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Always in the office? And if not, taking work home, even at the weekends? Answering calls at the dinner table? And all the time getting snarky comments saying you’re never at work because you go home at seven in the evening? Take a breath, because help may be at hand.

The revolt against the long hours tyranny may just be beginning. Writing in the Guardian, Sarah Jaffe [1]reviews the work of a number of thinkers who are just daring to think that there may be alternatives. That maybe only 32 hours, or possibly even 15, may be enough to get us all we need to lead a balanced life. Keynes was trying to suggest something along these lines as early as 1930, but it never really kicked in. And starting in the 1980s, the cult of hyperworking had taken root, when the rewards started going to those damaged souls who managed to be present 16 hours a day, regardless of the costs to their families, mental health and drink problem. (how truly productive they are is another question).

The problem is that it is easier for lazy bosses to measure hours rather than value, and activity rather than productivity. Rewards like promotion go to the workaholic company man, thus reinforcing the cycle. Everyone ends up in a frenzied cycle of overwork just to keep up, with the results spent on overpriced consumer goods of questionable long term value, to say the least. Of course we all have to work, but does it really have to be this way?

Readers of LSS are distinguished by their ability to think differently, as your feedback makes clear. So we urge you to consider Sarah’s article, however radical it appears. If there is one possession you should care for, it is your time.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/oct/11/should-we-work-less

#jm keynes #work life balance #stress #illness #long hours

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stories which we think will outlast this week’s news cycle

China Crisis Up to now the consensus seems to be that the phenomenal economic success of China will lead it to attack. But what if China has already entered its decline? Hal Brands and Michael Beckley consider this startling possibility for Foreign Policy. Either way, the options look grim

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/09/24/china-great-power-united-states/

AI writes the music Fans of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) will regret that he died before he had barely sketched his 10th symphony. Now a team of AI specialists and musicologists claim to have constructed the symphony, which will be premiered tonight. Can we build a robot that can paint like Velasquez?

https://www.dw.com/en/beethovens-last-symphony-finished-by-ai/a-59412362

French Connection at Fifty Older readers will recall that the 1970s had their own version of modernity, rather different from that we know now. No one captured that gritty, smoke-filled IT-less reality better than William Friedkin in The French Connection, a veritable time machine as well as a great thriller movie to this day as Scott Tobias explains for The Guardian. Did we really, really dress like that?

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/oct/09/the-french-connection-at-50-one-of-the-greatest-new-york-movies-ever

#french connection #films #china #bethoven #AI

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If you are going to have a well-earned end of week glass tonight, raise it to Dmitri Muratov and Maria Ressa. For their levels of physical and moral courage are beyond anything that we at LSS could ever hope to equal, we confess. Their bravery has tried to keep alive the spirit of free independent journalism in the face of brutal, oppressive regimes as our link to The Guardian [1] shows. It has won them a Nobel Peace Prize; but that is small recompense for what they go through daily.

We will let one extract from the piece by Jon Henley and Rebecca Ratcliffe, which quotes the Nobel Citation, do the talking

“Free, independent and fact-based journalism serves to protect against abuse of power, lies and war propaganda,” Reiss-Andersen said, praising the two journalists’ “courageous fight for freedom of expression, a precondition for democracy and lasting peace”.

You can say what you will about journalists, and some of the ones in certain British Tabloids are morally squalid, it’s true. But at their best, journalists are the first line of truth tellers. And if you suppress them, the next truth tellers in line will be scientists, engineers and doctors. In such societies, truth is traded for money and fear. Buildings fail, because no one can say the President’s brother has been dealing in defective steel and concrete. Hospitals close, because the Government cronies have looted all the drugs. The economy regresses as no one can trust official figures any more when they invest. And this is true for regimes of all types-Left Wing, Right Wing, Populist or Religious. You know the places we have in mind.

So if you are free enough to read this tonight, think what Dmitri and Maria must be living through. Guard your freedom-and remember how easily it can be stolen.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/08/journalists-maria-ressa-and-dmitry-muratov-win-nobel-peace-prize

#nobel prize #freedom #free journalism #courage

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Well done to Emma Radacanu and all the other top sportspersons who flit across the pages of the world’s sporting journals. There, we’ve said it. But readers of LSS, being an educated. discerning bunch, look elsewhere for persons to celebrate. That’s why autumn is important to us, because it’s Nobel Prize season.

