UK vaping illness spotted

I see via the BBC that in fact there has been one report of respiratory illness in the UK that seems associated with vaping, last year.  I am surprised we haven't heard about this before:

A young female vaper presented with insidious onset cough, progressive dyspnoea on exertion, fever, night sweats and was in respiratory failure when admitted to hospital. Clinical examination was unremarkable. Haematological tests revealed only thrombocytopenia, which was long standing, and her biochemical and inflammatory markers were normal. Chest radiograph and high-resolution CT showed diffuse ground-glass infiltrates with reticulation. She was initially treated with empirical steroids and there was improvement in her oxygenation, which facilitated further tests. Since the bronchoscopy and high-volume lavage was unyielding, a video-assisted thoracoscopicsurgical biopsy was done later and was suggestive of lipoid pneumonia. The only source of lipid was the vegetable glycerine found in e-cigarette (EC). Despite our advice to quit vaping, she continued to use EC with different flavours and there is not much improvement in her clinical and spirometric parameters.

Still vaping, JC?

Update:  Helen Dale, vaper, is still busy tweeting articles supporting the habit (as being better than smoking, etc.)    I like the way that article at the link relies heavily on (what would surely have to be) a rubbery figure by the suspiciously pro-vaping PHE that it's 95% safer that smoking cigarettes.   Maybe it is:  until it nearly kills you after a short time of use (if you are unlucky).   Risk assessment is a funny thing - people do factor in the "but something might go suddenly wrong" in their feelings about both legal and illegal activities.   Isn't that why lots of us will never be overcome with an urge to take a pill offered as a "safe" illicit but fun drug?   It makes me not so interested in skydiving, too.   (That and a general dislike of the falling sensation.)  

The other thing about it is that the pro-activists are now talking as if there is no other way to quit or reduce smoking.   Just like transexuals who used to just tuck it away, but now can't live without having it lobbed off,  pro-vape advocates seem to talk as if nicotine patches and gum are just now completely inadequate for those trying to get off smoking.

I wonder if companies that made nicotine patches are running ads now pushing their safety?   Seems a good idea to me.   

Toilet trouble

An eye catching headline at the BBC:

'Toilet trouble' for Narendra Modi and Bill Gates

Modi had promised (and claims) big success in providing toilets in India, but the true situation is a bit unclear:

While it's true that the number of toilets has increased significantly, a BBC investigation found that many of them are not working or aren't being used for various reasons, from lack of running water to poor maintenance to deeply ingrained cultural habits. Recent research found that people in some parts of northern India preferred to defecate in the open because they found it more "comfortable" or thought it to be "part of a wholesome, healthy virtuous life".

Another common problem is that the government offers subsidies for the poor to build a toilet in their home. But since the subsidy is paid out in instalments over more than a year, many poor households wait for months for the construction to be complete.

"Many beneficiaries have started construction but not competed it," says Siraz Hirani from the Mahila Housing Sewa Trust, a non-profit group that also works to improve sanitation. As a senior programme manager, Mr Hirani has worked closely with rural and urban governments to implement the Clean India scheme.

His other big worry is that the subsidy does not account for the cost of laying a sewer, which has often meant that people in rural areas end up building soak pits for drainage. This, he fears, will eventually lead to ground water and soil pollution in coastal areas where the water table is higher.

Mr Hirani says open defecation has "significantly reduced", but the "biggest challenge is how do we sustain this?"

About Greta

Careful readers may have noticed that I have only once made a comment about Greta Thunberg.  I now make the following observations:

*  I like her cultured accent.  It sounds like she's been in training to marry into royalty.

*  More seriously:  if you asked me before she got onto the world stage if I would think it a good idea that a young person with autism/Aspergers become a global spokesperson for the environment, I would have said "no".   But let's face it, ageing, ignorant denialists and conservatives generally dismiss all "progressive" concerns by attacking any articulate spokesperson no matter whether they appear "normal" or not.  Look at the treatment of David Hogg and other students who survived the Florida school shooting.   A very large part of modern conversativism wallows in its own stupidity and is nasty to boot.

* So, I have no particular concerns about Greta.   She has taken on the role with, I think, a large degree of dignity.   Does she exaggerate the situation re climate change?   To be honest, I haven't analysed much of what she has said, but in a broad brush sense at least, I think most mainstream scientists feel she is on point.

* As expected, the attacks on her by conservatives are extreme, completely uncharitable, and (of course) based on complete denial of mainstream science and culture war positioning (which is all conservatives have now days).

* There is an uprise in environmental activism that is wildly exaggerating:  parts of the Extinction Rebellion movement for one.   But people who follow mainstream climate scientists know that the worst exaggerations made by that group are actively disputed by the big guns.   It's a bit of a puzzle to know how to respond to them - I find street disruptions that they have been conducting to be counterproductive - but they are fighting against idiots and the politically self interested, and I think the problem is no one knows how to effectively counter idiots.     As I have suggested before, people who seriously think that current political inaction is going to kill billions in the future should probably be planning on physically attacking infrastructure that allows the burning of fossil fuels, not inconveniencing someone who needs to get to a hospital.   If they become environmental terrorists (who take care not to kill people), I would think more highly of them.

Update:  a very reasonable (if too kind to malign conservatives) take on Greta appears here in The Atlantic. 

Update 2:  dear ageing morons of Catallaxy - why so surprised that she is angry?:

You are willfully stupid and will soon be dead, leaving your legacy of 30 years of delay in serious  action to limit the harm of climate change to teenagers like her.   In all likelihood, the economic consequences will be large, not to mention the humanitarian and general environmental harms.  But you'll have enjoyed all the benefits of fossil fuel consumption with none of the long term consequences.  She has every reason to be angry of your influence, and to not understand that only confirms your continued stupidity.  

Update 3:. Oh look, a young American conservative who believes in climate change (what a lonely life he must lead) weighs in:

Update 4:   Oh look, another example of Greta being "histrionic":

Update 5?:

Growth questionned

Gee, this might do in Jason's head.   A guy who techno-optimist Bill Gates apparently likes says economists just have to give up on the idea that economic growth has to keep happening.

An extract:

You debunk overly rosy projections by techno-optimists, who say we can solve all our problems with smarter computers, and economists, who promise endless capitalist growth. In many countries, the downside of material growth now seems greater than the upside, which leads to what you call “anthropogenic insults to ecosystems”. Is that a fair summary?
Yes, I think so. Without a biosphere in a good shape, there is no life on the planet. It’s very simple. That’s all you need to know. The economists will tell you we can decouple growth from material consumption, but that is total nonsense. The options are quite clear from the historical evidence. If you don’t manage decline, then you succumb to it and you are gone. The best hope is that you find some way to manage it. We are in a better position to do that now than we were 50 or 100 years ago, because our knowledge is much vaster. If we sit down, we can come up with something. It won’t be painless, but we can come up with ways to minimise that pain.

