UK Government commission perpetuates “class” divisions

June 15, 2015

A report today from the UK Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission is garnering some headlines today because the study seems to show that there are “non-educational barriers to top jobs” and that “working-class applicants struggle to get access to top jobs in the UK”.  But this is a case, I think, of a social study which starts with pre-conceptions, proves them and makes nonsense recommendations. They advise firms to loosen (and downgrade) their job requirements to suit a wider range of applicants even though they don’t have a problem to fill their needs. The commission forgets that education (including of the “working class”) has to suit the jobs available and it is not for the job requirements to be diluted to suit the applicants. If the objective of the commision is to improve the employment prospects of the “working class” then perhaps the education system has to make the “non-educational” factors – which apparently are important – part of the education system.

Press Release:

The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission has published research ‘Non educational barriers to the elite profession evaluation’ showing that working-class applicants struggle to get access to top jobs in the UK.

The research is the product of extensive interviews with staff from 13 elite law, accountancy and financial services firms, who together are responsible for 45,000 of the best jobs in the country.

It finds that elite firms are systematically excluding bright working-class applicants from their workforce. Data collected for the project showed that as much as 70% of job offers in 2014 were to graduates who had been educated at a selective state or fee-paying school, compared to 4% and 7% of the population as a whole.

Rt. Hon. Alan Milburn, the Chair of the Commission, said:

This research shows that young people with working-class backgrounds are being systematically locked out of top jobs. Elite firms seem to require applicants to pass a ‘poshness test’ to gain entry. Inevitably that ends up excluding youngsters who have the right sort of grades and abilities but whose parents do not have the right sort of bank balances.

Why can’t the comprehensive schools teach their “working class” students to be posh if that is what is required. Speaking and behaving “posh” is a matter of education not necessarily a matter of wealth. But that is not something that “political correctness” will admit. Of course Alan Milburn is a Labour MP with a vested interest in demonstrating that the “working class” are being hard done by. It is always wealth that must be shown to be the culprit. It could never possibly be the education of the “working class” which is inadequate. But what he, and the commission are actually doing, are perpetuating their preconceptions of the poor, discriminated against, working class.

The recommendations are equally silly:

Dr Louise Ashley of Royal Holloway, University of London, Research Project Lead, said:

Our research finds that recruitment and selection processes which advantage students from more privileged backgrounds remain firmly in place at most elite law and accountancy firms. As such, despite their focus on specific social mobility initiatives, the rate and pace of change is limited.

We make 3 key recommendations for firms wishing to access the widest range of talent to benefit their business and their clients in future; first, amend attraction strategies to encourage higher numbers of applications from students with a wider range of educational and socio-economic backgrounds; second, ensure that these diverse students have access to similar levels of support enjoyed by their more traditional peers, in order to navigate the selection process effectively; third, interrogate current definitions of talent, including how potential is identified and assessed, to ensure that disadvantaged students are not ruled out for reasons of background rather than aptitude and skill.

If speaking “posh” is a job requirement then perhaps the education system has to adjust. Firms will automatically adjust their requirements if they cannot get sufficient applicants who fit.

“Poshness”, however you wish to define it, is a perfectly valid job requirement. Lack of it among “working class” applications is a commentary on their education – not an excuse.

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Fatwas and papal encyclicals are all bull

June 14, 2015

I am distressed by the fact that so many humans give so much credence (or any credence at all) to priests. All “priests” are in the business of imposing their beliefs onto others. What is not knowledge is ignorance. And beliefs only exist in the space outside knowledge. Imposing beliefs on others is just the imposition of ignorance. Each individual should at least be allowed his own ignorance. The “good” priests at least confine themselves to imposing their beliefs onto those who choose to suspend their intelligence and agree to be subjugated. The “bad” priests are those who seek to impose their beliefs on all and using force if necessary.

Science is the process by which ignorance becomes knowledge. And beliefs are, of course, required only when there is no knowledge – in the Space of Ignorance.

What is not knowledge is ignorance. Religions only exist in the Space of Ignorance

I find the idea that a few people and their spokesmen, whether some Mufti or the Pope, are taken seriously when they tell others what to believe, quite repugnant. In fact I find the idea that any  “priest” who – by definition – operates in the Space of Ignorance – and tells others what particular bit of ignorance they are to follow, effectively denies and degrades the sentience of the “follower”.

And while I have no objection to anybody wishing to subordinate his own capacity for thought and to unthinkingly “follow” some other person’s belief within the Space of Ignorance, it does not increase my respect for that person. Encyclicals, bulls and fatwas are merely opinions. They are all about beliefs in the Space of Ignorance. They are required only for matters of belief and are not required for matters which lie in the area of knowledge. Papal encyclicals are of a somewhat lower status than a papal bull.