Poor old Emma! One day she will learn the sports celebrities are here today and gone tomorrow. Ever heard of Alfredo di Stefano or David Beckham? Thought not.* But Nobel prize work is like laying stones in the enormous cathedrals of human learning. It’s important at the time-and other people will come along and build on it. So today we are going to celebrate the work of chemists Benjamin List and David MacMillan (see Nature below) We won’t say much, but their work will reduce pain, increase life and make people happier for centuries to come (assuming Mr Biden and Mr Xi don’t blow up the world between them) It’s without frontiers, because molecules don’t have countries. And in that sense, it tells a tale. Read, we beg you.

Elegant catalysts win chemistry Nobel

Chemists Benjamin List and David MacMillan share this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing a technique called asymmetric organocatalysis, which is widely used today for the production of drugs and other chemicals. The process relies on small organic molecules rather than big biological enzymes or compounds based on heavy metals. That makes it a cheaper, and more environmentally friendly, option for some reactions List and MacMillan separately developed some of the first organocatalysts and showed that they can drive asymmetric catalysis, where a reaction produces more of the left-handed version of a molecule than the right-handed one, for example. This is important in fields such as medicine, where the two mirror images of a molecule can produce very different biological effects.Nature | 5 min read

#joe biden #xi jinping #nobel prize #chemistry #catalyst #medecine

*they were Association footballers of bygone days

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It’s strange, it’s insoluble, but it always works. 3X+1 is in infamous Collatz conjecture. And it works like this. Take any positive integer(whole number). If it’s odd, multiply by three and add one. If even, divide by two. And just keep going. And going. And going. Sooner or later your operations will end in a loop of just three integers:4, 2 and 1. No one has formally proved it yet, but every number tried always ends up the same.

This is the fascination of mathematics. It’s one of those curious small ideas which suddenly produce a vast ecology of learning. Like fractals, imaginary numbers, fibbonacci sequences and so on. Mathematicians spend careers studying them, ending up with mountains of data and vast computer algorithms. Sometimes they get a formal proof, sometimes they don’t. But for us, it’s not quite the point, maybe because we are not mathematicians.

What we are is scientists, much of the time. Or at least Natural Philosophers. And what interests us is the way these mathematical conjectures describe deep patterns in nature. Take fractals-they are more than a mathematical game, they describe patterns of growth in all sorts of living things. The Collatz conjecture seems to accurately describe the way corals grow. Imaginary numbers were entirely made up-but you can’t understand the equations for all sorts of electromagnetic phemonena without them. Are all these formulae hinting at deeper structures in reality which we do not yet understand, or have hardly glimpsed?

We have a nice video by some enthusiastic Americans which explans Collatz incredibly well. You’ll be amazed by the amount of data they have squeezed out, and the pictures. And remember, any learning, if honestly done, will probably be useful some day.

#mathematics #nature #fractal #conjecture #sequence

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stories which we think will last for more than one day

Electron crystals-clear? When we were young, we were taught that everything was built out of atoms. Now, amazingly, someone has had a go at making a form of matter from the next level down, tiny electrons. This was so impressive we had to put it first. Read this report from Nature, This is a solid made of electrons

If the conditions are just right, some of the electrons inside a material will arrange themselves into a tidy honeycomb pattern — like a solid within a solid. Physicists have now for the first time directly imaged these ‘Wigner crystals’, named after theorist Eugene Wigner. Researchers built a device containing atom-thin layers of two semiconductors and cooled it to just a few degrees above absolute zero. This slowed the electrons between the two layers enough so that they formed the elusive material.Nature | 4 min read
Reference: Nature paper

What happens to old Windfarms? They’re clean, they’re green they’re productive-what’s not to like about windfarms? Well, there’s what to do about the old blades for one thing, because they only last about thirty years. And now, not only are they piling up by the thousand, they’re very hard to recycle. We’ll reproduce a thoughtful blog which at least gives an introduction to this issue. But we think it’s going to be very big, very soon.

