Overseas readers may be forgiven for not knowing, but in these islands we have become a little exercised by the tragic death of Head Teacher Ruth Perry who took her own life after an OFSTED inspection went against her school[1] (OFSTED is the body charged with maintaining standards in our schools) Now, there are OFSTED inspections a-plenty, and not everyone inspected shares Ruth’s tragedy. But for us, the whole affair is the tip of an iceberg.

Because the lives of teachers, both State and Private sector is a frazzle of overwork. Not just inspections; but lesson preparation, form filling, marking, tutorials, staff meetings, behaviour issues, angry parents, pushy parents, sports, nativity plays, out-of- hours clubs, indifferent parents, indifferent buildings, and far below indifferent IT. As well as endless directives from Government, local Government, Health and Safety.,,,and the rest. For most, it’s a 24/ 7 job; they don’t even get Sundays, and the profession is leaching staff because they are burned out and finished. And it’s not just teachers-ask any professional. Police Officers, Social Workers, Health Care Professionals will all say the same. Because for more than forty years, English management philosophy has been: keep costs low; invest as little as possible; and whip, whip, whip until the staff have nothing left to give.

Now our rulers are complaining about a ghost army of workers in their fifties who have dropped out of the workplace altogether. Thereby occasioning the need for large numbers of immigrants to fill the vacant posts. And these same rulers grumble and look to force these supposed missing millions back to the sweatshops, whatever their state of health. Which makes us beg the question; why have they gone missing in the first place? Why was work so obnoxious that they would be so keen to avoid it? Did it really require such an awful event to bring it to light?

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/mar/17/headteacher-killed-herself-after-news-of-low-ofsted-rating-family-says

#ruth perry #ofsted #teaching #long hours culture #overwork #investment

Long term followers of this blog (surely long-suffering? -ed) will recognise our predilection for two feeds in particular: Nature Briefings and The Conversation. You know why. Without going on for hours, it boils down to their use of the most intelligent sources, combined with a simple honesty of purpose. They don’t put out scare stories to sell newspapers, or to further the commercial interests of their owners. It’s because it is the truth.

And this time it really is scary, as both agree.[1] [2]. It seems that the Climate Crisis is now so acute that the world is now close to the points where the behaviour of natural systems, such as ice caps and rain forests, becomes non linear. In other words they suddenly break down chaotically and catastrophically. In which case, most of the systems which we rely on to keep us alive-food distribution, power networks, clean water and so on-will fail with them.

What will you do to ensure that your family survives?

[1]https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03849-y?utm_source=Live+Audience&utm_campaign=7579767eac-briefing-dy-20231206&utm_medium=email&

[2]https://theconversation.com/climate-tipping-points-are-nearer-than-you-think-our-new-report-warns-of-catastrophic-risk-219243?utm_medium=email&utm_cam

#global warming #climate change #tipping point #ice cap #rain forest #fossil fuel

Anyone who has visited Provence, as we have often, could fill two paragraphs with its delights: scenery, history, cities, cuisine and fine wines. Yet we never suspected a further hidden secret: its own delightful aperitif to rival the recently-fashionable Aperol as well as longer-established brands such as Campari or the Martinis.

For, in company recently with two Ladies in the fashionable resort of Worthing in the UK (well, Dominic the Builder thinks it resembles Nice) we were at first surprised when they demanded this Melonade as the basis of their pre-lunch cocktails. “What is it?” we enquired. And we were delighted to learn that:

Melonade is a craft aperitif born under the sun of Provence. It’s made from Cavaillon melons, grown in the unique soil of Provence in the South of France, and harvested at maturity for an intensity of taste and optimal flavours.

 Richly aromatic, this fruity aperitif is the ideal base for a laid-back, Southern French-inspired spritz. Alternatively, drink it neat over crushed ice or mix with sparkling water, lemonade, tonic or in cocktails. source/www.melonadeaperitif.com

As you will have guessed, these are the words of the Melonade home site. And we advise you to click on it forthwith, for it goes on to list some delightful recipes which anyone would be proud to mix for guests. Especially with Christmas parties coming up. Of course we can’t list them all. But one of our interlocutors swears by this easy to make Melospritz, which comprises:

60ml sparkling wine (most of you will choose Bolly, no doubt; but Prosecco will do at a pinch)

40ml Melonade

20ml soda water

All poured over ice and garnished with a slice of orange

Now what could better partner the life style of a Cote d’Azur flaneur, relaxing in a pavement cafe in Old Nice and observing the passing tides of humanity? We can’t wait to jump on a plane at Gatwick and try it out. When Spring comes, of course.

#melonade #spritz #Provence #cocktails

Any attempt to study the origins of language faces one huge, almost insurmountable, problem. At one end are the utterances of our nearest relatives, such as Chimps and Bonobos. At the other; fully formed, lexical and syntactic languages which only humans speak. What happened in between? And how long did it take?

