniacs and misogynists who took over in Afghanistan don’t realise this. Instead they have banned women and girls from all serious education. Is this more dim-witted than cruel, or more cruel than dim-witted? Unfortunately for them, someone more intelligent has found a way round their idiocy.

The Herat Online School [2] now provides online teaching for girls in maths, science, Persian Literature, health and a whole range of other subjects for Afghan women of all classes. These are the words of their founder, the redoubtable Angela Ghayour

“I simply could not sit and witness the despair, tears and grief of the girls of my homeland, so I started to light a candle in the dark to keep the hope of the bright day alive”.

We have scraped these words from the website of a truly marvellous organisation called Children on the Edge [3] They spend their time trying to do their best for underprivileged and marginalised children in some of the poorest and most desperate countries on earth. And they realise that you can’t help children if you oppress their mothers, so they are backing Herat Online School to the hilt.

Wouldn’t it be nice if this starts a trend? Imagine if all the women of Afghanistan started learning online, in the most modern subjects in the world. While their brothers are stuck in the Madrasa, rote learning religious texts and stripping down Kalashnikovs. How long long will the ghastly Afghan regime last then? We can’t ask you to donate to every cause that flits across our screen, gentle readers. We know that. But we can beg you to diffuse knowledge of these brave organisations as widely as you can. One day, you may be able to look back and say ” I helped to educate a Doctor.”

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_impact_of_female_education

[2]https://www.childrenontheedge.org/lateststories

[3]https://www.childrenontheedge.org/aboutus.html

#herat online school #children on the edge #afghanistan #taleban #womens rights

The story you are about to read is one of the most shocking domestic violence cases we have come across. So we will leave the pictures and the photos to Milo Pope of the Daily Mail.[1] Be warned: only click if you you are prepared to risk a sleepless night; because this will be traumatic.

Veteran readers will know that violence against women has always been one of our Idées fixées at this blog. You know why we think this, so we won’t run through our whole list of reasons once again. Let’s concentrate on something that we can all do, however small, to move things forward. And it seems to us that one such thing is the network of womens’ refuges and shelters which have grown up in several countries such as the UK. OK, ia shelter’s not as good as jailing the perpetrators to a life of penal servitude with hard labour. But at least its a place where the victim can feel safe and maybe begin to reconstruct the shattered fragments of body and mind.

In December last year we published an appeal on behalf of Refuge, a UK based charity which does much to try to ameliorate the sufferings of its victims. Overseas readers will find something similar within their own shores no doubt. But wherever you are, do you think you could send something, however small, to combat this enormous social evil?

[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12413909/Pictured-Horrific-injuries-suffered-mother-badly-beaten-partner.html

[2]https://refuge.org.uk/

#domestic abuse #domestic violence #women #refuge

Bacteriophages are back in the news, so we’ll start by linking to where where our researchers found it [1].,the ever excellent Ethan Ennals of the Daily Mail, whose work has often been showcased in our humble blog.

Ethan has been following the work of the admirable Professor Ran Nir Paz of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who has been injecting an effective new phage virus to combat resistant strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Which is where we come in. We wanted to find a link to an original Ran Nir Paz paper, or at least a preprint or two, for readers with a little time on their hands. However, a search for the Professor produced a cornucopia of publications and work, all centred around bacteriophage technology and the investigation of resistant diseases. And the good Prof. has been at it for years, right back to the time when we were plaintively calling for research into bacteriophages in the very earliest iterations of our blog.

There’s a moral here. Even when a country has slid into the grip of shouty politicians and religious maniacs, there are still good, thoughtful, people quietly working in the background on things of real importance. We think Professor Ran Nir Paz is a prime example of what this blog is all about.

[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12400195/Friendly-virus-jabs-used-tackle-antibiotic-resistant-lung-diseases-study-finds.html

#bacteriophage #professor ran nir paz #antibiotic resistance #research #life science

May the Unknown Force be with you Just when we think we have something like Quantum physics all nicely sorted, along comes some strange new observation and throws everything up in the air. Always expect the unexpected-maybe the UK Government might want to learn from that old adage. From the BBC

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66407099

Weight Buster We are always a little suspicious of prescribing drugs for things like weight loss. Maybe people should eat less and exercise more. However, we would fail in our duty to you, gentle readers, if we did not report the latest on the remarkable semaglutide, from the latest pages of Nature Briefings