https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2021/03/16/the-tragedy-of-wind-turbine-blade-disposal/

Turkey Carvings We at LSS have always been big fans of the Neolithic. It’s like crossing your first farm set with The Golden Bough-all those sheep, cattle, wheat and buildings combined with deeply felt and bizarre fertility rituals. It’s amazing how early it got going in some places as Sam Tomkin explains for the Mail online:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-10050217/Stunning-carvings-human-figures-heads-uncovered-Karahantepe.html

Well that’s it for this week. We’re off to spend the next two days hunting for fuel. Wish us luck

#solids #electrons ##globalwarming #windfarms #neolithic #culture

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Historians will record that the UK’s Brexit debate ended precisely on 29th September 2021 when Sir Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition Labour Party, declared that the task was now to make Brexit work.

To optimise Brexit means optimising trade flows, to ensure the highest levels of productivity, investment and living standards. Businesses do best from economies of scale, so that the same production run meets with the fewest barriers of tax, regulation and standards. Nowadays, this is done by forming large trading blocks such as MERCOSUR, NAFTA or the EU. Large countries such as the USA, China and India are primarily trade blocs, with widely differing economies linked into a regulatory whole. But to join them will take time and involve tortuous negotiations, which may not necessarily redound to Britain’s advantage. However, there is a faster way.

No quicker entry can be found to any market than to sell competitive goods. No amount of regulation and control can prevent people from getting what they want. If Britain were to devalue the pound, drastically, it would gain access to major markets of all sizes very quickly. The fall in overseas investment would be quickly reversed as foreigners could buy UK assets such as plant and labour at knock-down prices. British goods and services would enjoy an immense competitive advantage. The ancient, unsolved problem of our trade deficit would slowly begin to solve itself. So devalue-but to what level?

The gravitational theory of economics points the way as the paper by Elias Sanidas shows [1] Countries tend to trade best with the nearest neighbours, If Britain were to set the pound at parity with the Euro, or perhaps slightly under, there would be no need to rejoin the Single Market, Customs Union or Free Trade Area.

There would be downsides of course. Imported cars and foreign holidays would be more expensive. But the economic pain would be pretty widely shared, apart from the very few who have foreign denominated assets such as shares or properties. Yet immigration would be braked, as the value of remittances sent home fell sharply, and there was less incentive for employers to hire cheap foreign labour. Yes, there might be inflation-but is that not happening anyway?

The best economic policies recognise existing trends-and the pound has been falling since 2016 anyway. Why not take advantage of this trend, to recalibrate once and for all, and show that Britain really is taking a new path? Did not Shakespeare, our greatest playwright observe

There is a tide in the affairs of men/which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune/Omitted, all the voyage of their life/Is bound in shallows and in miseries

And surely Shakespeare was right!

[1]https://www.hilarispublisher.com/open-access/world-trade-the-importance-of-neighbors-2162-6359-1000492.pdf

#brexit #trade #britain

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One of the saddest things about Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is that no one is nearer to a clear understanding of causes. Immense amounts of work have been done, as even a cursory glance at our Wikipedia link will show [1]. But we are still far short o a unifying Theory of Mind without which any long term alleviation is hopeless (think of the unifying infectious organism theory changed the understanding of physical disease).

Brave and ingenious researchers keep trying, because they know that we need every scrap of data we can get. That’s why we were sad when we saw how a potentially groundbreaking study into the genetics of this disorder has been suspended. We’ll let Nature tell you the story:

The largest genetic study of genetics and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the United Kingdom has been suspended, following criticism that it failed to properly consult the autism community about the goals of the research. Concerns about the Spectrum 10K study include fears that its data could be misused by other researchers seeking to ‘cure’ or eliminate ASD.
Study leaders say that the research “does not aim to eradicate autism” and that it could contribute to a better understanding of co-occurring conditions such as epilepsy and gut-health problems.Nature | 5 min read

We understand the deep emotional concerns of those who live with the condition and their families. We hope that lessons will be learned all round about consulting with communities in any study. But in the end, only scientific research will offer a way ahead.

