Old hands on this blog will recall our admiration for the work of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. We still give copies of their seminal 2009 work The Spirit Level as Christmas and birthday presents to this day. Their key insight-that high levels of economic inequality are inimical to a healthy society- seems more valid than ever. But now they go further, averring the the societal dislocations caused by inequality may be actively impairing our response to the looming ecological collapse.
And so we present their thoughts by linking to Nature Briefings. Good scholarship is always provisional. But we think this is pretty robust. And we are fully confident that the intelligent readers of our blog will be able to ask, and answer, the right questions.
According to the American writer Gore Vidal, one must choose between two missions in life. Either to Comfort the Afflicted; or to Afflict the Comfortable. Now, generally speaking, the Daily Mail is normally very much on the side of the Comfortable. Hardly a bunch of Islington Green Remoaner Marxist Liberals, you might say. So when they publish something which might in some way be slightly comfort-afflicting, we know it’s been through a pretty fine toothcomb first. And today we present just such a story by their admirable Jonathan Chadwick called The Real Life Day After Tomorrow. Not only does it speculate that the warming currents of the North Atlantic might collapse, plunging us into a new Ice Age. But there is a chance that it might happen rather soon. [1]
Most people know that the reason that Western Europe is tolerably warm is due to the fact that certain ocean currents move vast quantities of heat up from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico to these otherwise benighted shores. Thanks to global warming and melting ice caps, those currents could switch off as early as next year. We cannot hope to improve on the excellent explanations and top notch, easy-to-understand graphics in Jonathan’s article. But we could beg you to look at some of the comments. and the squeals and howls of outrage from those whose weltenschauung is horribly imperilled by Jonathan’s words. Denial, evasion and getting shouty are common psychological defence mechanisms of people who are often uncertain of their own case. Blaming the messenger can be another; although we are all guilty of that.
Perhaps the latter was on display in the case of climate scientist Michael Mann, who, because of his scientific work, became the subject of unpleasant personal attacks from those who objected to his findings. To us it all seems a bit reminiscent of what happened to Galileo in the 1640s. Fortunately Mann has won damages from some of his adversaries , and this may buy back some space for objective debate in some areas of science. We wait to see. Whatever happens, those who prefer to deny, for whatever reason, should remember. Reality, be it economic, physical or logical, will eventually come round to charge a price. The longer you leave it, the higher that price will be.
These days everyone is talking about conspiracy theories and trying to find out who is in the secret conspiracy that controls everything. Some say it is Davos Man, but surely he can’t do it all on his own? Some say it’s the illuminati; others cite a rather boring man called George Soros who looks and sounds like someone at home in the impenetrable back pages of the Financial Times. But today, we at LSS can reveal that the real conspirators are the same they have always been. The Movers and the Shakers, and the Great and the Good. (although some claim to be in more than one of these categories at the same time) It’s about time that the Ordinary Citizen learned more about them. So you can recognise one in the street and, if possible, pointedly ignore them in a hostile way.
A note before we start The Movers and the Shakers, the first two rungs in the career ladder, are not to be confused with the 1960s California Soft Rock band of the same name whose hit single Baby I want your Love was the sound track for a whole generation who passed their golden youth in ancient camper vans on the golden beaches of places like La Jolla and Malibu.
Movers Can easily be recognised because they still inhabit the kind of flats they lived in when they were students, except now they own the flats and rarely wear baseball caps. Because their company/career/practice is in its early stages they still talk to people they knew at University. May even occasionally be seen at places like La Jolla, although the van is massively improved,. Hoping to become a…
Shaker By this time the company/career/practice is doing so well they can afford the all the extra houses/cars/mistresses that reinforce their new status. Do not expect Christmas cards/birthday cards/second wedding invitations from them any more. Quick to exalt the virtues of people like themselves who have made it big, they are longing to be called to a Selection Board in order to join the next stage, commonly known as :
The Great Yes, there are boards and examinations which you have to pass to reach this stage. But the questions are not like those in ordinary exams, such as “which is the largest copper-exporting country in South America?” or “integrate the function y=Cos x3-8 x1/2-4x”. Instead the questions are “are you going to Glyndebourne this year? or “were you at Rupert’s party in the Hamptons? Isn’t Piers Morgan one helluva guy?” One thing to know: the Great would never, ever, even be seen dead on beaches in places like La Jolla, however luxuriously-appointed was the camper van. But their major trouble is that they have spent so much time preparing for their role that they have learned nothing useful which might help them to do it. Which is way they make such a mess of things. And the hours are dreadful; if you are Great, your life is no longer your own. So many of them cannot wait to resign, and go as soon as possible to the last stage:
The Good Once upon a time being the Good was best of all. There were senior roles in things like the Arts Council or even your own 14-part cultural series on BBC2. Nowadays, with all these shopping channels and the internet, such gigs are few and far between. Instead they spend their time running international Institutes which nobody can see the point of. Or writing long newspaper articles which nobody reads, because the author is no longer Prime Minister, and never will be again. Apart from that, they just fret in case those ghastly locals build a caravan site on a hill which overlooks their villa in Tuscany. They have villas in Tuscany because they are far too old for beach life-especially among the heavy waves of La Jolla.