A weekly dose of the anti-obesity drug semaglutide, sold as Wegovy, seems to reduce the risk of heart attacks, strokes and death from cardiovascular disease by 20%. This suggests that there’s more than weight loss to semaglutide and other members of a new generation of hormone-mimicking drugs. “It’s hard to think of other [drugs], apart from statins, that have shown such a profound effect,” says cardiologist Martha Gulati. Researchers say the findings, if confirmed, could profoundly change preventive cardiology.Nature | 5 min read

Peace in Ukraine? Sometimes in private conversation, we have been heard to utter the opinion that the Ukraine war will end like Korea in 1953. There’s a deep moral hazard here, for it rewards the aggressor and leaves millions more under the jackboot of a totalitarian regime For a more nuanced discussion, therefore, we offer this from the Conversation

https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-why-a-ceasefire-based-on-partition-of-territory-wont-work-209750?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The%20Week

Crooked House The mysterious and wholly inexplicable fire which swept through the Crooked House Pub in Staffordshire recently has produced an avalanche of speculation and conjecture. Here Marina Hyde of The Guardian pulls together the latest deliberation, ensuring a balanced view.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/11/crooked-house-burnt-out-pub-historic-landmark

Well, that’s it for this week. As our honeysuckle is blooming so well, we’ll leave you with this little gem Madreselva, from the great Carlos Gardel who did the definitive version of everything Tango

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cancion+madreselva&sca_esv=556249635&sxsrf=AB5stBhRqNACmFq04oKdY7lfzUdRj6sFxQ%3A1691829728463&source=h

These days, the buzz words are ones like “polarised”, “deeply divided”, “tribalisms” and so on. Whether you look in the Atlantic, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times or El Pais, everyone admits that we spend most of our time trying to find ways to hate each other. That’s why we at LSS have decided to launch a Quest, gentle readers, a veritable Quest,to try to find a few organisations that might actually draw people together. And today we are going to start with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and their international partners.[1]

In 1889 a remarkable woman called Emily Williamson realised that the insatiable demands of the fashion industry were already driving many bird species to extinction. There! That word, in 1889, readers, is that prescience or what? Well the society she founded grew so rapidly that it got a royal charter in 1904, and has never looked back. Because they realised that it’s all about birds and people, the two go together Long John Silver and his parrot. If ou are going to conserve a bird species then you have to conserve its habitat. Which in turn conserves a biome of incredible richness, a possible source of antibiotics, and a major area for carbon capture. And they’ve been doing it ever since, with the help of international partners like Birdlife International. So,overseas readers, there’s something for you after all.

And the bringing people together? Well, we’ve always wondered why Conservatives don’t do more about Conservation, as the etymological root of both is so screamingly obvious. Actually we find that most RSPB people we meet are conservative, at least with a small c, who know perfectly well that conserving the wildlands conserves us all. As for the others-liberals, social democrats, socialists and the like- you got your environmental wings a long time ago. But even the most earnest folk need to relax sometimes. What could be better than wandering the salt marshes or combing the woods, in aid of this society and its laudable goals?

We are not members of the RSPB, nor ever have been. All the more reason then to praise and advocate them as the first of our organisations which might start to bring us together again. Saving birds may possibly save people.

[1]https://www.rspb.org.uk/

[2]https://www.birdlife.org/contact-us/

#conservative #ecologist #progressive #bird #habitat

At LSS we’ve always been a bit worried about rising levels of antibiotic resistance among infectious microorganisms. We think it could kill rather a lot of people. We’re also worried about rising levels of air pollution, particularly the deadly PM2.5 particles from engines, coal and burning forests. We think that could kill rather a lot of people too.

So what de we do when someone brings the two together? Have a nervous
breakdown? Take the entire staff of LSS over to the Porter and
Sorter and East Croydon Station for a massive drink up? We need to
decide quickly, because someone has done the unexpected. The improbable. They
have found a strong link between PM2.5 particles and the rise of antibiotic
resistance.

To show our utter impartiality, we’ve got two press links: one from the Guardian[1]
and one from the Mail [2] Both say the same thing. An international
team has used some really robust data (2000-2018; 118 countries) to show some
sort of link between rising levels of pollutant particulates and rising levels
of antibiotic resistance. They also have the admirable humility to admit that
they don’t know how or why yet. But we strongly suspect they have opened the
door on a vast new area of research in public health.

From which we draw a number of conclusions, none of them all that nice:

1 Things generally are worse than we thought

2 My freedom to drive my white van through your neighbourhood deeply
conflicts with your freedom to live (Sun readers please note)

3 What else is further driving antibiotic resistance? Smoking? Ultra
processed foods? Suddenly it’s wide open.

4 Should the UK Government sack Michael “we’ve had
enough of experts” Gove and spend the money on research
into this matter?