Slate: Encyclicals are authoritative, not to be criticized or rejected lightly by members of the church, but they are not infallible. Only three doctrines developed in the past 200 years are considered infallible, and all were issued as bulls: the Immaculate Conception (that Mary was born without original sin), the Assumption (that Mary was taken up body and soul into heaven), and the definition of papal infallibility issued by the First Vatican Council.

There is a distressing and contemptuous suspension of reason when a papal bull – regarded as infallible – has to be issued that the Pope is infallible. ” I am infallible because I am”.

But there is no difference between a papal encyclical which is a form of pastoral letter – sent by the Pope as a shepherd to inform all the unthinking sheep of his congregation what they are to believe, and the fatwa issued by some idiot Imam as a command to all those who choose to suspend their own intelligence. (A fatwa is actually a religious legal opinion and can only be pronounced by one who is a Mufti. All Imams are considered learned enough to be Muftis). Of course a papal bull would be a command to the faithful but would only have excommunication (nowadays) as the sanction for non-compliance. Non-compliance with a papal bull could be heresy and once upon a time demanded torture and death. A fatwa on the other hand is stuck in some distant past and may still require death for non-compliance.

In areas of ignorance where religious beliefs do not impinge, the process of science is not in conflict. But it took until 1835 for the Catholic Church to permit books on the heliocentric nature of the solar system:

The Catholic Church’s 1758 Index of Prohibited Books omitted the general prohibition of works defending heliocentrism, but retained the specific prohibitions of the original uncensored versions of De revolutionibus and Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Those prohibitions were finally dropped from the 1835 Index.

Many fatwas and encyclicals are opportunistic and often stupid. A fatwa from Saudi Arabia as recently as 2000 declared that the sun revolved around the earth. In 2005 an Indian mufti issued a fatwa against the tennis player Sania Mirza and her tight tops. Also in 2005 another Indian mufti declared that a 28 year old woman raped by her father-in-law was now in the position of mother to her husband and had to leave him. A fatwa from an idiot mufti in Malaysia banned “tomboys”. Children are still prevented from vaccinations against polio because of a fatwa.

Encyclicals from the Pope are more sophisticated than fatwas issued by a multitude of silly muftis, but just as opportunistic and equally inane. In 1864 a papal encyclical (Quanta Cura) condemned freedom of individual conscience or that the will of the public could override any law, human or divine, among many other idiocies. In 1937 a self-serving encyclical written in German (Mit brennender Sorge) was issued to protect Catholics in Germany and which denounced the theories of “race and blood”, but did not name the Nazis or Hitler. Just 5 days later another encyclical (Divini Redemptoris) denouncing communism and bolshevism and designed to mollify the Nazis was also issued. In 1968, another encyclical (Humanae Vitae) condemned contraception. In 1991 the encyclical Centesimus Annus praised labour unions and insisted that the end of the Cold War did not mean that Capitalism was the only model of economic organisation. In the last 100 years all the encyclicals issued have been about opportunism and political appeasement.

A papal encyclical has been expected for some time – any day now – on Climate Change. This would continue the recent tradition of populist political correctness. But it probably will not say very much about the sexual abuse of children by its priests. But addressing  climate change itself is some confirmation that, for the Catholic Church, hypothesised global warming (renamed to be the almost meaningless term “climate change”) lies in the Space of Ignorance and is not knowledge.  It is expected that the Pope will call on all good Catholics to stop using fossil fuels and stop eating meat or at least to get their cows to reduce their flatulence. But knowledge needs no papal encyclicals – only beliefs do.

Global warming belief is – as with all religions – placed in the Space of Ignorance. There is no “science” involved in “climate science”, when there is no testable hypothesis. No “climate policy” anywhere in the world has any climate parameter as a measurable goal. (The talk about a global warming of 2C is based on a parameter that is calculated not measured – and the calculations themselves are suspect). That the Catholic Church and this Pope espouse global warming orthodoxy is only “proof” that global warming is nothing more than a belief in the Space of Ignorance. It is Religious Alarmism of the worst kind. That the Catholic Church supports this belief could – hopefully – be its kiss of death.

But the bottom line is that encyclicals and fatwas are only needed in the Space of Ignorance and are all bull.