The study of language acquisition in infants provides a possible model for how early hominins extracted meaningful patterns from the sounds around them. It even hints at the way protolanguages could have functioned, usefully, before the development of discrete units such as phonemes or systems such as syntax. Jamie Grierson of the Guardian [1] reports on how a Cambridge team has studied the neural response of infants of various ages when presented with songs and nursery rhymes.[2] For us, the key feature is:

The study concluded that infants learn languages from rhythmic information – the rise and fall of tone – as seen in nursery rhymes or songs, such as the ubiquitous alphabet song.

The team at Cambridge also discovered that babies do not begin to process phonetic information – the smallest sounds of speech – until they are about seven months old.

The team think that infants study the rhythm of their interlocutors to determine where words begin and end, and slowly begin to recognise and store a lexicon of repeatable, meaningful phonemes. Words, in other words.

The first hominin to use words faced major problem; none of his/her companions could understand them. However, if protolanguages developed slowly through a series of mutually intelligible codes, they would still be of adaptive use. Especially in certain areas, such as child rearing. The discoveries of the Cambridge team hint, tantalisingly, that such neural pathways may slowly have evolved, and would have been selected for. A worthy winner of Article of the Week.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/dec/01/singing-to-babies-is-vital-to-help-them-understand-language-say-scientists

[2]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-43490-x

#origin of language #humans #hominins #protolanguage #chimpanzee #phoneme #syntax #natural selection

It’s COP time again; they come around so quickly these days, don’t they? In sunny Dubai, the Great and the Good, the Panjandrums of Climate Change, as well as quite a few of the people who got us into this mess, are gathering once again. “This time we’re really going to to something!” they proclaim. Or go the way of a certain well-known group of scaley reptiles, one of whose images is displayed at the head of this post, we surmise.

Out on the fringes, and in certain quarters of the Right-wing press, will be a number of opinionators who will be trying to undermine the whole thing. They and their so-called “experts” never seem do any original research, mind you. But they dig and snipe in the desperate hope of preserving their dirty failing old world, and presumably the memory of a time when they were moderately sexually attractive. (good heavens-which one was it?-ed)

If you want to counter this, a fantastic team of Guardian writers (Damien Carrington, Anna Leach, Paul Scruton and Harvey Symons) has put together a series of quick, easy-to-reference graphs which show the true urgency of the crisis. Here, in terms so simple even a Sun reader could understand them, are all the facts. Rising C0₂ and methane, forest destruction and the creeping flood which will make Noah‘s little matter look like a puddle in the park. One tiny quibble: nothing references the changing C₁₂/C₁₃ ratio level which for us was the clinching piece of evidence that the whole thing is human-made.[2] But that is to quibble. Marvellous work, and we urge every last one of you, gentle readers, to gaze upon it. Assiduously.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/30/the-climate-crisis-explained-in-10-charts-co2-green-energy-cop28

[2]https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/how-do-we-know-that-recent-cosub2sub-increases-are-due-to-human-activities-updated/

#global warming #climate change #cop 28

We have no training in Archaeology. We do like a good new story from that field, however. Hre is one from Nature Briefings, about claims that a 27 000 year old pyramid has been unearthed on the island of Java:

A paper claiming that a structure in Indonesia is the oldest pyramid in the world has raised the eyebrows of archaeologists and prompted an investigation by publisher Wiley’s ethics team. The study concludes that a structure lying beneath the prehistoric site of Gunung Padang in West Java might have been constructed as far back as 27,000 years ago — long before Egypt’s great pyramids. However, critics say that the buried layers are more likely to have occurred naturally, and that there’s no evidence people had the skills to build a pyramid at the time. The site has been linked to a fringe idea of an advanced global civilization that was wiped out 12,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age.Nature | 5 min read

We are in no position to judge the truth or otherwise of the claims made by the discoverers. However, the world is full of huge eye catching claims- from hikes in interest rates all the way out someone peddling an interview with the Abominable Snowman. We cannot be trained in every discipline from Economics to Zoology. But there is one intellectual rule of thumb which can help sift the wheat from the chaff;

extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

And that’s true in every field. So while the idea of a 27000-year- old pyramid is possible, it’s so far out of the bounds of our experience that experts are rightly looking carefully at every shred of evidence. And considering alternative hypotheses. Sometimes something extraordinary does go mainstream (think Geocentrism, Continental Drift and the bacterial origins of infectious disease) But to do so there needed to be the slow accumulation of careful, much-reasoned, evidence.

Anyone can make a big claim about anything. If someone says to you “policy makers have made a mistake over marginal tax rates” it may be worth discussing. But if someone says “Policy Makers are in league with Beelzebub and all his satanic crew” you are going to need a lot of facts before you even give them time of day.