We await your responses with interest.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/aug/07/air-pollution-linked-rise-antibiotic-resistance-imperils-human-health

[2]
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12383945/Air-pollution-linked-rise-antibiotic-resistance-poses-significant-threat-human-health-world-study-claims.ht

[3] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(23)00135-3/fulltext

#pollution #lung disease #asthma #antibitic resistance #diesel #pm2.5
#public health

 

When we were young, the nether end of Charing Cross Road and the little courts and alleys off it always held a certain type of bookshop. Smells of joss-sticks, batik and tie dyed fittings, odd posters of karmic universes ,everywhere. And crowded shelves reflecting the more outre pre-occupations of the human mind-Bigfoot, UFOs, shamans, tantric meditations……and a vast array of books on all kinds of alternative therapies, herbs, lifestyles, cookery and diet plans. Chaotic, disorganised and essentially harmless-a far cry from our real worries of the time, such as Communism and the rise of the National Front. A hippy and a stormtrooper seemed to be a very long way apart. Or are they?

According to James Ball of the Guardian, there’s now a rather well established production line taking new age therapy fans and turning them into fascists [1].Jjames documents a few well known cases, like the hooligans who stormed the US Congress in 2020. But he also delves into the psychological roots of the conspiracists, and tries to answer the question we’re always posing here, Why do they do it? Why do so many people give up the critical faculties of their minds, which after all, is our chief evolutionary adaptation? According to James

Academic researchers of conspiracy theories have speculated about whether their rise in the 20th century is related to the decline of religion. In a strange way, the idea that a malign cabal is running the world – while far more worrying than a benevolent God – is less scary than the idea that no one is in charge and everything is chaos. People who have a reason to mistrust the mainstream pillars of society – government, doctors, the media, teachers – are more likely to turn to conspiracy theories for explanations as to why the world is like it is.

As we speculated yesterday, most people crave certainty. Given the utter chaos of the real world, from the quantum level up, that’s understandable if wrong. For a long time, waht might be termed the rational community, that tiny segment of the population which educates, manages and teaches- were able to reassure them both with our discoveries in science and the cornucopia of bright shiny toys to play with which were such an easy by product of that science. Things like the Iraq war and the crash of 2007-2008 broke much of their trust (who can blame them? to quote WH Auden

All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good. (from Poets.org)

The lights of science and reason are now flickering dangerously low, just as they were in September 1939 Will they soon vanish forever?

we thank Mr Peter Seymour for this story

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/aug/02/everything-youve-been-told-is-a-lie-inside-the-wellness-to-facism-pipeline?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-5

[2]https://poets.org/poem/september-1-1939

#alternative medicine #conspiracy #fascist #irrationality

Alongside our other preoccupations, such as cocktails and the shortage of antibiotics, LSS has often covered the touchy issue of identity politics. (LSS 22 10 20 was a typical example, but it wasn’t the only one. We have always felt that identity trumps just about every other concern in the way people vote and think, even at the cost of their own economic well being.

So it’s nice to see our concerns shared and expressed by finer minds. And among such minds, few are finer than that of Simon Kuper, who writes for the Financial Times on an eclectic range of subjects from Association Football to politics. In our link below [1] he returns to the painful subject of Israel and compares its deep identity crisis with that of the United States (astute readers will recall our own essay into this territory (LSS 29 7 23) But Simon does it much better, and really names names, and the terrible dangers that they represent.

The ethno-nationalist thing has always bedevilled progressives from Enlightenment Philosophers all the way out Left to Communists, because it’s not really supposed to exist. We remember Medieval History books in which Swabians hated Saxons, and vice versa. The fact that they are now all Germans meant little at the time. Identities are indeed entirely arbitrary and subjective. But they are intensely real to those who hold them at any one time. And as Simon points out, the lower you go down the social scale, the more fervently these passions are nurtured.

If all nationalities were abolished tomorrow, would people stop hating each other? We think not; probably, you would find the red blood group O people at war the the As, Bs and ABs or the left handers with the right handers or something. Identity and xenophobia are as intrinsic to the human condition as bipedality and colour vision. To acknowledge its existence, and find strategies to cope, offers the possibility of engineering sustainable systems. Because if they fail this time, we are all lost forever.

[1]https://www.ft.com/content/9a8a9bc0-0a81-43e6-b215-bde2611ba6cc

#ethno nationalist #xenophobia #israel #united states #palestinians #enlightenment #simon kuper