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Just a little bit funny, this Saturday morning …

June 13, 2015
  1. A white woman, Rachel Dolezal, believed all the claptrap about how race was just a social construct and decided to identify herself as an African-American. She has altered her appearance and hair style to convince her surroundings and has leveraged the duplicity to get a full scholarship at a black University and then to become President of the local chapter of the NAACP in Spokane, Washington. She has managed to keep this up for some 7 or 8 years. But she didn’t manage to change her ancestry and her genetics and was eventually betrayed by her (white) parents.
  2. King Felipe VI of Spain has removed the title “Duchess of Palma” from his sister, Princess Cristina, who is to go on trial charged with tax evasion. She was granted the title in 1997 when she married Inaki Urdangarin, a former Olympic handball player who is also accused of tax evasion. Presumably she remains a Princess of the Ignoble kind.
  3. Barack Obama demonstrated again that he is a leader incapable of even carrying his own supporters with him. A leader who follows. He is trying to negotiate a trade agreement among 12 countries around the Pacific. He asked Congress to give him “fast track” powers to negotiate the deal. The Senate agreed but his own Democrats killed the enabling bill in the House of Representatives. But Obama will try again.
  4. The AAP (Arvind’s Agitation Populace) are now the ruling party in the Delhi government. True to their ineptitude they appointed a Law Minister, Jitender Singh Tomar, who turned out to have faked all his degrees.
  5. Moldova’s Prime Minister, Chiril Gaburici, also resigned because he was found to have faked his school diploma.
  6. Prince Carl-Philip was the Crown Prince of Sweden when he was born in 1979.  But a year later he had to give up that position to his elder sister Victoria when legislation removed the hereditary preference for male progeny. (This was actually a compromise since legislation to abolish the monarchy failed to pass). Today, he marries a commoner, Sofia Hellqvist, 30, who will become Princess Sofia of Sweden. Hellqvist was something of a hell-raiser when she was younger and more foolish, with a period as a topless model and beauty queen and even as a reality TV participant hobnobbing with porn stars. Just a touch of ignobility here.
  7. In Japan a Supreme court ruling in 1979 established that in a case of a husband or wife cheating with a 3rd party (where the 3rd party was not a prostitute paid for his or her services) the cheated spouse could sue the 3rd party for compensation for disturbing the tranquility of the marriage. But this week a Japanese judge ruled that a Ginza bar hostess who had sex with her business-men clients, not for money but for their continued patronage, could not be sued by an “injured” wife. He argued that this “business adultery” was routine and did not disturb the tranquility of the marriage.
  8. Tony Blair is.

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European Commission’s objections to GE/Alstom deal may come today

June 12, 2015

My previous posts about the GE/Alstom deal are here:

UPDATE2! The EC has apparently sent its statement of objections to GE:

WSJ: The European Commission, the EU’s top antitrust regulator, said it had sent a so-called statement of objections to the U.S. industrial company on Friday.

UPDATE! Reuters reports that Alstom has reacted to the press articles today and said that they will continue to provide evidence to the EC about the positive aspects of the deal for Europe. About the “statement of objections” they said “There have been press comments that a ‘statement of objections’ would be issued by the European Commission associated with the investigation of the sale of Alstom’s Energy businesses to General Electric. This is a usual step in a phase II merger case and it does not prejudge the outcome of the investigation. It will allow both General Electric and Alstom to address specific matters pointed out by the investigating team.”

The EC are playing hardball and seem to be looking for substantial concessions from GE before approving GE’s acquisition of Alstom’s power and grid businesses. According to Reuters a statement of their objections could come today (12th June).

Reuters: General Electric Co may need to offer bigger concessions to win European Union approval for its purchase of Alstom SA’s power unit as regulators plan to warn the U.S. company that the deal would harm competition, two people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

….. “A statement of objections could come on Friday,” one source said.

Such a document shows why the EU regulator views the deal as anti-competitive and is a prelude to a veto unless companies come up with strong arguments or significant concessions.

Alstom shares fell 3.2 percent following the Reuters story, while GE was down 0.3 percent. An EC spokesman declined to comment. Alstom had no immediate comment. GE said it was working constructively with the regulator.  “We are focused on a positive outcome that preserves the deal economics,” GE said, adding it was confident of closing the transaction in the second half of 2015.

As I have written before, I expect that the EC objections are centred around what will happen with Alstom’s Heavy Duty Gas Turbine (HDGT) technology and service business. GE has no immediate need for Alstom’s sequential combustion technology, though, in the long run, GE may be the best placed to utilise that technology to take gas turbines to new heights. Regarding the service business for gas turbines it is very rarely, and only for older machines, that a party other than the OEM can provide the most critical spares. So such spares for the Alstom machines would come in the future from GE instead of Alstom but it would be no real change to the competitive position. (For the critical, “noble” parts of any not-too-old gas turbine, the OEM has a virtual monopoly).