So now you know, you have two choices. You could Rise in Righteous Indignation and overthrow them. But; someone’s got to to do the job, why would you be any better? And do you you really want to give up your old camper van, with its digitally remastered tracks like Baby I want your love, just to fly to Davos and endure a string quartet?
No, we thought not.
#george soros #illuminati #conspirators #davos man #the great and the good #movers and shakers #malibu #la jolla
It’s funny how different people deal with reality. Some seem to think that whatever is right here and now is transcendentally important. They devote every minute they have to finding someone to disagree with, and invest immense amounts of nervous and physical energy pursuing the consequent feuds to the last possible opportunity. Elsewhere, someone else is quietly getting on with new ideas which render everything we do now backward and irrelevant. Who worries now about the quarrels of the Babylonians and the Assyrians, or the ridiculous chariots and spears they used to carry around?
We at LSS, being Whigs or Enlightenments or progressives, or whatever, are very much interested in the “someone elses” mentioned above . And with the help of the inestimable Nature Briefings, we’d like to raise your eyes from the endless disputes around the narcissism of small differences. And let you look at what’s really happening. Changes in the climate, not the weather, if you want to put it that way.
The technologies that Nature will be watching this year include protein design using algorithms similar to those underlying image-generators such as DALL-E, deepfake-detection tools and gene-editing systems that can modify DNA sequences much larger than the single-site edits possible with regular CRISPR–Cas. One advance that didn’t make the cut: ChatGPT. Its applications are “labour-saving gains rather than transformations of the research process”, says the feature.Nature | 15 min read
And imagine a child in 2124 saying to its Dad “what did they do one hundred years ago?” The answer will be in the link above. The endless, futile, indescribably stupid disputes of today will have been forgotten.
#gene editing #AI deep fakes #protein #nature briefings
If you’re reading this, we can be confident of one thing. The chances are 90% that you’re right-handed. And of one other thing: they are 10% that you’re left-handed. when you think about it, this fact is so woven into our everyday lives that we take it for granted-in work, in sport, art-well, everything. And it seems to be very old. Our Neanderthal cousins showed exactly the same ratio.
So, if such a pesky thing as handedness exists at all, you’d expect our nearest relatives, chimpanzees, to show exactly the same pattern, right? Wrong. Chimps do indeed show hand preferences. But give and take a few donnish arguments among researchers, they seem to come out somewhere around 50% right and 50% left. They certainly don’t show this strong, settled right-hand bias that the human line has preserved. Counter-intuitive, isn’t it?
So, why? It’s a very big question. Any answer has to be hypothetical, as the trend must have started millions of years ago. Hannah Fry makes a good first stab it here[1] for the BBC. But there is one other possible reason. Humans spend a lot more time standing up than chimps do. And this frees the hands for several things. Carrying. Signalling. And making tools. Now, as Sverker Johannsen [2] points out, the parts of the brain that control language is on the left side of the brain. And by the simple fact of the way we’re wired up, that controls the right hand. Is it possible that this handedness thing is in some way connected to the use of tools, or language, or even both? We await new discoveries with anticipation.
“You’re always telling us how bad we are!” It’s a small, but steady complaint from a certain group of readers. “Telling us how we’re wasting antibiotics! Polluting the skies and the oceans! Squandering our money in fruitless luxury , dissipation and depravity!” We take exception to the last, as we have never scolded anyone for Depravity. If done with due regard to Health and Safety, it can be a valuable method of weight loss. But as for the other charges- yes. we can be a bit over-censorious and pessimistic. And if we tell you all is lost, why try at all?
There’s nothing like having a sense of agency, a sense that you can actually make a difference, to restore morale. Even if that difference is small. Which is why we offer a chance to do One Thing. And that thing is to help out with a beach clean. We don’t need to tell you just how bad the situation in the oceans is. The Marine Conservation Society [1] has an excellent site for all matters oceanographic. But if you click further into their webpage you’ll find a section on Beach Cleans. Where groups of volunteers are co ordinated to go out, collect and record the vast mountains of debris which wash up on our beaches
Now this has several advantages over doing it by yourself. Firstly, it’s safer because there will be people around. Beaches and shores of any kinds can be dangerous places. Secondly collection and disposal can be jointly organised, making them much more efficient. Thirdly, the MCS and can make real use of the data you throw up. And last-think of the exercise and weight loss, with none of the drawbacks that Depravity brings. Is this becoming a no-brainer, or what?
Learning, Science and Society 