Category: History

Improving equality

An extremely powerful new essay from George Monbiot.

While this post from G. Monbiot is about politics, I think it goes far beyond that. Hence my reason for republishing this essay, with George Monbiot’s permission. When I will die is not known but surely I will in the next ten years or so. I really want to leave this world seeing everything improving, from the lessening of the change in our climate, to a reduction in world fighting, to a greater equality for all.

Please, please be wrong, Mr. Monbiot.

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The Urge to Destroy

Posted on14th April 2025

It’s a cast-iron relationship: the more unequal a society becomes, the better the far right does. Here’s why. 

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian  13th April 2025

“He’s really gone and done it this time. Now everyone can see what a disaster he is.” How many times have we heard this about Donald Trump? And how many times has it been proved wrong? Well, maybe this time he really has overstepped. After all, his clowning around with tariffs, sparking trade wars, then suddenly reversing his position, could provoke a global recession, perhaps even a depression. Surely his supporters will disown him? But I’m not banking on it, and this is why.

Already, Trump has waged war on everything that builds prosperity and wellbeing: democracy, healthy ecosystems, education, healthcare, science, the arts. Yet, amid the wreckage, and despite some slippage, his approval ratings still hold between 43 and 48%: far higher than those of many other leaders. Why? I believe part of the answer lies in a fundamental aspect of our humanity: the urge to destroy that from which you feel excluded.

This urge, I think, is crucial to understanding politics. Yet hardly anyone seems to recognise it. Hardly anyone, that is, except the far right, who see it all too well.

In many parts of the world, and the US in particular, inequality has risen sharply since the late 1970s. (The UK tracks this trend.) The world’s billionaires became $2tn richer last year, while the number of people living below the global poverty line is more or less unchanged since 1990.

There is strong evidence of a causal association between growing inequality and the rise of populist authoritarian movements. A paper in the Journal of European Public Policy found that a one-unit rise in the Gini coefficient (a standard measure of inequality) increases support for demagogues by 1%.

Why might this be? There are various, related explanations: feelings of marginalisation, status anxiety and social threat, insecurity triggering an authoritarian reflex and a loss of trust in other social groups. At the root of some of these explanations, I feel, is something deeply embedded in the human psyche: if you can’t get even, get mean.

In the US, a high proportion of the population is excluded from many of the benefits I’ve listed. Science might lead to medical breakthroughs, but not, perhaps, for people who can’t afford health insurance. A university education might open doors, but only if you’re prepared to carry tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. Art and theatre and music improve our lives: good for those who can buy the tickets. So do national parks, but only if you can afford to visit them.

Democracy, we are told, allows people a voice in politics. But only, it seems, if they have a few million to give to a political party. As the political scientist Prof Martin Gilens notes in his book Affluence and Influence: “Under most circumstances, the preferences of the vast majority of Americans appear to have essentially no impact on which policies the government does or doesn’t adopt.” GDP growth was strong under Joe Biden, but as the economics professor Jason Furman points out: “From 2019 to 2023, inflation-adjusted household income fell, and the poverty rate rose.” GDP and social improvement are no longer connected.

All those good things? Sorry, they’re not for you. If you feel an urge to tear it all down, to burn the whole stinking, hypocritical, exclusive system to the ground, Trump is your man. Or so he claims. In reality his entire performance is both a distraction from and an accelerant of spiralling inequality. He can hardly lose: the more he exacerbates inequality, the more he triggers an urge for revenge against his scapegoats: immigrants, trans people, scientists, teachers, China.

But such killer clowns can’t pull this off by themselves. Their most effective recruiters are centrist parties paralysed in the face of economic power. In hock to rich funders, terrified of the billionaire media, for decades they have been unable even to name the problem, let alone address it. Hence the spectacular uselessness of the Democrats’ response to Trump. As the US journalist Hamilton Nolan remarks: “One party is out to kill, and the other is waiting for its leaders to die.”

In the UK, Labour, like the Democrats, has long assured itself that it doesn’t matter how wide economic disparities are, as long as the poorest are raised up. Now it has abandoned even that caveat: we can cut benefits, so long as GDP grows. But it does matter. It matters very much. A vast array of evidence, brought together in 2009 in The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett and updated in 2024, shows that inequality exerts a massive influence on social, economic, environmental and political outcomes, regardless of people’s absolute positions.

If there is a such a thing as Starmerism, it collapses in the face of a paper published by the political scientists Leonardo Baccini and Thomas Sattler last year, which finds that austerity increases support for the radical right in economically vulnerable regions. (My emboldening. PH) Austerity, they found, is the key variable: without it, less-educated people are no more likely to vote for rightwing demagogues than highly educated people are. In other words, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are busily handing their core constituencies to Nigel Farage.