However what the EC may be struggling with is that

  1. insisting on Alstom selling the HDGT business to someone other than GE will not find any competent buyers and certainly not any price close to what GE would pay, or
  2. asking GE (or Alstom) to sell sequential combustion technology to a 3rd party could only find buyers a long way down the learning curve who would need deep pockets and maybe 5 years to bring themselves up to any kind  of competitive position, or
  3. asking GE to either commit to use the sequential combustion technology themselves but where GE would probably want to discontinue the Alstom machines quickly, or
  4. to make the technology  “generally available” (as some kind of open source technology) for other potential competitors which would also require that GE give up the service business for some of Alstom’s biggest engines (say the machines operating in Europe) so that they could be available as a “training ground” for any technology user trying to make a go of it (for example; Ansaldo/Shanghai, MHPS, Harbin, Bhel, Kawasaki Heavy ……)

None of these options would be easy to implement. Option 1, I think, will not fly. Option 4 is probably beyond GE’s walk-away point since the heart of their business plan – the service revenues – would be impaired. Some variation of Options 2 and or 3 and parts of 4 maybe will not chase GE away.

The EC is due to announce its decision by early August, and since the EC is in regular discussions with GE, it does look like there is a negotiation ongoing (even if it cannot ever be acknowledged to be a negotiation by either party). I suspect Alstom has no great part to play in this negotiation. The French government probably can not be seen to be involved, but they are certainly not happy with the EC and its objections. (Of course, it is inconceivable for the French government that the EC could possibly go against “French interests”).

The statement of the EC’s objections – if it comes out today – should give a good indication whether this deal is going to go through or will eventually die. But killing the deal is not really in Europe’s interests, so the EC will have to tread very carefully.

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Web ads may not be the dominating revenue model in the future

June 11, 2015

I find web ads always irritating and sometimes so intrusive that they have put me off the site altogether. Now I use Adblocker with Chrome, which works very well and this allows me to visit and stay on sites which I would otherwise have avoided. Apparently Apple will also allow ad blocker apps with Safari (iOS9) and clearly they see it as a way of improving the experience of their users. But what Apple plans will allow more than just ad blocking:

“Content Blocking gives your extensions a fast and efficient way to block cookies, images, resources, pop-ups, and other content.”

Effectively Apple are offering”ghostery” rather than ad blocking:

Quartz: Ghostery is a popular browser extension for all major desktop browsers. It blocks all content pulled in from third-party servers.

The way the modern web works is this: if you go to a website, it only sends some text and images your way. But it also pulls in data from dozens of analytics tools, ad servers, ad exchanges, web analytics firms, social buttons and trackers, and various other forms of online surveillance that serve you ads, measure you responses, gauge your profile, figure out your shoe size, and so on. Ghostery stops all of it. Apple’s content blocker appears to allow developers to do something similar.

Why is Apple doing this? Joshua Benton at Nieman Lab lays out three ways of looking at it: either Apple is serious about all its recent privacy talk, or it is out to get Google and Facebook, or it wants people to look at the ads served by its own iAds service on its new News app. Perhaps it is a mix of the three.

But what is clear is that small businesses that rely entirely on online advertising are going to have to rethink how they make money.

In fact it could be a way for Apple not only to to differentiate themselves from their competitors but also to develop some brand loyalty from among the increasing number of web and mobile users who are just irritated and get no added value from the ads and 3rd party content.

Since using Adblocker I have returned to many sites which I had abandoned because of their intrusive ads. Typically on the news sites, “quality” news sites have upto 5 ads blocked per web page while the “tabloids” have 10 – 20 ads blocked. One tentative conclusion that I come to is that the experience of getting the “news” is inversely proportional to the number of ads on the page.

Surfing some of the news sites just now I found the number of ads being blocked as below:

NYT – 5, Wa Po – 3, Huff Po – 13, CNN – 5, NY Post – 9, CBS News – 18

The Telegraph – 13, The Guardian – 5, The Independent – 19, Daily Mail – 12, The Times -8, BBC – 4, The Mirror – 38

The Hindu – 3, Times of India – 5, Hindustan Times -6

Expressen – 7, Svenska Dagbladet – 2, Dagens Nyheter – 7, Aftonbladet – 21

Der Spiegel -3, Deutsche Welle – 0, Reuters – 17, Le Monde – 4, El Pais – 6

So by my simple reckoning, without an adblocker, The Mirror provides about the worst experience and Deutsche Welle, SvD, BBC, Der Spiegel and Le Monde offer the least intrusion and disturbance to their readers.

