We are in receipt of a communication from that most erudite of readers, Mrs Lee of Fulham, London, (currently travelling on a cultural tour of Europe),who writes:
“O, Cocktailmeister, much as we admire your recipes and suggestions, some of them do seem to suggest another age. An expansive age, an art deco age, a world of liners, blazers and streamlined limousines. All very well, but it has passed! Where is something for the ultra modernists, those cool dudes who wear clothes that make them look like the residents of certain suburbs of Los Angeles, Ca, and who spend more time on their computers and mobile telephones than in erudite conversation with educated peers?”
“Ok,” we said, “a have you in mind?”
And she has come up with this-the 5G, which comprises: gin, grenadine, grapefruit juice, ginger beer and Galliano.
Take a well cooled cocktail shaker and add five or six ice cubes. Add two measures of gin, one of Galliano and one of fresh grapefruit juice. Shake well and pour with ice into a tumbler. Top up with cold ginger beer for taste. Decorate with a small twig of mint or borage.
Some correspondents have enquired if they may substitute the ginger beer with Guinness, but we do not recommend it.
Well, thank you Mrs Lee, and keep your suggestions coming. And the same goes for everyone else!
Slowing recoveries around the world from China to the US, rising inflation, massive debts. You could be forgiven for thinking that the headwinds blowing across the world economy were due to our old friend COVID 19, but not so, according to Larry Elliott of The Guardian.[1] He sees a deeper structural malfunction comparable to the famous long depression that started after the financial crash of 1873 and lasted for the rest of the nineteenth century. The parallels with 2007-08 are obvious,
Well, not only does he provide a masterly analysis, but also shows what the way out will be-so read it and find out. Since 2007 the feeling that the whole world is living with a ild but chronic case of flu is almost palpable. There has to be way out for everyone, we deserve better than this.
Amid the square parsecs of coverage on The Retreat from Kabul(2) and the endless discussions on, strategically, was it a Good Thing? or a Bad Thing?, the fact remains that on the ground, in Afghanistan, the forces of feminism have suffered a grievous blow. Life for women in there is going to get worse for a very, very long time. From that, it’s all too easy to sink into sorrow, culpability and despair. When that threatens, as any good psychiatrist will tell you, you need to find Hope from somewhere. And we have found it.
Thanks to the inestimable Channel 4 News, we have discovered the existence of a remarkable organisation called The Centre For Women’s Justice. Remarkable because they do what we believe to be central at LSS. Do something different but use sensible mainstream tools to do it. And their USP is to add tip top legal brains to all the different fights for rights going on everywhere. They cite the long list of abuses-rape, domestic violence, forced marriage, genital mutilation, the usual charge sheet. They admit that some advanced countries have passed laws against these atrocities. But without enforcement-holding the feet of Governments to the fire, so to speak-laws are just bits of paper in a dusty book of statutes. So, paraphrasing their own words, they
hold the state accountable for failures in the prevention of violence against women…..support groups who challenge individuals and laws that perpetuate such violence and , crucially: Undertake strategic litigation and facilitate legal assistance
A small start you might say after the disaster in Central Asia. But consider this; the most intelligent man we have ever met once told us that progress starts from well organised centres of excellence, and spreads out. This is as true of science and education as it is of sports teams. In the related field of animal rights, Arthur Schopenhauer was quick to recognise the pioneering work of British organisations like the RSPCA, whose ideas later went global. Feminists and all progressives round the world-here is a beacon and a template for you. We link below [1] but as you scroll, please remember there is a donate button for these people too!
your guide to to intriguing little stories which may yet run
We at LSS are far from anti religion. Trouble is, when it goes wrong or you concentrate too much on purity over everything else, you can get problems, as the following cautionary tales illustrate
Thrashing out the issues: John Smyth QC was quite a guy. He was a relentless moral crusader, a committed Christian activist and a Recorder Judge. Yet according to allegations reported by Harriet Sherwood of the Guardian, Smyth was implicated in lurid abuse scandals at a whole series of summer camps run for the education of young men from Britain’s elite schools. Remember Bleeding for Jesus is the case for the prosecution, and we have yet to hear from the Smyth family (Smyth died in 2018), Whatever the final truth, it’s a sobering reminder of the psychological currents that flow through the more exclusive and righteous organisations.
Rifts in the family According to our more nervous and excitable commentators the Fall of Kabul is a triumph for the forces of Islam over a morally decadent, cowardly West. Except that the truth is never that simple. For one thing the Taliban are militant Sunnis with strong links to Saudi Arabia, while their huge neighbour Iran is staunchly Shi’ite. it gets even more complicated, as Jason BurkeWhy not all Islamists Extremists are buoyed by the Taliban’s victory for the Guardian, shows. Jason takes you through a lot of names and groups, so you’ll learn a lot. Let this be a taster:
……the Islamic State (Isis), which considers the Taliban “apostates” because of their willingness to negotiate with the US, their apparent pragmatism and their failure to apply Islamic law with sufficient rigour.
