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Even if we somehow survive global warming there’s another threat almost certain to get us. Once again LSS returns to the theme of antibiotic resistance, when organisms like E. coli become so resistant to our drugs that they multiply as they like and kill us all. Horribly.

We’ve used these blogs often to discuss progress in antibiotic research, and also more outre ideas like the use of AI and bacteriophages (LSS passim) Now a new approach is being pioneered by Cesar de la Fuente of the University of Pennsylvania, in collaboration with the University of Naples. Using AI algorithms they are scanning the body’s vast storehouse of proteins and peptides, and discovering many hitherto unsuspected properties. Most exciting for us, gentle readers, is that many of these naturally produced molecules seem to have strong antimicrobial functions. This raises the possibility of a third method of treatment to run alongside improvements to to conventional antibiotics,and improvements to the immune system like mRNA vaccines.

Raul Limon‘s article for El Pais is a useful summary of Cesar’s work, and on progress generally in this field. English readers, be warned: you’ll need your translation app.

https://elpais.com/ciencia/2021-11-16/identificadas-2603-moleculas-producidas-por-el-organismo-de-forma-natural-que-tienen-capacidades-antibioticas.html

#protein #peptide #antibiotic #nature #bioscience #antimicrobials

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“He was not for an age, but for all time.” said Ben Johnson of William Shakespeare. The general consensus about Shakespeare was that he was so marvellously fair. Goodies and baddies went out of the window and in their place came an examination of the deep psychological drives of what may be called the human soul. Now we at LSS are proud to offer you the works of a contemporary playwright who imitates Shakespeare at least in that insight and objectivity.

James Graham is now 39 and grew up in a village bitterly divided by the miners’ strike of the 1980s. Perhaps this is why his plays are ostensibly political-like Shakespeare’s best. He covers such diverse subjects as Brexit, Rupert Murdoch and the bitter feuding of Gore Vidal and William Buckley. Yet the plays are so balanced and funny that even some of their subjects go to see them twice, as Rupert Murdoch is rumoured to have done with Ink.

There is something engaging about a media and political titan who can view an honest portrayal of themselves on stage. We cannot conceive of any past or present rulers of China and Russia doing so, and would take great care not to members of the cast, crew or audience of any such production. Murdoch believes in giving people what they want, not what educated people say they ought to want. He thinks the simple choices of the marketplace are more effectively democratic than a ballot. Perhaps this is a fallacy. But to sneer at Murdoch and his tribe of followers as so many do is to go down to massive political and economic defeat again and again and again.

What James Graham does is to open a space where we can discuss the oldest political question of all: do we construct on the way people actually are? Or do we aspire to something different and better? And be grateful-under Murdoch you are still free to ask that question. People in certain other places are not.

our link today from Dorian Lynskey of the Guardian covers the above issues in a refreshingly easy style

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2021/nov/15/james-graham-dominic-cummings-rupert-murdoch-gore-vidal-william-buckley-best-of-enemies

#freedom #humannature #theatre #rupert murdoch #gore vidal #william buckley #shakespeare

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some stories which go beyond the daily swirl

Tabloids heal thyself A peculiar feature of British life is the immense impact that our popular newspapers have on everything from politics and economics to our viewing habits. Simply because so many trust them as impeccable sources. Perhaps the following piece from Joe will show how perilous this trust may be. If they can’t get things right on a story about pubs and chips, what hope is there for their thoughts on macro-economic policy?

https://www.joe.co.uk/news/the-old-man-collecting-chips-from-every-single-wetherspoon-isnt-who-you-think-he-is-298912

_{we thank Mr Peter Seymour of Hertfordshire for this story}

At last, a European Capital Market? The irony is that Brexit has probably benefited the European Union more than the UK, leaving them free to speed up their plans for integration on everything from defence to law. Nowhere is this clearer than renewed attempts to form a single Capital Market for equities, sovereign debt and securities clearances, a Philip Stafford of the Financial Times makes clear. The point is not whether the particular enterprise of Mr Boujnah fails or not; it is the overall direction of travel. If London is not careful it could find itself isolated from the main stream of commerce, and dwindle to something the size of Geneva. Or Liechtenstein?

https://www.ft.com/content/baf47da8-e02d-4295-b22b-55f885cc65a1

Language and motor skills One of the great puzzles in science is where language came from. Perhaps we will never know. But one clue is the close association of regions of the brain which deal with fine motor skills, such as tool-handling, and language functions. Claudio Brozzoli and Simon Thibault explain their fascinating findings for The Conversation

https://theconversation.com/tool-use-and-language-skills-are-linked-in-the-brain-and-practising-one-improves-the-other-171464?