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Boozy chimps, Hanuman and the “drunken monkey” hypothesis

June 11, 2015

A new paper reports on chimpanzees in Guinea exhibiting long-term and recurrent ingestion of ethanol. The study was carried out over 17 years and found chimpanzees using leaves to drink fermented palm sap. Many consumed sufficient to produce “visible signs of inebriation”. Local humans also tap the sap of the raffia palm trees to make a palm wine.

The human trait of imbibing intentionally fermented drinks is at least as old as the oldest known archaeological records of ancient civilizations. Stone jugs for alcoholic drinks have been found which date back to at least 10,000 BCE . It is quite likely that the origin of alcoholic drinks predates the arrival of agriculture some 15,000 years ago. And that would suggest that the origin lies with the accidental (and fortuitous?) consumption of over-ripe and partially fermented fruits and berries leading eventually to an intentional fermentation. But that takes the origin back to the time before modern humans had even arrived on the scene and when their primate ancestors relied on fruits and berries for their diet.

Kimberly J Hockings, et al, Tools to tipple: ethanol ingestion by wild chimpanzees using leaf-sponges, Royal Society of Open Science, DOI: 10.1098/rsos.150150, Published 9 June 2015

Abstract: African apes and humans share a genetic mutation that enables them to effectively metabolize ethanol. However, voluntary ethanol consumption in this evolutionary radiation is documented only in modern humans. Here, we report evidence of the long-term and recurrent ingestion of ethanol from the raffia palm (Raphia hookeri, Arecaceae) by wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) at Bossou in Guinea, West Africa, from 1995 to 2012. Chimpanzees at Bossou ingest this alcoholic beverage, often in large quantities, despite an average presence of ethanol of 3.1% alcohol by volume (ABV) and up to 6.9% ABV. Local people tap raffia palms and the sap collects in plastic containers, and chimpanzees use elementary technology—a leafy tool—to obtain this fermenting sap. These data show that ethanol does not act as a deterrent to feeding in this community of wild apes, supporting the idea that the last common ancestor of living African apes and modern humans was not averse to ingesting foods containing ethanol.

The study provides support for the “drunken monkey” hypothesis which “proposes that human attraction to ethanol may derive from dependence of the primate ancestors of Homo sapiens on ripe and fermenting fruit as a dominant food source. Ethanol naturally occurs in ripe and overripe fruit when yeasts ferment sugars, and consequently early primates (and many other fruit-eating animals) have evolved a genetically based behavioral attraction to the molecule”.

In fact there were natural selection benefits in being “drunken monkeys”. The chimpanzee paper begins:

The ‘drunken monkey hypothesis’ states that natural selection favoured those primates with an attraction to ethanol (commonly referred to as alcohol) because it was associated with proximate benefits (e.g. acting as an appetite stimulant or a cue to finding fruit, or as an unavoidable consequence of a frugivorous diet, etc.), consequently increasing caloric gains.

Hanuman chasing the Sun — image Wikipedia

It is a short mental step from monkey-ancestors to ancient civilizations and mythology. The Indian monkey-god, Hanuman was supposed to be both celibate and teetotal. But his depiction as a “monkey” is probably a later invention. Ancient texts suggest that the young Hanuman was so enamoured of red fruit that he tried to eat the Sun, thinking it was just another ripe fruit. Quite possibly his red fruit were over-ripe, partially fermented and intoxicating. The resulting disfigurement to his jaw and face (burnt and swollen) is what may have given him his appearance. There is a hint that he was of an ancient people (species), half-human and half-monkey, which has become extinct. An ancient ancestor perhaps, and one addicted to intoxicating fruit. Clearly he was put off alcohol for ever. Interestingly, mythology and ancient ayurvedic medicine agree that alcohol in moderation is medicinal and good but taken in excess is a poison and bad. Of course in the Ramayana, all the good guys are vegetarians and teetotal while all the bad guys eat meat and consume an excess of alcohol. The Mahabharata is much more equivocal. Here even the good guys are allowed to drink.

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Another theory: MH370 nosedived into the ocean with no resulting debris

June 10, 2015

Another theory about the MH370 disappearance. Mathematics shows that if the pilot nosedived vertically into the ocean, it might explain why no debris has been found.

“The true final moments of MH370 are likely to remain a mystery until someday when its black box is finally recovered and decoded. But forensics strongly supports that MH370 plunged into the ocean in a nosedive.”

Goong Chen, Texas A&M mathematician

Texas A&M University at Qatar mathematician Goong Chen has theorized the ill-fated plane plunged vertically into the southern Indian Ocean in March 2014.

The researchers’ computer simulations lead to the forensic assertion that a 90-degree nosedive explains the lack of debris or spilled oil in the water near where the plane is presumed to have crashed. The research was the cover story in the April 2015 issue of Notices of the American Mathematical Society (see the team’s paper here.)

