Brain food

From the BBC -

People who eat vegan or plant-based diets should ensure they are getting enough of a key, but little-known, brain nutrient, say experts.

Choline, which helps transfer signals between nerve cells, is highest in dairy foods and meat.

Nutritionist Emma Derbyshire told a BMJ journal that people not eating those foods may not get sufficient choline.

Strangely enough this claim about choline and its vital role in brain functioning came just after my comprehensive survey of McDonald’s customers. Perhaps comprehensive is a slight exaggeration but I did some people-watching over a moody coffee during a more or less compulsory holiday journey break.

As McDonald’s is famous for its beef burgers one would suppose its customers to be pretty advanced in the brain department. At least they ought to be more brainy than salad-munchers who read the Guardian for example. There were two main findings from this in-depth test.

Firstly there is no obvious reason to suppose MacDonald’s customers are more brainy than average. I prefer not to go into details here.

Secondly there may be some kind of correlation between choline intake and tattoos.

These are only tentative conclusions of course. More work is required but if I have anything to do with it the work will never be done. Ever.

A Brexit undercurrent

source

There is an undercurrent here. We often see it when Donald Trump is attacked by his political opponents in the media - a horrible lurking suspicion that Trump might be smart and those who voted for him knew what they were doing. It still sours much of what Trump's opponents write and say - diminishes what they say and diminishes them.

We may be seeing the beginnings of something similar with Boris. He is certainly smart enough to imbibe a lesson or two from Trump's abrasive way of keeping his opponents off balance. Boris may yet stumble, fail or make too many compromises but the undercurrent is there.

No revolution in Zimbabwe

Marian L. Tupy writing for CAPX reminds us about Zimbabwe, a horror story which never seems to get any better. Brexit seems trivial in comparison.

Why are we not seeing a revolution in Zimbabwe?

“We can’t go on like this.”

Thus began a newsletter written on August 19 by Eddie Cross, a member of Zimbabwe’s parliament and one of the founders of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. Cross is a trained economist and a very brave man. He remained in Zimbabwe throughout its 20 year-long descent from one of Africa’s most prosperous countries, into one of its poorest.

“Yesterday,” he noted in his missive, “the fuel queues were kilometres long, I slept in my car for five hours to get fuel. We have been experiencing 18 hours of load-shedding every day – on at 10 PM and off at 05.00 AM. Bread is unobtainable and when it is its over Z$8 per loaf – eight times what it was a year ago. Many prices are up by 10 times.”

And yet, I doubt that he is right. I think that if the last two decades show anything, it is that Zimbabwe can and will go on like this for some time to come.

The whole piece is well worth reading, especially when we recall this piece from the dear old Guardian back in 2013.

'Why a Robert Mugabe victory would be good for Zimbabwe'

President has proved critics at home and abroad wrong with bold policies now yielding economic freedom

The curious incident

“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

Arthur Conan Doyle - Silver Blaze (1892)

This is another non-technical post on climate change. Previous posts are here and here.

As so often in politics we should be aware of what the narrative does not say as well as what it does. There is an obvious hole in the climate narrative which is rarely spoken of because it has been made to seem naive even though it is not. This hole concerns what has been demonstrated and what has not. What unambiguous decades-long predictive skills have catastrophic climate change proponents actually demonstrated?

The obvious answer is – nothing. Arm-waving, propaganda, demonstrations, public displays of anguish and tame celebrities don’t count. Nothing has actually been demonstrated. Otherwise the whole climate debate would revolve around what would have been a scientifically stunning achievement. But it didn’t turn out that way and we know it didn’t turn out that way. Everyone knows it.

The missing demonstration is an unambiguous ability to predict a genuinely useful estimate of a key climate parameter such as global temperature up to 2050 and even beyond. Such an astounding achievement would have a globally recognised name and its leading figures would be at least as famous and highly regarded as Einstein, Darwin or Galileo. We would see references to it everywhere but we don’t because it isn’t there. The missing demonstration is still missing.

An obvious clue is provided by parallel work on weather forecasting. This is supposedly the naive comparison – naive because it absolutely has to be squelched. Suppose we ignore the squelching and ask the obvious question - for how many days into the future are weather forecasts reasonably accurate? Five days? Ten days? In which case how are climate forecasts even modestly accurate over decades?

This is not a technical question. It is a question about a public performance of predictive skill by catastrophic climate change proponents. What climate-related predictive skill has been publicly demonstrated? That’s the question and the obvious answer is – nothing has been publicly demonstrated. No predictive skill has been publicly demonstrated apart from the closely related activity of weather forecasting. That’s all there is.

And the problem is?

Force us to fund free TV licences and channels will close, BBC tells PM

The BBC warns it would be forced to close several channels - including BBC Two - if it had to fund free licences for all over-75s.

According to the corporation, it would be forced to close BBC Two, BBC Four, the BBC News Channel, the BBC Scotland channel, Radio 5 Live and several local radio stations if it funded the policy.

Loud ladies

The other day Mrs H and I visited a cafe where six elderly ladies were seated round a table. They were amicably chatting away over tea and cakes but the level of noise they managed to create was astounding. I couldn’t do it.

Mrs H who notices these things said they kept raising their voices as they tried to talk over each other. All entirely amicable but crikey - the noise.

Holidays

Holidays are rum games aren’t they? Today we returned from our holiday in Suffolk, a most enjoyable week spent in a fairly isolated self-catering place on the edge of marshes not too far from Southwold.

All very pleasant but now we are back home, the routines of daily life have established themselves and Suffolk has already begun to fade from our memories. Yet we were still there early this morning. If our quick-fade holiday experience is common then why do we go on holiday at all? We are no longer escaping from a life down the pit or from the dark satanic mills. 

Yet it still seems obvious enough why we go on holiday even though in our case we are retired and life is one long holiday. We escape from familiar routines explore new places and so on. Holidays are definitely pleasant interludes but - hang on there is somebody at the door...

...Only a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Haven’t seen them for a while – told them we are still unpacking which is fairly true. Where were we?

I know - holidays. What do we escape from when we go on holiday? Obvious enough when we are working I imagine – we are still escaping from work even if we no longer fill our days with toil and drudgery. What else? I’m not sure. It feels like one of those highly familiar social experiences with its highly familiar language which doesn’t quite apply to the modern world.

Escaping from the daily grind of work – that’s still easy enough to understand but why do we carry on doing it when we retire? Perhaps holidays give us a sense of freedom - a freedom we cannot really attain but must believe in. Discarded responsibilities which we cannot really discard but for a week or so we can pretend.

I wonder if Jehovah’s Witnesses go on holiday?