So we need to change our expectations of GDP growth?
Yes, the simple fact is that however you define happiness, we know – and we have known this for ages – that the amount of GDP is not going to improve your satisfaction with life, equanimity and sense of wellbeing. Look at Japan. They are pretty rich but they are among the unhappiest people on the planet. Then who is always in the top 10 of the happiest people? It is the Philippines, which is much poorer and smitten by typhoons, yet many times more happy than their neighbours in Japan. Once you reach a certain point, the benefits of GDP growth start to level off in terms of mortality, nutrition and education.

Is that point the golden mean? Is that what we should be aiming for rather than pushing until growth becomes malign, cancerous, obese and environmentally destructive?
Exactly. That would be nice. We could halve our energy and material consumption and this would put us back around the level of the 1960s. We could cut down without losing anything important. Life wasn’t horrible in 1960s or 70s Europe. People from Copenhagen would no longer be able to fly to Singapore for a three-day visit, but so what? Not much is going to happen to their lives. People don’t realise how much slack in the system we have.

 I'm not sure about this, but I do wonder about it at times.

PS:   What bothers me about techno-optimists who go on about nuclear is that they are too pessimistic about different ways of utilising increasing amounts of renewables wisely.  Too pessimistic about large and small scale storage; too insistent that unless you keep the ability to use energy in exactly the way we do now, it'll be some sort of crisis.   I mean, unexpected brown outs are inconvenient, but the way they carry on if even a single brown out happens in summer now due to generation issues is over the top.    This guy makes a lot of sense - we can probably readily adjust to energy conservation if we accept it as necessary; and not all countries need to use energy in exactly the same way we do.

Seeing a future whereby clean energy allows a similar, even if somewhat more modest, lifestyle to what we enjoy now is a form of techno-optimism;  decrying renewables as never being able to supply enough power for a modern industrial nation is a form of techno-pessimism, really.


 

No Biden corruption

Not getting as much airing as it should, in my opinion, is the fact that it is not true that the Biden acted corruptly in Ukraine.

The Intercept discusses it here.

And here is the Washington Post on it.  

Both articles are from May 2019.

Many people on Twitter are furious that the New York Times in particular is playing this for Trump just like they did Hillary's emails.   They are helping normalise Trumpian rumour mongering, even when there is plenty of evidence already that it is not true.

As has been written thousands of times, the problem is that a lot of journalism does not know how to respond to being played by a bullshitter like Trump.

Update:  Max Boot's column on this is good too.

Update 2:  and read this thread on Twitter.  

A brief Spotify note

It may just be the era the music is primarily from, but I really like the selection of songs in the Power Pop playlist on Spotify.  

More modern comedy I didn't like

Watched the 2012 movie version of 21 Jump Street last night.   (Another cheap hire on Google.  I must stop doing that.)  Can't say I cared for it. 

I didn't read much about it at the time, except that I knew it was pretty well reviewed going by Rotten Tomatoes.  I didn't care for the (more than I expected) amount of swearing, but I'm most surprised it didn't attract more commentary for being way, way too much like a homophobic teenage boy's idea of a screenplay.   I know the main characters were meant to be immature, but you can only claim to be ironically getting humour from immature straight characters talking about sex acts between men up to a certain point.    And it's disingenuous, because you know actual homophobes will find it particularly hilarious.

I have found an article at Vanity Fair that shared my take on this aspect.  (And OK, I did read this before I wrote the paragraph above):

As I hope you can intuit, I’m being ironically homophobic—as, to be very charitable, the filmmakers behind 21 Jump Street may also be. That would be an improvement over Don Draper–era jokes about limp-wristed hairdressers, I suppose, but irony can serve as a flimsy cover-up, too. It’s an easy hall pass to wave, like the way some people think saying “just kidding!” puts the burden of offense on anyone they’ve just insulted. You also have to calculate who’s laughing at a joke and why, who’s in on it and who’s left outside.

I also see that the sequel dwells more on this type of humour, and that before its release, Jonah Hill got into trouble by being caught yelling "Faggot" at some photographers bothering him.  He apologised, and said he was a gay rights activist from way back.   He may well be, but I think he's pretty dumb in that case.  From what I read, one of the characters in the sequel makes a speech about how you shouldn't use that sort of language about gays.   Which indicates real life irony as far as Hill is concerned.

As I say, why didn't this bother more reviewers?

Update:  just to show that I am not exactly squeemish about "penis" in comedy per se - I thought this recent bit on Conan was pretty funny:

I try to be charitable, but...

....Steve Kates just couldn't be more stupidly un-self aware if he tried. 

Here's the shorter version of what he's been writing for years "Why won't they engage in good faith dialogue, those moronic Lefties who want to kill everything good in the world and crush us under their totalitarian heal?  They need to dialogue, so as to learn how I understand both economics (buy my book) and the science of climate change perfectly, and they don't have a clue."

The point I was trying to make yesterday is that it is all very well to be speaking among ourselves on our side of the fence but useless if we cannot force these climate totalitarians to engage in a dialogue.....There is, of course, nothing that these ignoramuses say that we are unaware of. They, on the other hand, are unaware of every bit of the counter-arguments that have been made on our side. They are certainly unaware of the massive evidence proving that they are almost certainly wrong.

When a person is so clueless as to what the "massive evidence" actually says about climate change, and is always claiming evil ulterior motives on those who he does not agree with, why would anyone try to "dialogue" with him?   It's why no one bothers engaging on the topic on the science side at his Catallaxy outlet anymore.  They are, as with their contrarian scientist heros, nearly all old obnoxious cranks who'll be dead within 20 years anyway.  Unfortunately, we can't wait that long to get into serious CO2 reduction, though.

And it's fair enough that The Conversation won't let denialists engage in comments debate anymore.  It's pointless and just as bad as it would be to allow nutty anti-vaxers free rein on the site.

Jason, it must be a residual bit of your libertarian past that the Conversation policy annoys you - and citing Ian Plimer, for God's sake.  He has zero credibility on the topic; always has.  Freeman Dyson has next to no credibility on this topic - which is one well out of his field of expertise, too.

Stop being such a sucker for thinking people with high IQ and success in one field are worth paying attention to in fields outside of their expertise.  They very often aren't.

 

Saturday pics: West End

The Saturday West End markets are good for food:

There is also a great Greek deli nearby, with good olives, and catering size stuff:

Twenty ltrs of mayo, anyone?

And who would still be using Clive of India curry powder, let alone 3 kg of it:

It was the only curry powder of 1960s Australia, but I thought no one missed the bland yellow curried sausages, prawns and devilled eggs it made....

Why the Ukrainian matter matters

There's a good explanation by Fred Kaplan at Slate as to why the question of what Trump said to the Ukrainian President is a big deal:

Federal bribery statutes prohibit any U.S. official from expressing a “specific intent to give or receive something of value in exchange for an official act.” Courts have ruled that soliciting an attack on a political opponent constitutes asking for “something of value.”