Chen is an applied mathematician teaching and researching at Texas A&M at Qatar who has been a faculty member in the Department of Mathematics at Texas A&M University’s main campus in College Station, Texas, USA since 1987. He led the interdisciplinary team of collaborators from Texas A&M, Penn State, Virginia Tech, MIT and the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute (QEERI) in simulating and modeling what might have happened to the plane. His research is supported by the QNRF National Priority Research Project Grant #5-674-1-114.

The researchers used applied mathematics and computational fluid dynamics to conduct numerical simulations on the RAAD Supercomputer at Texas A&M at Qatar of a Boeing 777 plunging into the ocean, a so-called “water entry” problem in applied mathematics and aerospace engineering. The team simulated five different scenarios, including a gliding water entry similar to the one Capt. Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger skillfully performed when US Airways flight 1549 landed in the middle of New York City’s Hudson River, a feat that’s referred to as “the miracle on the Hudson.”

Chen said based on all available evidence — especially the lack of floating debris or oil spills near the area of the presumed crash — the mostly likely theory is that the plane entered the water at a vertical or steep angle.

……. The fluid dynamics simulations indicate, for a vertical water entry of the plane, that there would be no large bending moment, which is what happens when an external force, or moment, is applied to a structural element (such as a plane), which then causes the fuselage to buckle and break up. As the vertical water-entry is the smoothest with only small bending moment in contrast with other angles of entry, the aircraft is less likely to experience “global failure,” or break-up on entry near the ocean surface, which would explain the lack of debris or oil near the presumed crash site.

Based also on the suggestions of other aviation experts, Chen said in such a situation the wings would have broken off almost immediately and, along with other heavy debris, would have sunk to the bottom of the ocean, leaving little or no trace to be spotted.

MH370 nose dive -- Daily Mail

MH370 nose dive — graphic by Daily Mail

 

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Birth month (hence month of conception) linked to disease risk (in New York)

June 10, 2015

Back to Astrology.

M. R. Boland, Z. Shahn, D. Madigan, G. Hripcsak, N. P. Tatonetti. Birth Month Affects Lifetime Disease Risk: A Phenome-Wide Method.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 2015; DOI:10.1093/jamia/ocv046

This is not so much a medical study as a data analysis of the health records of 1.7 million people in New York. It is about correlations and not about causations but could, of course, lead to insights about causations. While the study and all the headlines focus on month of birth, I note that month of birth automatically implies month of conception. I would have thought that there was a greater chance of any genetic effects being associated with the time of conception rather than the time of birth. And if the time of conception is really of some significance, then it begs the question whether the “quality” of sperm or ova are affected by time or follow some seasonal or cyclic pattern.

In any event, the association of season with health suggests that the sun is playing a role. And if the sun can play a role (gravitational?) then so can the moon and other celestial bodies. Which sounds suspiciously like Astrology.

The study finds

  • Overall, babies born in October had the highest risk of disease, and those born in May had the lowest risk.
  • Asthma risk was highest for July and October babies.
  • November babies were at the highest risk for developing ADHD.
  • Babies born in March faced the highest risk for heart problems including atrial fibrillation, congestive heart failure and mitral valve disorder.
  • Winter babies were at a higher risk of neurological problems.

Babies born in October would have been conceived in December and those born in May would have been conceived in July. And that means that conception during the summer holiday period produces babies with less risk of disease than babies conceived during the Christmas holidays.

Press Release: Columbia University scientists have developed a computational method to investigate the relationship between birth month and disease risk. The researchers used this algorithm to examine New York City medical databases and found 55 diseases that correlated with the season of birth. Overall, the study indicated people born in May had the lowest disease risk, and those born in October the highest. The study was published this week in the Journal of American Medical Informatics Association. ……. 

Earlier research on individual diseases such as ADHD and asthma suggested a connection between birth season and incidence, but no large-scale studies had been undertaken. This motivated Columbia’s scientists to compare 1,688 diseases against the birth dates and medical histories of 1.7 million patients treated at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/CUMC between 1985 and 2013. …….. The study ruled out more than 1,600 associations and confirmed 39 links previously reported in the medical literature. The researchers also uncovered 16 new associations, including nine types of heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States. The researchers performed statistical tests to check that the 55 diseases for which they found associations did not arise by chance. ……

……….. The new data are consistent with previous research on individual diseases. For example, the study authors found that asthma risk is greatest for July and October babies. An earlier Danish study on the disease found that the peak risk was in the months (May and August) when Denmark’s sunlight levels are similar to New York’s in the July and October period.