Seems that however hard you try, there’s always someone who thinks you could be doing better!
Biodiversity: it’s not all gloom. On the better theme, the media are full of declining habitats, dead animals and burning forests. But herculean efforts are being made to resore the wounds somewhere, as Nature Briefings reminds us Seeking Biodiversity winners and losers
We are ourselves busy reporting on biodiversity projects on the south coast of England, and hope to bring you more news soon. In the meantime, have a good weekend
Photo by Sebastian Coman Photography on Pexels.com
Tonight LSS bids a sad farewell to one of the greats in his field-Douglas Ankrah, inventor of the Pornstar Martini. We cannot improve on Katie Feehan’s piece for the Mail [1] below. Suffice to say
The Ghanaian-born entrepreneur invented the Pornstar Martini in 2003 while he was working at his cocktail bar Townhouse, in Knightsbridge, west London. The cocktail features a mix of vanilla vodka, fresh passion fruit, passion fruit liqueur, vanilla syrup and lime juice, plus a shot of Prosecco on the side.
Douglas, who was always a gentleman was inspired to invent the concoction while visiting a gentlemen’s club in Cape Town and went on to pioneer it at the famous Town House in London in 2003. To maintain the purity of his art he went on to produce it at his own bar, LAB. If our research is correct, it was right on the site of a former independent music-and-dance theatre which some will remember well.
Everyone can enjoy a good martini if you click on link [2] where Kathryn Maier of Liquour.com has no less than 11 variations: that’s enough for everyone, surely. And let them raise a glass to Douglas, a true entrepreneur, creator and citizen of the world.
Everyone remembers the promise of the White Queen to Alice in Through the Looking Glass: “…..the rule is: jam tomorrow and jam yesterday-but never jam today.” Children of the nineteen sixties and every subsequent decade will remember the same promise for nuclear fusion: it’s just around the corner, it’ll be an endless supply of cheap clean energy, the living standards of the world will step change……..” and so on, and so on.
So news of yet another exciting breakthrough [1] US Lab stands on the threshold of key nuclear fusion goal” by Paul Rincon for the BBC has once again caused us to utter the hackneyed words “oh yeah?” It’s not that we don’t want controlled nuclear fusion. It’s just that we’ve sat around wanting it since 1973 (really, some of go back that far) Good luck to the hard working experts who are still plugging away at it. But they may be missing a trick.
Because sitting close to us is a free source of illimitable controlled nuclear fusion. It’s called the Sun. It already provides abundant power, as anyone with a solar panel will tell you. It drives the winds which turn all those lovely turbines. God help us, it even put the energy in all that filthy coal and oil which ignorant people so love to burn. Wouldn’t a little money poured into tapping that pay better dividends, at least in the medium term?
One day controlled fusion will arrive. But we think the timescale is so long that there is more chance of the White Queen redeeming her pledge to Alice first. Meanwhile, let’s use what we’ve got. It’s so much easier.
You may be fed up with us saying so, but we think that the most pressing issue of our time is the appearance of so many people who defy reason and have become allergic to evidence. We alluded to it recently (LSS 9 august) and we are always open to anyone with any new idea at all on how to solve this depressing conundrum.
Far wiser minds than our own share our concerns, however. Nature Briefings has an intriguing piece by scientist Lee McIntyre on how he goes into hornets’ nests full of science deniers and flat earthers and actually tries to reason and convince. Brave man. Noble soul. Surprisingly he does seem to get results-sometimes. [1] [2] Ultimately the key to all this seems to be respect-and that’s not a bad way to treat anyone!
If we have got this right, both links should lead to the same piece, but we think it’s so important you should have every possible chance
[2] Talking to science deniers is not hopeless, says philosopher of science Lee McIntyre — if you’re willing to build trust and listen. (Nature | 5 min read)
Something much much bigger than the Taliban is taking place on the dusty plains of Central Asia. News that Russia and China have formally commenced joint military exercises should fill all of us with deep disquiet. Brad Lendon of CNN [1] tries to put an optimistic gloss on things. He says that the interests of the two counties do not converge. China has no interest in Crimea, nor Russia in the South China Sea. Perhaps. But by the same token, analysts of the 1930s would have alleged that Imperial Japan had no interest in Belgium, nor Nazi Germany in Hong Kong. Power finds its own reasons nonetheless.
It is easy to see what China gains from this for they are the overwhelmingly superior partner. But Russia? No one can penetrate the inner workings of the Kremlin. But someone there must have looked at the map and seen the enormous, resource-rich lands of Siberia and how vulnerable they are to a thrust from below. Better perhaps to make friends and supply the resources peacefully, before they are taken by force. It was the thinking followed by Joseph Stalin between 1939 and 1941, and it did not end well.