He goes on to explain the complicated system for intelligence whistleblowing, and the clearly authoritarian way the Trump administration is seeking to circumvent it.

What an utter disgrace the Republicans are.

Seems unfair...

Alcohol-producing gut bacteria could cause liver damage even in people who don't drink

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the build-up of fat in the liver due to factors other than alcohol. It affects about a quarter of the adult population globally, but its cause remains unknown. Now, researchers have linked NAFLD to gut bacteria that produce a large amount of alcohol in the body, finding these bacteria in over 60% of non-alcoholic fatty liver patients. Their findings, publishing September 19 in the journal Cell Metabolism, could help develop a screening method for early diagnosis and treatment of non-alcoholic fatty liver.

"We were surprised that bacteria can produce so much alcohol," says lead author Jing Yuan at Capital Institute of Pediatrics. "When the body is overloaded and can't break down the alcohol produced by these bacteria, you can develop fatty liver disease even if you don't drink."

I guess the ultimate irony would be if drinking alcohol killed some of these unhealthy alcohol making bacteria.

A science fiction film to look forward to?

I tend to be dubious of the merits of Brad Pitt as an actor - he has a touch of the Matthew McConaughey's about him, in that I can't fully explain why I react against him the way I do - but this Ad Astra film is getting a lot of positive reviews, so I think I should see it.  Quality science fiction in films deserves support.  (Except if it involves Matthew McConaughey, and has such an awful screenplay as Interstellar.)

(I don't dislike all Pitt movies, by the way;  but there is something about him that causes me to resist crediting him as a likeable actor.) 

Yet more flash floods

Big flash floods in Texas, I see.   

Seems that some areas are having record breaking periods of intense rainfall, but the details are not yet 100% clear.

Certainly seems to be a dramatic event, consistent with increased intensity of rain and associated flash flooding being the one of the clearest recurring (and expensive) disasters that everyone is coming to accept as being from climate change.

Interesting comments on vaping

Once more, I head to my preferred UK medical journal, The Sun, (ha ha) because it runs interesting sceptical comments about vaping from UK's retiring Chief Medical Officer:

In an interview this month with Civil Service World, Professor Davies asked: “Is this a ticking time bomb? Will they turn out to have long term consequences?”

Public Health England published a report in 2015 suggesting that vaping could be 95 per cent less harmful than normal cigarettes.

The report stated: “There is no evidence that e-cigarettes (EC) are undermining the long-term decline in cigarette smoking among adults and youth, and may in fact be contributing to it."

Professor Davies conceded evidence has accumulated to suggest that e-cigarettes may help as a smoking cessation tool, but did not believe the evidence is 'hard' yet.

She added: "Meanwhile they're not regulated. So when you buy them, you don't know that you're getting what it says on the packet.

"I do - and will continue to - worry, because we don't know what the effects are of long-term use, or about the effect on people who may be upping their nicotine addiction by using them as well as smoking."

She added: “What you have to remember is that evidence is a social construct. So there’s hard evidence, from randomised control trials and meta-analysis. But then there’s other evidence.

"Policy based just on hard evidence leaves out all sorts of things that haven’t been tested but which maybe should be tried.

“The other thing, which is always difficult to explain to the public and to non-scientists, is that science kind of flip flops a bit to get to a final answer."

Not sure about that "unregulated" comment - I thought Public Health England says they are heavily regulated there? - but the Professor's comments about "science kind of flip flops a bit to get to a final answer" reminds me very much of how the views of marijuana and the risk of psychosis developed over 20 or 30 years.

China has pork reserves?

Is it just me, or does anyone else find the idea of a Strategic Pork Reserve kinda funny?:

China to tap pork reserves as swine fever hits industry

China is set to release pork supplies from its central reserves as it moves to tackle soaring prices and shortages caused by an outbreak of swine fever. A state-backed body will auction 10,000 tonnes of frozen pork from its strategic reserves on Thursday.

I suppose Australian democracy could be in trouble if there was a sausage shortage before an election, so I think the National Party needs to fly a National Snag Reserve.   

Cancel culture

As explained by the Washington Post, "cancel culture" is in large part a result of the nature of social media:

Stand-up comedy, just like other art forms, has traditionally enjoyed an unspoken pact with the audience: Comedians can say pretty much whatever they want, and people in the crowd can feel however they want about the jokes. In live comedy, the power dynamics tend to favor the comedian who has the stage, spotlight and microphone. If a couple of people in the audience are deeply offended, the comic may never know about it.

But the Internet changed this relationship. The audience can do more than heckle a live performance; they can talk back, at length, and get a lot of people to listen.

I have also noticed some people on Twitter pointing out that people so upset with it tend to only think of the attacks run by those on the Left, not about those run by the wingnuts of the Right:

(I see someone in the thread says Chapelle mentioned Kaepernick in his special.  I wonder how briefly?)

Go Will

Everyone's favourite former Libertarian should be Will Wilkinson, who has a great column in the New York Times noting how the Right wing response to a mere proposal of an assault weapon buy back by a guy wildly unlikely to become President (to threaten violence against the police and civil war against the State) is the illiberal and undemocratic scream of an ageing minority fearful of losing control because of democracy:

Nearly every Republican policy priority lacks majority support. New restrictions on abortion are unpopular. Slashing legal immigration levels is unpopular. The president’s single major legislative achievement, tax cuts for corporations and high earners, is unpopular. 

Public support for enhanced background checks stands at an astonishing 90 percent, and 60 percent (and more) support a ban on assault weapon sales. Yet Republican legislatures block modest, popular gun control measures at every turn. The security of the minority’s self-ascribed right to make the rules has become their platform’s major plank, because unpopular rules don’t stand a chance without it. Float a rule that threatens their grip on power, no matter how popular, and it’s “my AR is waiting for you, Robert Francis.”

They’ll tell you their thinly veiled threats are really about defending their constitutional rights. Don’t believe it. The conservative Supreme Court majority’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller found an individual right to own guns for self-protection, but no civilian needs a weapon capable of shooting 26 people in 32 seconds to ward off burglars. The Second Amendment doesn’t grant the right to own one any more than it grants the right to own a surface-to-air missile.  

They’ll tell you their foreboding “predictions” of lethal resistance are really about preserving the means to protect the republic against an overweening, rights-stomping state. Don’t believe that, either. It’s really about the imagined peril of a multicultural majority running the show. Many countries that do more to protect their citizens against gun violence are more, not less, free than we are. According to the libertarian Cato Institute, 16 countries enjoy a higher level of overall freedom than the United States, and most of them ban or severely restrict ownership of assault weapons. The freedom to have your head blown off in an Applebee’s, to flee in terror from the bang of a backfiring engine, might not be freedom at all.