For ADHD, the Columbia data suggest that around one in 675 occurrences could relate to being born in New York in November. This result matches a Swedish study showing peak rates of ADHD in November babies.

The researchers also found a relationship between birth month and nine types of heart disease, with people born in March facing the highest risk for atrial fibrillation, congestive heart failure, and mitral valve disorder. One in 40 atrial fibrillation cases may relate to seasonal effects for a March birth. A previous study using Austrian and Danish patient records found that those born in months with higher heart disease rates—March through June—had shorter life spans.

Tatonetti Lab disease and time of birth

Tatonetti Lab disease and time of birth

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Ignoble Royals

June 9, 2015

Monarchy and monarchists, by their very nature, must tend towards dictatorship.  A hundred years ago, the Labour revolutions and adoption of universal suffrage forced the opposing concept of benevolent dictatorships to harden into a concept of fascist dictatorships. Nobility and noblesse oblige, which characterised and made palatable the behaviour of benevolent monarchs, were no longer required. They are now a thing of the distant past. Since the early part of the 20th century and following World War 1, the very idea of “nobility” died. Members of royal families were now concerned with retaining their positions, their privileges and their personal wealth, and had not the freedom or the room to exercise or demonstrate their “nobility”. Most Royalty in Europe had little choice – if they were to remain Royalty – other than to become Ignoble. Leading up to and during World war 2, three common factors – a controlled breeding of the masses,  a hatred of the Jews and opposition to the Reds, made the now Ignoble Royals natural allies of the Nazis and Hitler.

That the Duke of Windsor – probably encouraged by his wife Wallis Simpson – was quite a strong Nazi sympathiser is no great secret. A new book by Karina Urbach – Go Betweens for Hitler  (OUP £20) – brings out some further details of his extensive contacts and his actions in support of a Nazi victory (which would have brought him back to the throne). He even supported the bombing of Britain to bring the war quickly to a close in favour of Germany. Since Royal correspondence between the British and German branches of the House of Windsor (actually the House of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha, renamed in 1917) is still being kept secret, it can only be deduced from other records that the British Royals had quite extensive links with their German  cousins – who were nearly all Nazi sympathisers.

Members of the Royals (in any country) are inherently opposed to communism. In Europe they were very often anti-semitic and were already eugenicists (in the Nazi style) with their support of their own breeding programs. (In the event, inbreeding has actually led to a clear decline in intelligence among the Royals, with significant non-royal admixtures only coming through to strengthen their gene pool in the last 2 generations or so). A belief in controlling the breeding of the masses, a hatred of the Jews and an implacable opposition to communism – made the Royals natural allies of the Nazis and Hitler.

Urbach writes about her book in The Conversation:

Intelligence reports and German, Spanish and Russian documents show members of the British royal family were indeed far closer to Nazi Germany than has previously been recognised. …. One key to this Anglo-German network is Charles Edward Duke of Coburg (1884-1954). …… Coburg was part of a wider group of go-betweens – private individuals who were used for secret negotiations by Hitler. My investigation into Coburg’s work sheds new and damning light on the Duke of Windsor, a relative and confidante of Coburg. …….

After the failed Hitler Putsch of 1923, Coburg hid several Hitler supporters on the run in his castles. Hitler would not forget this great favour and later rewarded Coburg by making him a general. But he also needed him for something more secretive. In 1933 the Führer was short of international contacts and did not trust his own foreign ministry.

He therefore used members of the German aristocracy for secret missions to Britain, Italy, Hungary and Sweden. Coburg was particularly useful in London from 1935 to 1939 and was received in Britain due to his sister Alice Countess of Athlone’s tireless work. She was Queen Mary’s sister-in-law and fought for Coburg’s acceptance. This resulted in him not just being welcomed in British drawing rooms, but most importantly, by the royals, including the Duke of Windsor.

……. The Soviet intelligence services were convinced of the Duke of Windsor’s treachery when war broke out. …….. In 1940 they reported that he was conducting negotiations with Hitler to form a new English government and conclude a peace with Germany contingent on a military alliance against the USSR. …….. 

Like his relative Coburg, the Duke of Windsor was anti-Semitic. In June 1940 Don Javier Bermejillo, a Spanish diplomat and old friend of Windsor – he had known him since the 1920s – reported a conversation he had had with the Duke to his superiors …. that the Duke of Windsor blamed “the Jews, the Reds and the Foreign Office for the war”. Windsor added that he would like to put Anthony Eden and other British politicians “up against a wall”. Bermejillo stated that Windsor had already made similar remarks about the Reds and the Jews to him long before he became King in 1936. In another conversation on June 25 1940 Bermejillo reported that Windsor stressed if one bombed England effectively this could bring peace.

…….