China US accord-what’s it worth? An intelligent follower of this blog wisely counselled that “you won’t do anything about global warming unless you get China on board.” We agree, but we think this is true for the US too, who were distinctly foot-dragging until the arrival of the more enlightened Biden Administration. Nature, surely the most intelligent of publications, gives a first take on the two countries’ Cop-side agreement , linking to the admirable Washington Post. At least it means the two superpowers are not fighting each other-yet.

The world’s two biggest greenhouse-gas emitters have issued a surprise joint declaration at COP26. The statement reiterates the countries’ commitment to the 2015 Paris agreement and promises “enhanced climate actions” to make it happen. “We both see that the challenge of climate change is an existential and severe one,” said Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua at an unannounced news conference. “In the area of climate change, there is more agreement between China and the US than there is disagreement.” The declaration was met with cautious optimism by observers, who note that it is short on firm deadlines or specific commitments, and partly restates a shared statement made in April.The Washington Post | 9 min read Reference: US-China joint Glasgow declaration

Exhibitions at Olympia Now we have all this fantastic AI lying around, what are we going to do with it? One use might be to make fantastic reconstructions of past glories, such as the original home of the Olympic games in Greece. Ian Randall has a charming article for the Mail about researchers who have done just that. LSS confession: we used to live near the eponymous area of West London, but it was nothing like this!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-10186537/Archeology-Microsoft-uses-AI-digitally-recreate-site-Olympic-Games.html

#greece #olympia #earls court #capital markets #global warming #climate change #china #USA #tabloids

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Our American readers have been known to complain-“LSS is a bit Anglo Centric, there’s a lot more to the world than one part of one small island in the Eastern Atlantic!” True, very true, and point taken. So as the United States of America (and certain other countries) have their Thanksgiving Dinners coming up soon, we mark the occasion with a cocktail homage to the humble cranberry.

Why the cranberry? Well, on 25th November many Americans will be complementing their traditional turkeys made from the juice of this humble but exceedingly worthy red berry. Many readers of LSS will know that the American-deployed cranberry will most likely be Vaccinium macrocarpyn as opposed to the more British V. oxycoccus. But let’s not be cranberry purists! The juice of the little red fruit is packed with any number of vitamins and minerals, especially manganese, so moderate amounts will do you good. So without further ado, let’s look at three possibilities from Hamlyn’s Ultimate Cocktail Book which bring out the cranberry to its best.

Sea Breeze Put one measure of vodka, 1.5 measures of grapefruit juice, and 1.5 measures of cranberry juice into a hurricane glass. Crush 5 ice cubes and stir but don’t spill. Decorate with lemon and lime slices and serve with a straw. Dead simple, and a perfect opener for party guests, we say.

Sex on the Beach To be honest neither sex nor beaches seem to rank especially high on anyone’s agenda in freezing November, but this one’s got cranberries, so it makes the cut. Take a cocktail shaker and add 1/2 measure vodka, 1/2 measure peach schnapps, 1 measure cranberry juice, 1 measure fresh orange juice, and one of pineapple juice. Add 4-5 ice cubes and shake ’til they break. Pour to a tall glass, decorate with a cherry or two and serve with an environmentally-friendly straw Perhaps certain staid Puritan circles may disapprove of the name-but, hell, even Puritans have to come from somewhere, same as the rest of us.

,This one’s non alcoholic for the drivers. Put 600ml of cranberry juice and 600ml of fresh orange juice in a saucepan together with 150ml of pure water. Add 1/2 teaspoon of ground ginger and 1/2 teaspoon of mixed spice. Bring gently to boil and add sugar to taste. Simmer for about 8 minutes and serve to punch cups. Hamlyn recommend decorating with cherries mint sprigs, kumquats and a few cranberries. If you live some where near a fully stocked supermarket that is!

Well, there’s a few curtain raisers for any cranberry-themed dinner party. We hope you enjoy your day, whenever that is, and look forward to weekly round up tomorrow, where we have some great ideas for you

#cranberry #thanksgiving #USA #turkey

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The problem is not that so many lies are told, but that even more people believe them. So wrote someone far more intelligent than ourselves, but we can’t remember who it was. But we believe them, as should you. For the internet (and public sphere generally for that matter) is awash with lies, half truths and fake news.