I’m not too proud to admit that in my misspent libertarian youth, I embraced the idea that a well-armed populace is a bulwark against tyranny. I imagined us a vast Switzerland, hived with rifles to defend our inviolable rights against … Michael Dukakis? What I slowly came to see is that freedom is inseparable from political disagreement and that holding to a trove of weapons as your last line of defense in a losing debate makes normal ideological opposition look like nascent tyranny and readies you to suppress it.

So it’s no surprise that the most authoritarian American president in living memory, elected by a paltry minority, is not threatened in the least by citizen militias bristling with military firepower. He knows they’re on his side.

Democrats don’t want to grind the rights of Republicans underfoot. They want to feel safe and think it should be harder for unhinged lunatics to turn Walmarts into abattoirs. But when minority-rule radicals hear determined talk of mandatory assault rifle buybacks, they start to feel surrounded. They hear the hammers clicking back, imagine themselves in the majority’s cross hairs.

That’s why they’re unmoved by the mounting heap of slaughtered innocents, by schoolkids missing recess to rehearse being hunted. It’s a sacrifice they’re willing to let other Americans make, because they think democracy’s coming for their power, and they’re right.

Put them in the military..or something

I watched last night's Foreign Correspondent on the issue of illicit drug testing at European music festivals, and it was a pretty good way to get me feeling old and cranky with youff of today.

Actually, the editorial line taken by the show was more moderate and balanced than I expected, especially given that it was done by someone from JJJ who has reported on music festival drug deaths for a few years.  Yes, while it generally did paint the testing services in a positive light, they did balance it with at least one guy who ran tests acknowledging that those who have concerns that it virtually endorses illicit drug use do have a point.

It was sort of funny, though, that it featured a recent English festival at which the organisation which had previously done the free on site testing pulled back their involvement this year to only giving drug counselling.   (There was one fake looking scene where a couple said "yeah, we'll still go get counselling at least", and afterwards the dissolute woman said she had learnt for the first time that she should not mix alcohol with her ketamine taking - seriously?  I thought.   She looked a very experienced user.)   Yet no one at the end of the festival had been too badly endangered by their drug use anyway.   Kind of makes you wonder about the efficacy of the testing part of it, then.

But the worst thing about it was the "so this is what decadent youth of today think is having a good time?   Standing in a field in the sun, drinking and using illicit drugs to dance stupidly for three days straight?"   The people on screen, especially the English youth, playing up to the camera, all looked so distinctly uninspiring to my "I must be getting old" eyes.   Sure, I guess most of them actually hold down jobs, but I just have trouble handling the idea that people want to be off their face for so long at these events.

I mean, at least people at Woodstock had something they felt they were legitimately rebelling against - and the free love bits were just all part and parcel of wanting the world to change to something non-violent and less materialist.

Today's music festival scene, on the other hand, just looks like so much self indulgent hedonism that has emerged from youth having too much money, spare time and no interest in changing the world at all - it's given them an ugly tattoo or ten and enough cheap drugs, as well as a free ambulance tent if they have taken too much unknown substance and have started hallucinating, after all.

In my parent's day, the response was all "they should do some national service, that would straighten them out."    I'm still not at the stage of wanting that - although I am getting awfully close!

PS:  I am not at all sure why, but I find (for want of a better description) young yobbo behaviour when done with an English accent particularly annoying.    Is it the sense that it is a sadly fallen culture, compared to the stoicism of only (say) 80 years ago?

Unbelievable, and good

I've watched the first two episodes of the well reviewed Netflix true crime series Unbelievable - and it is really good.

This review in The Guardian is accurate, I think.   I like the way it describes the second episode as being better than mere "competence porn" - because, yes, you cannot help but feel that the first two episodes are virtually written to be police training films.  (The first episode is the grating, but quite distressingly plausible, example of everything detectives could possibly do wrong in questioning a rape victim; the second episode shows a virtually perfect example of how it should be done.)

But look, the acting is really good, so far, and it is not sensationalist despite the weirdness of the crimes.

Well worth watching.

A scandal to come?

Heh.  I see that Helen Dale, who vapes to get her nicotine hit, has re-tweeted a tweet of reassurance from Public Health England that they are not backing down from their (unusually strong) support of vaping:

No situation?   I'm not at all sure that there are any cases of young people developing life threatening lung problems within a year of smoking, are there?  


I'm sure I have commented on this before:   England's health authorities seem to have been completely persuaded unusually quickly that vaping is a pretty good thing, at least for smokers.   They don't seem to have any of the concerns of the equivalent US bodies, which have always been much more dubious.  True, there may be regulatory differences that account for some of this - such as tighter regulation in the UK of vaping liquids, and far fewer English youth getting hooked on nicotine this way.  But I still have my strong suspicions about something being not quite right about how strongly PHE has decided to endorse this nicotine delivery method.

It has a whiff of - something: perhaps money buying influence, and/or one or two key strong personalities within a health bureaucracy deciding a line and pushing it onto others.

There are hints of academic resistance - earlier this year, before the current spate of problems in the US, there was this headline in The Sun (OK, I know, not my preferred journal of health news): 

A LEADING scientist has accused health bosses of purposely "ignoring" the dangers of vaping.

Professor Martin McKee from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine says that he has "serious concerns" about the safety of e-cigs.

 And a couple of doctors writing to the BMJ in 2018 expressed similar scepticism about the PHE endorsement:

We understand that such conflict, existing as it does among tobacco experts, reflects a wider uncertainty surrounding the long term health risks of e-cigarettes. That PHE, whose purpose is “to protect and improve the nation’s health,”5 should sanction e-cigarette use citing an embryonic and inconclusive evidence base, is astonishing.

There was a whole article  in an American journal looking at how the American and English appraisals of vaping could come to such different conclusions:   The E-Cigarette Debate - What Counts as Evidence.

I reckon that all it will take for the UK media to leap into strenuous criticism of the PHE approach will be one or two British youth developing the sort of serious lung issues we have seen in the US.  The tabloids, which love that sort of story, will give it plenty of coverage.

Perhaps there will then be a proper and thorough political or journalistic investigation as to how the PHE came to its conclusions, and I would not be at all surprised if there is an element of scandal to be discovered.

Let's see.  I've made my prediction:  will I be vindicated?

Italians and their pets

I thought England would still be the European country most besotted with dogs, but according to this diary entry at the Catholic Herald, Italians now prefer pooches to bambini:

A growing number of Italians are now opting for pets rather than children. Back in 2014, Pope Francis was already sufficiently worried about this new trend, and warned Italians to keep their devotion for their children rather than pets. It looks like no one was listening. The passeggiata, the traditional evening walk which used to be a chance to show off babies in prams and toddlers on their new tricycles, is now given over to strutting dog owners, and pooches nestling like a baby in a kangaroo pouch.