#logic #reason #epidemiology #conspiracy theory #archaeology

As November draws to its darkening close (that’s enough imagery-ed) we would like to offer a big thank you to all our readers, researchers and contributors. There have been a few new followers lately, so welcome aboard our little blog. A few points:

We haven’t always been that good at posting and registering all of your comments. This is for technological reasons: we’re rubbish at it, and still can’t seem to make it work. There are Sasquatches in the backwoods of Canada who are better that IT than we are, so it makes it the more moving when you stick with us despite our ham-fisted incompetence.

We do try to visit as many of your blogs and websites as possible. Many are very good indeed. But you can imagine how, with a colossal mainstream media/new media reading list every day, there cannot always be time.

Why don’t we write in Spanish? Because we are not good enough, that’s why. Unless you are a native speaker it is almost impossible to write in a language without it sounding mangled and artificial. Maybe AI and chat GPT will change that; but by which time it won’t be worth doing anyway.

And finally- why don’t we go out and do more Good Works to help the Needy and Comfort the Afflicted? Well we would. Except recently we have been subjected to a plague of questionnaires about the service we received every time we go into a shop/doctor/dentist/garage/railway station/park…who’s going to do them next, your local Bordello? By the time we’ve answered them, most of the day has gone, and our soul shrivelled with it. The needy and afflicted have probably perished; but the companies concerned have a bit more data to justify cutting out assistants and introducing more of those ghastly serve your self check outs.

We wish all of you success in all your enterprises, and look forward to our next message in this personal tone closer to Christmas.

#blog #lss #thank you

Followers of the “learning” aspect of our little blog will have spotted us trying to suggest a link between education and economic growth. Sometimes we point to the importance of technology as a multiplier of national wealth. Sometimes we’ve tried to say that money is the result of economic success rather than its cause. On the whole we’ve been a bit tentative, grasping at truths that might have been better expressed. Sorry.

Which is why it’s nice to come across a careful, well, studied report which lays out our preoccupations far better than we could. It’s called The Contribution of Education to Economic Growth by Catherine Grant[1], and its published by the Institute of Development Studies. So if you ever get into an argument with someone who wants to reduce the education budget to fund tax cuts, it,s all here for you. Blow by blow, across the whole gamut of primary to tertiary levels, and the whole range of countries from low to middle to high income. But what really stuck out for us here was this simple exposition of the value of education from page one:

First, it increases the collective ability of the workforce to carry out existing
tasks more quickly. Second, secondary and tertiary education especially facilitate the transfer of
knowledge about new information, products, and technologies created by others ………..Finally, by increasing creativity it boosts a country’s own capacity to create new
knowledge, products, and technologies.

It’s that last part which we think justifies our efforts on this blog for the last three years.

There’s some real hostility to education growing again these days. Not just from old style religious fundamentalists but from right wing rationalists who ought to know better. Some of their websites bemoan the existence of Universities as breeding grounds for progressive voters. We have been personally told of Conservative candidates not to waste time on households where they see the presence of books. But, as this report shows, their hostility affords a long term disservice to their societies. But don’t take our word for it: have a look at the Bible, Proverbs 2 13,

13 Happy is the Man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding

14 For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver and the gain thereof than fine gold

If that really is the word of God, then we agree with Him. Or Her.

[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5b9b87f340f0b67896977bae/K4D_HDR_The_Contribution_of_Education_to_Economic_Growth_Final.pdf

#gdp #economics #growth #education #training

Nothing seems more innocent and sensible than to take human sewage waste and spread it on the fields as fertiliser. Simple recycling, and supposedly the way Mother Nature does things. Or did, before we came along.

But what if that innocent sludge contains a cocktail of poisonous compounds? What if they get into the food chain, and come back to us? Could there be long-term effects on cancer rates, birth defects, or nervous diseases? George Monbiot of the Guardian wants some answers to these questions. [1] Because in the UK

…….Instead of taking their liquid waste to dedicated disposal facilities, chemical and cosmetics manufacturers now pay water companies for the right to dump their loads into sewage treatment works. In other words, two completely different waste streams – human excrement and industrial effluent – are being deliberately and irremediably mixed……..

And George goes on to list a a whole raft of nasties including polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxins, phthalates, antibiotics(look, it’s our old favourite!), microplastics, and many more.

We choose our article of the week because it tells us something we didn’t know before we read it. Something potentially significant. something that might affect you, gentle reader. Because although this article is Anglocentric, we seriously doubt that the UK is the only, or the worst, offender. And it teaches us all this final lesson: just because someone appears to be doing the right thing, you still need to look very carefully to make sure. George raises so many long term questions, you just have to look at this one, gentle readers

[2]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/18/cocktail-toxins-poisoning-fields-humans-sewage-sludge-fighting-dirty?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

#fertiliser #pollution #sewage #toxins #food chain