As good children of the Enlightenment we assumed that this couldn’t be Reason and the findings of science, it was confidently asseverated, would slowly wash away at all misconception error, facilitating a world of abundance and wisdom for all.

You may have noticed this hasn’t happened.

So once again, what is it that drives so many people to believe the stories of chancers, grifters, con artists, boiler room boosters and the rest of the mendacious melange who have done so much damage over the last fifteen years or so? What we have done today is to offer you an assortment of writers and researchers who consider this trope from a variety of angles and perspectives in the hope that you have time to consider this most pressing of issues.

Janice Wood of Psych Central looks at why people continue to believe lies even after they have been proved wrong

https://psychcentral.com/news/2018/09/23/why-do-we-believe-lies-even-after-they-are-proven-wrong#1

Bill Gates and Yuval Noah Harari (great duo!) have a podcast and a bit of test. Our advice is-when you come across people who are this bright, listen to what they say

https://www.gatesnotes.com/Podcast/Why-do-we-believe-lies

It’s not only other people who believe lies- you have probably done it too. An nice exercise in humility for us all from Michael Austin of Psychology Today:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ethics-everyone/202106/why-we-believe-lies-and-how-resist

Well there’s some jumping off points, but these tips of the iceberg which we have shown you are filled with good links and jumping-off points. We hope that you’ll take them, because this is the biggest issue of our times.

#lies #fakenews #deception #fraud #massdelusion #conspiracy theories

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Tonight in England is Bonfire Night, Firework Night, call it what you will. It’s when we remember the Gunpowder plot of 1605 when blundering toff Guy Fawkes and chums tried to bring down Parliament and the constitution by blowing the entire building up with high explosives. Maybe if he’d just asked help from Boris Johnson, he could have saved a whole lot of money on gunpowder.

Tonight we will be out in the dark as fireworks flash and crash overhead, while the rich smell of burning wood pervades the air. Wrapped up against the early winter cold (this is the night winter really comes, not Halloween) and eager for some warming refreshment to kill the chill, in keeping with the occasion.

So what better drink to warm the inner man and woman than a nice hot punch? We’ve taken our recipe from a site called Delicious. Which is well worth a visit for all matters food, but on to the task:

Their mix is marvellously simple, but full of good flavours. Basically it’s golden rum, fino sherry, cognac sugar syrup and lemon juice. We’ll let you click to their site to find measures and method, but basically you mix them up in a warmed jug, add hot water, then pour into cups and stir with a stick of cinnamon. It’s the sorts of ingredients that would have been lying in the holds of wooden ships in the Thames on the night of the plot, and would have been well-known to seventeenth century drinkers.

And while you’re at it, why not try another November 5th treat-hot potatoes, baked in their jackets, then cut and filled with lashings of butter and sprinkled with salt and pepper? A quick and nutritious way to feed any number of guests at your firework party, or upon return from the one at the municipal park.

But wherever you are tonight, north or south, enjoy and stay safe. For professional reasons there can be no round up tomorrow, but we’ll see you next week with more scintillating stories and epoch-making exclusives.

The Editors

Hot rum punch

#guy fawkes #boris johnson #fireworks #bonfire #parliament #potatoes #hot punch #winter

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Once the antibiotics run out, modern medicine disappears with them. We need to develop new antibiotics, but we need other approaches as well. thinking outside the current box, if you will. One approach has been the revival of our old friends bacteriophages (LSS passim). But a rather exciting new line comes from the new world of nanomedicine.

Yanping Long and his colleagues have developed artificial macrophages, which will assist the capture and kill process of the body’s natural defences. By mimicking the irregular “hedgehog” like properties of natural macrophages, the researchers have structured their artificial ones to attain similar efficiencies in capturing the pathogens and delivering the “killer” molecules. Results with MRSA infections on rabbit skin look promising.  Alongside new conventional antibiotics other approaches, such as bacteriophages, we may yet be able to wriggle out of this particular threat.

Our link is a rather heavy real scientific paper from Nature Communications,[1]But do not be dismayed, gentle reader! The trick with scientific papers is to read the abstract. Plus this one has some really good diagrams, which by definition are easier to follow.

[1]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26456-9

#antibiotic resistance #macrophages #nanomedicine

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Trouble with the internet, and so many media outlets, is that they all SCREAM AT YOU like commodities brokers, setting the tone for so many of their followers, and adding to the general coarsening and shrill intolerance which now dominates so much of life in the public sphere. What we like at LSS is a calm, cool and thoughtful approach. A rational debate of facts, which nevertheless leads to some surprising conclusions. Well, surprising to us sometimes.