The land that was once synonymous with a large brood now has one of the lowest birthrates in the world (1.35), but boasts a one-to-one ratio of pets per person – more than any other European country. Italians spent more than €2 billion (£1.8 billion, $2.2 billion) on pet food in 2017, and more than €72 million (£65 million, $80 million) on “accessories” in the same year. When I say “accessories”, I mean rhinestone-studded collars and sheepskin-lined miniature four-poster beds.

The African divide

Reversing the usual formula for Western people talking about how their family and friends took their "hey I'm gay" news, Time magazine notes this about the coming out of a famous gospel singer from Rwanda:

...the reaction he has received, from family and friends to strangers, has been mostly “horrible,” underscoring the intolerance faced by LGBT people in many parts of Africa.

The articles goes on to note that although Rwanda does not make gay sexual activity a crime, it is far from socially accepted:

Some of Nabonibo’s best friends who spoke to the AP said they were too embarrassed even to talk about him. They requested anonymity for their own privacy. “This is crazy. I don’t understand why he thinks this is normal,” said one friend, shaking his head.

Another friend, a man who attends the same church as Nabonibo, said he was in a state of “agony” since the rest of his family knows he used to hang out with Nabonibo. Now he has blocked Nabonibo from all phone contact, saying he wants to “keep safe.”

There has been a similar reaction on social media, with many Rwandans questioning Nabonibo’s intentions and others condemning him. One wondered on Twitter: “How can a gospel singer be gay?”

The article also notes that in many countries on that continent, legislation is in reverse from the Western, liberalising trend:

In 2017, Chad enacted legislation criminalizing same-sex relations for the first time in the country’s history. In May, a court in Kenya ruled against overturning a colonial-era law criminalizing homosexual acts between consenting adults. Activists there who had challenged the law in court said they faced discrimination and threats to their dignity.

And in neighboring Uganda, a government minister in charge of ethics is threatening to introduce another version of an anti-gay law passed in 2014, and subsequently voided by the country’s constitutional court, that provided for jail terms of up to life for those convicted of engaging in gay sex. The original version of that bill, first introduced in 2009, had included the death penalty for what it called aggravated acts of homosexuality.

It's pretty remarkable, really:  living in the West, it is easy to imagine that everyone around the globe is moving in same liberalising direction on such matters.

It also points to the huge problem it may be if the Catholic Church hopes to increasingly provide conservative African priests to Western parishes.   It's going to go over like a lead balloon.

Adam has thoughts

What's going on with Adam Creighton?   Is he hanging up his soft libertarian, capitalism-is-great-and-let's-leave-it-alone credentials for good with today's column "Maybe it is time we accepted greed was never good"?

He's never impressed me, as many posts here over the years will attest, so I'm not going to be one to welcome him into the centrist, capitalism-needs-good-regulation-as-all-reasonable-people-have-known-since-about-1850 fold.  He'll probably have another change of heart next week, anyway.

And didn't he write a whinge about our immigration program last week, that it was letting in too  many unskilled?

As with Jason, it seems, soft libertarian types are now lost and wandering around listening to anyone from Pauline Hanson via her acolyte Mark Latham (who, I see, has re-joined Twitter because he couldn't bear to be around without annoying people) to "I'm just being reasonable, having articles both anti immigration and anti urgent climate change action" Lehmann.

Sad.

Conan does Greenland

I enjoyed the clips of Conan O'Brien's recent trip to Nuuk, Greenland.   It's a one hotel,  two traffic light town, with what would appear to be no tourism infrastructure at all, but it's still interesting to see.

I thought all of the locals were pretty attractive, amusing and likeable people, too:

Musician's death noted

Ric Ocasek's death gives me the opportunity to note that I enjoyed The Cars in the 1980's:  fun, catchy pop that I may still have on vinyl in a cupboard at home.    He was a bit of an odd looking dude, though; but then again, I suppose a lot of pop/rock stars of the era were not exactly handsome.

Not sure what difference Bolton leaving has made, really...

Yes, this is a ridiculous way for a President to act:

Update:  more Twitter commentary on the matter:

"It belongs in a toilet"

Has this story flashed around the innerwebs yet?   I saw it via a Dave Roberts tweet this morning:  a link to this very important update to archaeological science:

Experimental replication shows knives manufactured from frozen human feces do not work

You can read the full article at the link.  A highlight or two:

Fecal samples were formed into knives using ceramic molds, “knife molds” (Figs. S1–S2), or molded by hand, “hand-shaped knives” (Fig. S3). All fecal samples were stored at −20 °C until the experiments began...

Neither the “knife mold” samples, nor the “hand-shaped knives” could cut through hide (Figs. S5–S6). Despite the hide being cold from refrigeration, instead of slicing through it the knife-edge simply melted upon contact, leaving streaks of fecal matter (Fig. S4).

I have even downloaded the supplementary material so you can see what a frozen human poo blade failing to cut looks like.  Here:

And now I have no idea how to end this post appropriately...

Explaining the Many Worlds, again

Sean Carroll has a new book out, promoting the Everett Many Worlds theory as being correct even if (to say the least) counter-intuitive, and so there is some good reading about it around the 'net.

First, Carroll's own essay at Aeon gives a nice, pretty clear account.  Well worth reading.

Secondly, the book must be pretty good, because fellow physicist Bee Hossenfelder gives it a good review at Backreaction.

And finally: another good review at NPR.

Update:   Peter Woit liked the book, but is very annoyed that Sean Carroll is participating in some nonsense descriptions about what Many Worlds means.

The Orwell failure

Oh look - a really long essay about Orwell and 1984 in particular, which I think gives plenty of ammunition to my unpopular but resolute position that the book is vastly over-rated and actually a failure on most levels.

My only regret is that I did not have stuff like this to bolster my dislike of the book in high school.

Living Dutch style

I have never been to the Netherlands, and didn't understand how some of their "let's live well below sea level" worked for much of the country until watching these interesting videos from Channel News Asia this morning:





What's that breed of cow in the second video, by the way?  They are very pretty looking, for cows.

Highly regarded movies I didn't much care for

I caught up with the 1995 Michael Mann film Heat for the first time last night.  (It was a cheap hire on Google.)   While it was sort of amusing watching Al Pacino play a cop who seemed potentially more dangerous (and nuttier) than criminal mastermind Robert De Niro, I don't think the film had all that much going for it.  One big shoot out on the streets of LA isn't enough.   That bank heist before it seemed way, way too easy.   A lot of the dialogue was hard to follow - you more or less just had to hope that it would become clearer in the next scene what they had been talking about in the one before. My son said it reminded him a lot of playing Grand Theft Auto, and I think he is right. 

Anyway, not the pits, but not that great either.

A few weeks ago, we watched Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance).  Technically well made, with the long, long single tracking shots; its basic theme of "you have to be nuts to want to be actor" is a tad self indulgent in just the right way to win critics' praise and Oscars, but is not of that much interest to the rest of us.   And does Edward Norton ever get to play a normal human?