Western nations, where a flicker of freedom is still alive, have much to fear. We cannot wait in the hope of others falling out. However disastrous the loss of Afghanistan, at least it frees up money and resources to be better deployed elsewhere. Above all it shows how self-defeating our own little quarrels over borders and tariffs really are, when vaster issues are at stake.
Know your enemy Overseas readers may have missed it, but UK media this week were treated to the spectacle of an angry crowd of anti-vaccination activists and COVID deniers storming what they took to be the Headquarters of the BBC. Except the corporation had moved out eight years before. The few remaining studios were leased to rival broadcasters ITV, who use them for worthy things like afternoon women’s programmes. Surely the anti-vaxxers can’t object to that? It got a lot of ribald coverage. We chose this link from The London Economic because of the droll tweets it lists:
Green light to fly? Thoughtful people may be genuinely worried that their jet powered holiday to Marbella may be bad for the planet. Fair comment. Now a team at Cranfield University led by Professor Bobby Sethi is on the brink of developing a practicable hydrogen fuel. Here’s a quote from the article by Gwyn Topham for The Guardian as Sethi describes a breakthrough afternoon in the Lab
“……we were almost certainly the only people in the world right then burning anything without producing CO2.”
The New Snobbery The moment Labour lost it was in 2010 with the hapless Gordon Brown‘s contemptuous dismissal of the concerns of a voter in front of the TV cameras. It exposed deep fault lines between the educated and those who are less so. The phenomenon is not confined to Britain. At the real premises of the BBC, Brian Wheeler looks at the work of David Skelton, who thinks it is the key political divide of our times.
Know when the game’s up Fans of LSS will know we are big fans of the great Amy Chua, whose searing analysis of ethnic hatred Political Tribes exposed cataclysmic flaws in US policy in both Vietnam and Afghanistan. Whatever the cost in human rights, the West was never going to win in Afghanistan, as Natasha Lindstaedt explains in The Conversation. The USSR thought they were bringing progress there too-remember what happened next? Putin may gloat that he no longer has NATO forces somewhere under his southern flank. But how long can he keep the Chinese out of Central Asia? Good luck with that one, drhoogh!
Well done to Nature A few years ago Nature, the foremost scientific journal in the world commissioned Flora Graham to bring its massive learning to the ordinary Joe. The result was Nature Briefings, a marvellous dispatch from the cutting edge of science, geared down so that anyone can understand it in their coffee break. Today they celebrate a collection of their very best, as voted by their readers. If you have followed LSS to any extent, that means you. Enjoy
No one should let life pass by without visiting the beautiful island of Madeira, situated in the blue waters of the sub-tropical Atlantic. It’s like a huge garden, full of picturesque towns, gardens and rugged largely unspoilt scenery. And get this- it’s very low in discothéques and other types of dance halls, beaches and all the other drawbacks which tend to attract families, and the -er- popular set, if you see what we mean. They all go to the Algarve, and good luck to them.
The drink of Madeira par excellence is the eponymous fortified wine. A mathematical set theorist would detain you for hours describing all the different combinations of brands and flavours. We advise you to check our links at [1] and [2] below for the details. But what you really need to know, gentle reader, is that it comes in four types: Malvasia, Bual, Verdelho and Sercial. which describes a range from rich and sweet to nicely dry. Connoisseurs will often kick off a meal with a Sercial aperitif and finish off the cheese and nuts with a good Malvasia. A bit like Sherry and Port? Perhaps. But Madeira has its own history and flavour, and we earnestly advise acquiring a good bottle to sit alongside your decanters of fortified wines, just in case the Queen or Mr Biden drop by and are feeling thirsty.
Visitors to Madeira come by plane and boat, as it’s a particularly favourite stop off on the cruise circuit. All should enjoy a visit to the Madeira Wine Lodge in the middle of Funchal. After six Tours of Duty on the island, we know it well. It’s not just the tastings and all the presents in the gift shop. The building is made of ancient timbers and you can literally smell the curranty flavours of the maturing vintages as you walk round. A must for the sophisticated tourist of all nations.
UK residents can get a good Madeira in our better supermarkets such as Waitrose or a big Sainsbury. A good entry point might be a Blandy’s Malvasia aged at about five to ten years. Even when opened for a quick swig, it usually keeps for years. Sorry we can’t comment on outlets for our overseas chums.
So after dinner tonight, crack out your best cheddar and stilton, turn down the lights and enjoy the savour of this fine wine in the company of a loved one or old friends. And don’t overdo it-because that lovely dark bottle’s got spirits in it as well as wine. So you were warned.
Learning, Science and Society 