We can offer you no better exemplar than Open Democracy, which tries to find the real interests, be they financial or political, behind so much of what is churning through the 24 hour news cycle. We link to their website below.[1] We strongly advise you to go in and sample. Why not try a particular trope, such as Climate Change for example. [2]You could then compare it to all the coverage around COP26 and the problems that hang off of it. You can always disagree later.

Whatever you think, gentle reader, you have to agree that they at least represent a voice in contrast to the campaigns run by some of the richest and most powerful people in the world, and their hangers on. Of course those people have a right to spend on campaigns in their interests and those of their shareholders. But someone has an equal right to criticise. We think one of those critics should be Open Democracy.

[1] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/

[2] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/the-brexit-dark-money-lobby-has-a-new-target-climate-change-action/

#opendemocracy #global warming #fossil fuel lobby #climate change #astroturf movements

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Sorry-we thought you only get child prodigies in music, but Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) is definitely the exception. To look at his accomplishments is to be dazzled, especially as all was finished by the time of his early death-he didn’t even break forty.

Where shall we start? You want mathematics? He had made important contributions to geometry by the time he was 16, and went on to collaborate with the famous Fermat on probability theory. How about technology? He invented the first calculating machine to save his poor old Dad, who was a taxman, from doing so many calculations. Science. then? Pascal it was who proved that vacuums exist, and whose work led to all kinds of advances in pressure and gas studies. Or how about philosophy? He was the one who showed that science was best done free of received opinions, old books and dead experts.

Growing tired of all this, he turned to theology (a big favourite of Newton‘s). He threw in his lot with a Catholic sect called the Jansenists, whose principal raison d’etre seems to have been opposition to the Jesuits. Jesuits were another Catholic sect whose main aim appears to have been opposing Jansenism. Yet the famous Pascal’s wager which he developed during the bitter controversy is still regarded by persons of Faith as the litmus test of their entirely respectable choice.

For us at LSS, Pascal is prof of many things. That learning of all kinds knows no boundaries of nation and faith. That setting the intelligent free produces long term benefits for the rest of us. And the modern expression of his wide open mind is Wikipedia to which you should donate now. We do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal

#pascal #atmosphericphysics #theology #mathematics #probability #fermat

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issues beyond the daily news cycle

Resolving the muddle in the middle– Human evolution has always been a mess, with warring tribes of anthropologists fighting over every bone. Latest attempt at clarity comes from Mirjana Roksandic and colleagues who identify a line leading to modern humans and lump the rest into the Neanderthals. Two links for you: the first has a diagram which tries to show how all the different early humans link over the last million years. It’s alright going forwards-but any first year student of Complexity Theory would ask:”where are your feedback loops, Dr Roksandic?”

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/evan.21929

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/oct/28/human-species-homo-bodoensis-who-lived-500000-years-ago-is-named

Complexity Theory Talking of which, here’s a whole field of human learning which makes you think again about what you know and how you think about it. It comprises the work of Computer Scientists, Linguists, Information experts, physicist, mathematicians and many others. Many of whom are so bright that, frankly, we struggle to understand. But their work will be vital in umderstanding big data, markets, fluid dynamics and many aspects of biology. Maybe you, gentle reader will do better than us. But to start we are going to recommend a book. Clearly written, but by an absolute doyenne, we think it makes a complex world comprehensible, at least for starters

John H Holland Complexity;a very short introduction Oxford 2013

Private Eye on Prime Ministers Foreign readers may not have heard of a very British Institution called Private Eye. Maybe certain newspapers can tell you a bit about how the country is run. But if you want to know about what the people who run the country actually do, and who gets what contracts, you need to read Private Eye, We think that its editor, Ian Hislop is one of the most fearless, clear-sighted and honest people working in Britain today. But they do lots of jokes too, and nowhere better than their lampoons of our Prime Ministers of the last sixty years. Martin Farr explains in The Conversation

https://theconversation.com/private-eye-at-60-the-prime-ministerial-parodies-that-tell-a-history-of-modern-britain-170416?

No drinks this week Sorry that for personal reasons we were unable to run a Cocktail Hour this week. But why not raise a glass tonight to the COP26 conference in Glasgow and hope against hope that they might come up with something to save us all? Otherwise how will you explain to all those early humans in item #1 “sorry all your brave efforts to come through the ice age were in vain. We blew it !”

#private eye #evolution #complexity theory