Again, not the pits, but...etc.

I'm finding it a bit difficult, lately, to find streaming service movies which have I have missed and really like when I do get to watch them.

 

Shadow self

Happens to a lot of blokey blokes, it seems

Jack the Insider, the ever genial blokey writer, says today (in relation to the apparent suicide of that ex footy player) that he too has had periods of suffering from suicidal ideation.  He writes:

...for many years, suicide ideation was like an unwelcome houseguest I couldn’t get shot of. The demons of anxiety, panic and desolation mutter away. “I’ll never be any good.’’ “I’m letting everyone down.’’ Combine that dark mantra with a sleepless couple of nights and you’re in the danger zone, borderline psychotic, suffering silently from a pain that won’t go away.

Some people still cling to the atavistic notion that suicide is for the weak. It’s not. It can’t be. It is almost the hardest thing anyone can do, bearing in mind the hardest is to survive and live on.

Mental illness is, if not invisible, then something sufferers are adept at camouflaging. It hides in plain sight. There are no ugly blemishes or boils, no hacking coughs, no greying of complexions. It is almost impossible to see in others.

I’ve spoken on live television. I’ve spoken at venues where audiences that number from fifty to five thousand. I flick the switch to the wisecracking good bloke, that part of my personality that people expect to see. I do it easily and without any reservations. I like that part of me, but I know it is a disguise.

Well that's very clear, direct writing on the topic, if a little worrying in its warning that it can be impossible to tell if someone is suffering this way.   (On the other hand, I suppose, it could be seen as comforting for those who blame themselves after a suicide for not noticing.)

He also says this:

Beyond mental illness the one thing they shared with Frawley was a personality type. They are characters who everyone wants to be with. Larger than life, the lives of the party. I often wonder if there is some correlation between that personality type and frequency of mental health problems.

It could just be more my personality than any particular insight I have into other people, but it's fair to say that I have always felt that I do not want to be around "life of the party" types;  perhaps due to a sense I've instinctively had that brashness can too easily be a cover for inner dissatisfaction?

Either that, or I just dislike other people having too much fun. :)
 
Also on this topic, I noticed on Twitter this thread by some people complaining about RU OK day - many saying that they had suffered mental health issues and they did not enjoy the day at all, thinking it was shallow and a patronising take on a problem which lasts all year, not just one day, etc etc.

To be honest, even allowing for their problems, this annoys me.   Any "day" which intends to promote awareness or raise money for research can annoy people affected by the illness.   I'm sure I read once that parents who have lost a baby to SIDS can find the "red nose day" a distressing reminder of their loss.  I can understand that, at least for the first few years after their baby's death. 

But really, you have to allow for the greater good that such promotions may achieve, and the good intentions of the people who create such awareness of a health issue.  

Sure, have a whinge about the lack of readily accessible mental health services, if that is something you know about, but don't get upset at a program that can do some good.

From (old) cinema to reality (almost)

The internet makes it easy to remember things now.

This story:

 Cockpit coffee spill forces commercial jet to make emergency landing 

put me in mind of an old movie that I probably watched as a kid one Saturday afternoon on the black and white TV about a plane crash where it turned out to have been caused by spilt coffee.

And the internet reminds me - the movie was Fate is the Hunter.   A very dramatic noir-ish title, for a plane crash movie, no?   About the only thing I remember about it is the coffee spill revelation at the end.   Obviously, modern pilots need to watch more old movies.

The ridiculous Right

Not a bad, short column here about the utterly ridiculous Tucker Carlson saying that he's glad John Bolton has gone, because he was a man of the Left:

"It is great news for America," as Fox News host Tucker Carlson said Tuesday evening, "especially for the large number of young people who would have been killed in pointless wars if Bolton had stayed on the job." Bolton was an inveterate hawk, perpetually undermining the president's better instincts on pursuing diplomacy and extricating America from her many misadventures in the Middle East. And anyway, as Carlson continued, Bolton "fundamentally was a man of the left," and — wait, what?

John Bolton, fundamentally a man of the left? Opposed to abortion and gun control, pro-private sector remedies to recession, unrelentingly aggressive on foreign policy John Bolton? Bomb Iran and invade North Korea John Bolton? Supporter of Barry Goldwater; member of the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump; Fox News commentator John Bolton? That John Bolton?

As she explains:

Some conservatives are putting in the difficult but necessary work of constructive criticism of their own movement. But Carlson and others like him have chosen the easier and more damaging method of handling disagreement via a constant game of "no true Scotsman." Instead of admitting fault, error, or even simple differences of opinion within their own camp — and different policy preferences unquestionably can develop from a set of ideological underpinnings unified enough to fund a single movement — they relabel anything objectionable as the property of their political enemies.

For this crowd, to have a bad position is to have a liberal position. If you're not with us, you're against us. To err is to be a Democrat. For Carlson, if Bolton is a disaster on foreign policy, that proves Bolton is a left-winger.

Yet more "what climate change looks like"

From The Guardian:

Parts of eastern Spain received what in some places was the heaviest rainfall on record on Thursday, as storms wreaked widespread destruction and killed at least two people.

The regional emergency service said a 51-year-old woman and her 61-year-old brother had been found dead in an overturned car that floodwaters had washed away in Caudete, about 60 miles (100km) south of Valencia, the private Spanish news agency Europa Press reported.

While on the topic of increased floods from climate change, a recent study at Nature confirmed that climate change is both increasing floods in parts of Europe, and decreasing them in other parts:

Our results—arising from the most complete database of European flooding so far—suggest that: increasing autumn and winter rainfall has resulted in increasing floods in northwestern Europe; decreasing precipitation and increasing evaporation have led to decreasing floods in medium and large catchments in southern Europe; and decreasing snow cover and snowmelt, resulting from warmer temperatures, have led to decreasing floods in eastern Europe. Regional flood discharge trends in Europe range from an increase of about 11 per cent per decade to a decrease of 23 per cent. Notwithstanding the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of the observational record, the flood changes identified here are broadly consistent with climate model projections for the next century^4,5, suggesting that climate-driven changes are already happening and supporting calls for the consideration of climate change in flood risk management.

Of course, this will cause simple minded, dumb people, like Bolt, Blair and anyone at Catallaxy, to have a headache, because they cannot conceive that climate change is not exactly the same in every part of the world.

Vaping taking the big hit

I wonder if vaping JC from Catallaxy invested in some vaping company's shares?   Or if he is still vaping himself.  Because businesses involved in this activity must be taking a severe hit in sales, one would imagine.  From People magazine:

A student athlete still has difficulty climbing up stairs after being hospitalized with “severe lung damage” caused by e-cigarettes.

“My lungs were that of a 70-year-old’s,” Illinois teen Adam Hergenreder, who started vaping when he was 16, was told by the doctors, according to CNN.