Prince Philip’s connections are no secret but they are now part of the convenient loss of collective memory.

Ryan Paul: ….. Not only was he trained in the Hitler Youth curriculum, but his German brothers-in-law, with whom he lived, all became high-ranking figures in the Nazi Party. ……. 

During 1931-1932, Philip’s four older sisters married as follows: Margarita to a Czech-Austrian prince named Gottfried von Hohenlohe-Langenburg, a great-grandson of England’s Queen Victoria; Theodora to Berthold, the margrave of Baden; Cecilia to Georg Donatus, grand duke of Hesse-by-Rhine, also a great-grandson of Queen Victoria; and, Sophie to Prince Christoph of Hesse.

Three of Philip’s brothers-in-law were part of a group of German aristocrats who were Anglophile and pro-Nazi at the same time …… 

The Ignoble Royals were not just in Britain and were quite widespread. Prince Bernhard, the consort of Queen Juliana and the the father of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, was a member of the Nazi party and of the SS. After the War he converted his fascist tendencies to become eco-fascism as the first head of the WWF. (When he was forced to resign after the Lockheed scandal, he handed over the eco-fascist baton to Prince Philip). Gustav V and the remaining aristocracy in Sweden approved of Nazi actions against the Red Menace. Currently he is said to have been opposed to their Jewish policies but there is some whitewashing involved. Leopold III of Belgium was born Prince Leopold of Belgium, Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and tried to walk the tightrope between Hitler and the Allies. He did try to keep Belgium neutral but he surrendered to the Germans without his government’s approval and was seen by some as a traitor.

While many Royals eventually opposed Hitler and the Nazis (especially after it was clear that they would not win), royalty and business and bankers (of the non-Jewish kind) all over Europe, were strong, and even enthusiastic supporters of Hitler before the War. In fact, they helped with funding the growth of the National Socialists and his “election” to power.

Nobility is not something that is a characteristic of European royalty any longer. It is not even a behavioural requirement since they have no power to wield. And so they have degenerated to the point that much of their behaviour is that of spoilt brats and ignoble.

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Wanted! A leader in the White House

June 8, 2015

After 7 years as President, Barack Obama’s Iraq strategy is still ” not complete”. His Syria and Ukraine “strategies” are only conspicuous by their absence.

Once upon a time and a fairy tale or three ago, I had very high expectations of President Obama. He had set the expectations himself with his rhetoric. There was nothing he couldn’t. But all that he will have accomplished by the end of his two terms is to have been the first “black” President of the United States – and he can’t even take credit for that.

I have a theory that world development proceeds in steps and that these discrete steps are dependent upon the number of “leaders” available at any time in the world to work together. With “leaders” I mean those who take people along with them towards some vision of the world and are not mere “followers”. For the last 150 years the “leader” of the US has been, is, and must be a necessary – but insufficient – ingredient. The world stagnates or even moves backwards in the time when the political leaders are “followers”. A critical mass of “leadership” is not possible when the President of the US is a follower. It would seem that for the last 7 years we have had a “follower” in the White House whose actions are subordinated to his fears. It is paralysis by analysis which reigns. The closest to a leader in Europe has been Angela Merkel but even she has  not communicated any vision of Europe – let alone the world – to chase.

The clarity of a vision is important for leadership. A “consensus” vision is diffuse and muddled – almost by definition. My hypothesis is that real “leadership”, if existing simultaneously in 5 key countries/regions of the world, can provide the necessary and sufficient conditions to create new wonders. If the “leaders” of the US, Russia, Europe (whichever of France, Germany or the UK qualifies) together with China and India actually shared a vision of what could be done and “led” their people along that path, there would be a paradigm shift and a step-change to a level not ever seen before.

BBC: The US does not yet have a “complete strategy” for helping Iraq regain territory from Islamic State (IS), President Barack Obama has said.

Business Insider: “When a finalized plan is presented to me by the Pentagon, then I will share it with the American people,” Obama said. “We don’t yet have a complete strategy because it requires commitments on the part of the Iraqis as well.” ………. Obama said in September that the goal was to “degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL,” but that goal still seems far off.

ISIS Islamic State Iraq Syria control

Graphic Business Insider / Reuters

The development of proportional representation in democracies is a natural inhibitor of “leaders” and “leadership”. The focus on consensus politics means that, very often, it is the “lowest common”  standards and goals that apply. This turns even very good leaders into mediocre followers. The coming together of a critical mass of “political leadership” in the world cannot be predicted. But it will surely happen some time.

It might even happen in my lifetime, but looking at the field of Presidential candidates in the US, the next President of the US is likely to be another follower, and it will not happen anytime soon.

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