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

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Our blog Should You Only Read a Book Once? has drawn many responses. One of the best was from our old friend Gaynor Lynch of London. Her riposte is so cogent that we simply reproduce it full

In your article you posit four questions:
1. How often do you go over a favourite work like War and Peace before you’ve squeezed it dry?
2. And what have you missed in the meantime?
3. when to start reading and when to stop,
4. what is essential learning?

The answer to your questions lies in the purpose of your reading. We read to learn to navigate through the intricacies of modern life, learning and for leisure. We know that low literacy levels are associated with poor health, poor education and negative social outcomes. Reading is also important for developing expressive language skills, the imagination and emotional intelligence.
So how much reading is too much? That depends the purpose of your reading and, on your responsibilities and duties to yourself and others. My mother, at 88, reads compulsively. Good on her I say. Her life is limited in many ways and reading stops her from becoming depressed. So even if you take an instrumental view on reading, reading for pleasure is an important skill for maintaining emotional and psychological wellbeing. If the reading is getting in the way of normal life and social relations then it is too much.
As to reading choices and rereading books, I am very wary of any elitist or prescriptive views about what a person should read.
When it comes to fiction, yes it may be good to stretch ourselves with reading ‘worthy’ literary fiction but it is equally valid to return to an old favourite or pulp fiction for comfort. I have lost count of the number of times I have read the Master and Margarita (Mikail Bulgakov) and Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series and make no apology for this. I enjoy Linda la Plante for her uncomplicated plots, limited cast of characters and simple narrative but once I’ve read them – that’s it, because there is not much more to be had out of them. Charles Dickens has written some of the finest prose fiction that I have ever read and I particularly enjoy Great Expectations. Sometimes I dip in to find a favourite passage just to enjoy the sheer beauty of the language and narrative description. So yes – extend your reading choices to something new, take a risk with something novel (pun intended) but it’s equally OK to enjoy an old friend.
Reading non fiction for information and learning is different. Old textbooks can be dangerously out of date particularly in medicine and the sciences. Even in the humanities, critical perspectives of history and culture change so it is important to read current editions from trusted publishers. As a librarian I was often criticised for pulping old textbooks rather than selling them to raise money for the council. I always defended this because I was aware that often people on limited income would buy these for themselves or their children because they couldn’t afford to buy new ones and could be misinforming themselves.
Old works and editions do have a value though as historical source documents so should not be entirely discarded / ignored. Here we drift into the censorship debate where calls are made, with our ‘woke’ sensibilities, to bar/remove texts which are now considered offensive. Something which I am against and a subject for a whole new debate.
Useful websites on censorship
https://www.cilip.org.uk/general/custom.asp?page=FreedomOfAccessToInformation
https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/censorship/faq#ifpoint3
https://www.indexoncensorship.org/what-we-do/

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Things like Kindle and publishers’ lists are filling with compendiums with generic titles like 100 of the great biggest slammingest books you have to must read before you die! The lists in the back catalogues are the usual worthy offerings- in fiction you’ll find Conrad, Cervantes, Edith Wharton, Jane Austen, the usual excellent but safe canon. In Non-fiction luminaries such as Darwin or Machiavelli prevail, but there’s a problem.

Non fiction tends to date quickly as new discoveries occur. Anything written in human evolution before about 2010 will be instantly out of date as it lay before the discoveries of the Denisovans and all the main work of Professor Paabo. So to be frank, works like The Origin of Species, The Golden Bough or The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire will provide only limited information on their ostensible subject matters-Biology, Anthropology and History. They are Great Works. But the danger, particularly to the uneducated is getting hung up on them. We came across fans of Sir James Frazer who thought they knew it all about human life, but completely missed the groundbreaking work of Rachel Carson in Silent Spring.

So, when to start reading, and when to stop? How often do you go over a favourite work like War and Peace before you’ve squeezed it dry? And what have you missed in the meantime? Anyone who has ever owned a watch will have noticed that there are only so many hours in a day, and you may have a life to live outside the pages of Literature.

We would love to know our readers views on what is essential learning, and what can be done without. Please use the comments spaces to tell us your opinions because this is a question that you will know the answer to better than us!