Following days of persistent nausea and vomiting, the teenager was hospitalized in late August, where doctors were able to realize the full extent of the damage....

“If I had known what it was doing to my body, I would have never even touched it, but I didn’t know,” the teen said, adding that “it was scary to think about” the damage “that little device” did to his lungs.

After being released from the hospital, Hergenreder still finds it “difficult to even do normal activities, like going up stairs,” which leaves him winded. His future with sports is also in jeopardy.

“I was a varsity wrestler before this and I might not ever be able to wrestle because that’s a very physical sport and my lungs might not be able to hold that exertion,” he told CNN. “It’s sad.”

I did try to warn you, JC.   

Playing with rats for a living

It's been a while since I had a rat post, but this story in The Atlantic about researchers who taught rats to play hide and seek (with the only reward being to tickle them) is quite charming:

All six rats learned to seek, and five also learned to hide. They clearly understood the rules of the game, and played strategically. When seeking, they searched systematically, beginning with past hiding locations. When hiding, they chose opaque boxes instead of transparent ones and kept quieter. They also seamlessly switched between the two roles, taking their cue from whether the starting box was closed (indicating “seek”) or open (indicating “hide”).

The rats learned the game in only a couple of weeks, which is “impressive in neuroscience,” says Juan Ignacio Sanguinetti-Scheck, who also took part in the study. “Animals can take months to learn tasks, even monkeys, but we’re generally trying to teach them to use joysticks or things they’d never do in normal life.” Hide-and-seek, by contrast, draws on behaviors such as concealing, finding peers, and switching roles, which aren’t just natural parts of rat life, but also frequent parts of rat play. In retrospect, it was the perfect game for uniting two different species. “It’s a clever and innovative approach,” says Gordon Burghardt of the University of Tennessee. “Many animals play with other species and engage in peekaboo, tug of war, or tag, but this example does seem unexpectedly complex.”

Why did the rats play along? It’s possible that they were going after tickles and other social rewards. After all, for two decades researchers have known that rats enjoy being tickled and react by producing ultrasonic chirps that can be compared to laughter. But Reinhold found that once discovered, the rats would often run away and re-hide, delaying their reward and prolonging the game itself. “It seemed really playful,” she says.

She and her colleagues believe that rather than pursuing rewards, the rats were playing for the sake of it. They played because they had fun. For a start, and this is an unusual but welcome line to see in a scientific paper, “the animals looked like they are having fun,” the team writes. When they reunited with Reinhold, they frantically jumped on the spot—a behavior delightfully known as freudensprung, or “joy jumps.” They also teased Reinhold by repeatedly getting close and running away.

Wall Street not what it was

I hadn't read of this before (thanks, ABC):  Wall Street is not what it was, with investment banks moving out into other parts of New York and their former building converted into apartments:

When you walk down Wall Street today, it's all condos", says Brian Barnier, director at ValueBridge Advisors.

"JP Morgan's office building — that's condos.

"Somebody's got a bathroom where JP Morgan's [John Pierpont "Jack" Morgan] office was."

Wall Street real estate agent Julia Hoagland is selling rentals on the strip.

"Wall Street and the financial district have changed dramatically in the nearly two decades since September 11," she says.

"A healthy housing market and tax incentives motivated developers to convert commercial buildings to the more valuable residential product."

The former AIG tower across the street from the NYSE and JP Morgan was made into rental apartments.

The owners of 60 Wall Street, which housed Deutsche Bank, have reportedly commissioned CBRE to market the tower's 1.7 million square feet of office space to apartment developers.

It also discusses changes in the whole investment banking line of business:

Mr Barnier, who has first-hand experience working in investment banking as an independent consultant, says the industry has traditionally leaned on three main sources of revenue.

Buying and selling companies, which was a major theme of the movie Wall Street, is one source of revenue. Much of this business has dried up.

Another huge revenue stream for investment banks has been their corporate advisory services.

"And they're now getting more competition from the consultancy firms." Think the big four accounting firms: EY, PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG and Deloitte.

"They're shedding traders right and left, going more to algorithmic models [where computer-driven mathematical models buy and sell shares based on stocks meeting certain criteria]."

"Each one of those business lines is under a lot of pressure."

Heh, again

From the Onion.

But what does it all mean?

At the New Daily, there's a story about the increase in government debt, and the uncertainty as to where it all stops.

Take this illustration from it:

As far as Australia is concerned, our debt government debt level is apparently at 41% of GDP, which (assuming debt is not a good thing) sounds pretty healthy. 

And what about this chart:

As for us:

Australia is a notch ahead of the US, with a corporate debt-to-GDP ratio of 74.7%.

As far as I can tell, the problem is that no one really understands the economics of debt on a global scale.

The thing Australia is "bad" at is household debt to GDP:   we rank near the top at about 120%, whereas the US is about 75% and China 52%.  But having a really low level is not a sign of a country you would like to live in:

So, all rather confusing as to what it means, really...

A victim of the culture wars

The Catholic Herald has an article entitled The Church used to have a powerful economic voice. What went wrong? and that is a pretty good question.

It starts:

One hundred years ago, the National Catholic War Council, the predecessor of today’s US Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued a “Program for Social Reconstruction”. Drawing on American progressive thought and the encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891), it argued for a living wage, urban housing, trust-busting, worker-run cooperatives, and employee ownership of industry.

Unlike most documents issued by America’s Catholic bishops, this one gained widespread notice. It was denounced by some as socialistic, though it in fact condemned socialism in unsparing terms. Leo XIII had done the same in Rerum Novarum. Then as now, a great deal of confusion arose from the fact that the Catholic Church condemns socialism while advancing ideas many people falsely regard as socialist. Some Catholics (including this author) who reject what the Church rejects have even called themselves socialist in this colloquial sense, with more exuberance than accuracy.

The statement’s ideas, some more practical than others, were not immediately implemented. But they helped shape the arguments and activism that would later result in the New Deal and the Great Society. The priest who drafted the statement, Fr John A Ryan, became an influential supporter of Franklin Roosevelt. The Program remains the most important intervention the American bishops have made in economic debates.

Given the document’s importance, the American bishops have marked its centenary rather tepidly.

These paragraphs offer an explanation: 

 Looking back on the document now, a right-wing observer is likely to view it as too economically progressive, and a leftwing observer is likely to view it as culturally retrograde. For example, the bishops state that women should receive equal pay for equal work, but that only adult men are to be guaranteed a living wage (the idea being that the man is responsible for supporting the family). They ask that women be treated fairly – in the name of justice and chivalry. Yet they insist that “the proportion of women in industry ought to be kept within the smallest practical limits.”

Not all these statements necessarily follow from Catholic premises. But simply glossing over them (as many left-wing admirers of the Program do) obscures something important about the document, however questionable some of its conclusions may be. Its signatories felt it was natural to argue simultaneously for economic justice and for healthy families (as they understood those things). They did so in a way that offends liberal economic and cultural pieties. Their statement showed an unabashed confidence in Catholic thought, economic and moral, that has since been lost.

This loss of confidence has much to do with developments in post-war politics. The Left focused on cultural deregulation and the Right on deregulation of the economy. It is hard for the Church to support unions when unions support abortion. It is hard to endorse the pro-life party when its members deny the universal destination of goods.

It is no secret that both political parties have become alienated from the working class. Hillary Clinton’s denunciation of “deplorables” and Mitt Romney’s misleading dismissal of “people who pay no income tax” were of a piece. Though it has generally avoided such crude rhetoric, the Church has suffered the same fate. Poorer and wealthier Catholics used to attend Mass at roughly equal rates. But there has been a large drop in attendance among working-class Catholics born after 1960. It should not surprise us that the Church has lost its economic voice at the same time it has lost the attachment of the working class.

One of the most appalling features of conservative Catholics is their adoption of  selfish, small government economic policies of the libertarian Right, and pretending that this has always been true Catholic thought.   And a large part of the reason for this is because they don't want to catch culture war cooties by being seen to be aligned in any way with the Left on the matters of abortion and sexuality. 

Yet more reason not to vegan

An article at The Conversation talks about a recent UK study indicating that vegetarian/vegan diets are associated with a higher risk of stroke (but a lower risk of heart disease.)

The article seems very reasonable, and it notes that some researchers think a lack of vitamin B12 might be behind this:

They cite a number of Japanese studies which have shown links between a very low intake of animal products and an increased risk of stroke.

One nutrient they mention is vitamin B12, as it’s found only in animal products (meat, fish, dairy products and eggs). Vegan sources are limited, though some mushroom varieties and fermented beans may contain vitamin B12.

Vitamin B12 deficiency can lead to anaemia and neurological issues, including numbness and tingling, and cognitive difficulties.

The authors suggest a lack of vitamin B12 may be linked to the increased risk of stroke among the vegetarian group. This deficiency could be present in vegetarians, and even more pronounced in vegans.

But this is largely speculative, and any associations between a low intake of animal products and an increased risk of stroke remain to be founded in a strong body of evidence.

A veganism worry

As I have said recently, the apparent triumph of veganism over vegetarianism bothers me, because you read so very often how certain key nutrients are hard to get from plants only. 

Here's another one to add to the list:

The momentum behind a move to plant-based and vegan diets for the good of the planet is commendable, but risks worsening an already low intake of an essential nutrient involved in brain health, warns a nutritionist in the online journal BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health.

To make matters worse, the UK government has failed to recommend or monitor dietary levels of this nutrient -- choline -- found predominantly in animal foods, says Dr Emma Derbyshire, of Nutritional Insight, a consultancy specialising in nutrition and biomedical science.

Choline is an essential dietary nutrient, but the amount produced by the liver is not enough to meet the requirements of the human body.

Choline is critical to brain health, particularly during fetal development. It also influences liver function, with shortfalls linked to irregularities in blood fat metabolism as well as excess free radical cellular damage, writes Dr Derbyshire.

The primary sources of dietary choline are found in beef, eggs, dairy products, fish, and chicken, with much lower levels found in nuts, beans, and cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli.

It doesn't say how it affects "brain health" - but it's a worry that it is important for fetal development in particular.   I hope there is no risk that more widespread veganism will end up dumbing down the population overall.

Cursing in Japan

Not swearing, but literal cursing, is discussed in this fascinating article in Japan Times.

Everyone who has been to Japan has seen the votive plaques with wishes for good fortune hanging around temples and shrines.   But at some shrines, the wishes are not happy ones:

...at Kadota Inari Shrine, located in the suburbs of Ashikaga, a city in Tochigi Prefecture some 90 minutes by train from Tokyo, visitors won’t find plaques with light-hearted wishes asking for good luck and rosy relationships.

“I’m completely exhausted dealing with K.S., the selfish devil in disguise who looks down on me, shouts at me and complains about each and everything I do. I hate you … I hate you … I hate you from the bottom of my heart, and I pray that you disappear from this world as soon as possible,” one of the plaques reads.

“I pray that my relationship with Hitomi, who betrayed me and wasted a year of my life, is completely severed” reads another. “She must be distanced from all paths leading to happiness. I will never let you become happy. May you suffer for the rest of your life to atone for my tears and agony. Mariko.”

Some wishes are more direct: “I pray that Okabe dies in an accident.”

Others are desperate pleas for help: “I pray that my family’s ties with depression and bipolar disorder come to an end.”

These are fervent, even violent expressions of raw, personal emotions rarely shown in public, and physical evidence of how traditional rituals associated with cursing are well and alive in 21st-century Japan.

Gosh.  It continues:

Kadota Inari Shrine is considered one of Japan’s three major enkiri, or “tie-cutting” shrines, in addition to Kyoto’s Fushimi Inari Taisha and Enkiri Enoki in Tokyo’s Itabashi Ward. However, occult writer Yuki Yoshida says Kadota Inari Shrine stands out in terms of the sheer number of plaques being offered and the level of animosity on display.

“A normal person may become sick of reading so many negative messages left on the plaques, but it’s an opportunity to observe the dark side of the human mind,” Yoshida says. “In fact, a number of dedicated fans visit Kadota Inari Shrine routinely to check the plaques hanging there. While Japan is often considered a secular society, it’s worth learning how there are still many people who seriously indulge in the act of cursing others.”

That said, Yoshida says regardless of how cruel wishes may be, revealing one’s darkest secrets in such fashion and letting off some steam is a healthier alternative to taking physical action.

Yet more details:

According to a book published more than a century ago by U.S. orientalist and lecturer William Elliot Griffis titled “The Religions of Japan From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji,” women betrayed by their lovers typically performed this religious act of vengeance at the hour of the ox, which is between 1 and 3 a.m.

“First making an image or manikin of straw, she set out on her errand of revenge, with nails held in her mouth and with hammer in one hand and straw figure in the other, sometimes also having on her head a reversed tripod in which were stuck three lighted candles,” he wrote. “Arriving at the shrine she selected a tree dedicated to a god, and then nailed the straw simulacrum of her betrayer to the trunk, invoking the kami (god) to curse and annihilate the destroyer of her peace.”

Griffis wrote that he had seen rusted nails and pieces of straw struck on trees on multiple occasions.

But cursing is now available commercially, on line:

For those looking to curse someone but remain wary of going through complicated rituals, there are online services that conduct curses on the client’s behalf.

Nihon Jujutsu Kenkyu Jukikai is one such service. Founded around three decades ago, the organization now staff around 30 people who undertake ushi no koku mairi and other rituals ranging in price from ¥20,000 to ¥300,000 depending on the skill set of the practitioner and the level of curse being administered, according to a spokesperson for the group.

I had no idea...