Of course, they deny they’re imposing austerity, using a technical definition that means nothing to those on the sharp end. Austerity is what the poor experience, while they must watch the rich and upper middle classes, under a Labour government, enjoy ever greater abundance.

Starmer and his minions suggest there’s nothing they can do: wealthy people are already taxed to the max. As private jets and helicopters cross the skies, anyone can see this is nonsense. Of all the remarkable things I stumbled across while researching this column, the following is perhaps the most jaw-dropping. On the most recent (2022) figures, once benefits have been paid, the Gini coefficient for gross income in the UK scarcely differs from the Gini coefficient for post-tax income. In other words, the gap between the rich and the poor is rougly the same after taxes are levied, suggesting that taxation has no further significant effect on income distribution. How could this possibly be true, when the rich pay higher rates of income tax? It’s because the poor surrender a much higher proportion of their income in sales taxes, such as VAT. So much for no further options. So much for Labour “realism”.

The one thing that can stop the rise of the far right is the one thing mainstream parties are currently not prepared to deliver: greater equality. The rich should be taxed more, and the revenue used to improve the lives of the poor. However frantically centrist parties avoid the issue, there is no other way.

www.monbiot.com

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George writes about Britain but my judgement is that this issue is not limited to that country; I suspect it is a far wider problem. Did you know that Finland is the world’s happiest country?

An extract of that article: “Finland has been ranked as the world’s happiest country for the eighth successive year, with experts citing access to nature and a strong welfare system as factors.

It came ahead of three other Nordic countries in this year’s UN-sponsored World Happiness Report, while Latin America’s Costa Rica and Mexico entered the top 10 for the first time.

Both the UK and the US slipped down the list to 23rd and 24th respectively – the lowest-ever position for the latter.”

Crater Lake

Two shots of this beautiful lake.

I was going through some files yesterday and found many photographs taken by me.

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These were taken in 2018 which was when my son, Alex, and his partner, Lisa, came over to see us.

Here is the opening part of Wikipedia writing about Crater Lake:

Crater Lake (Klamath: Giiwas)[2] is a volcanic crater lake in south-central Oregon in the Western United States. It is the main feature of Crater Lake National Park and is a tourist attraction for its deep blue color and water clarity. The lake partly fills a 2,148-foot-deep (655 m) caldera[3] that was formed around 7,700 (± 150) years ago[4] by the collapse of the volcano Mount Mazama. No rivers flow into or out of the lake; the evaporation is compensated for by rain and snowfall at a rate such that the total amount of water is replaced every 150 years.[5] With a depth of 1,949 feet (594 m),[6] the lake is the deepest in the United States. In the world, it ranks eleventh for maximum depth, as well as fifth for mean depth.

The rest of that Wikipedia article is here.

My dear friend, Richard.

Richard’s funeral was last Thursday.

Julie, his partner, sent me the Order of Service, held on the 20th, that I have published on LfD today.

Richard Maugham – Order of Service V4Download

(Click on the link to see the complete Order.)

UPDATE: Here is the service, sent to me on Sunday by Julie.

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In Loving Memory and to 

Celebrate the Life of

Richard Julian Maugham

28th October 1946 – 9th February 2025

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Entrance Music – 

Theme from Out of Africa (Flying Scene)

By John Barry

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A very warm welcome as we unite in both love and friendship to say, not just goodbye, but more importantly to pay tribute and to celebrate the life of Richard Julian Maugham.

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Richard was a true character, one of a kind, sociable, funny and a wonderful raconteur who led a varied and interesting life which we will hear more about shortly but even then, we will barely scratch the surface of all he was, but I hope when you leave here this afternoon that you will do so with a real sense of having shared in something special, for a friendly, popular and unique individual.

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Reflection Music

We start today by playing a song from one of Richard’s favourite bands The Eagle’s, please sit back, listen and enjoy – ‘It’s Your World Now’ 

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Eulogy

The word Eulogy refers to a tribute of somebody’s life and it’s a pleasure for me share these words on behalf of Richard’s family and friends.

Richard was welcomed into this world on 28th October 1946 to parents Phylis and Lesley, born in Chiswick he would join his elder sister Vivienne who aged 4 was quizzed if she would prefer a brother or sister, prompting her response ‘I don’t really mind as long as it’s NOT a boy!’

But fortunately, it didn’t matter as Richard and Vivienne forged a wonderful relationship over the years and although not spending a lot of time together early on, Vivienne has such fond memories of cycling together with a picnic to the local swimming pool and also their cycle trips out with their dad too, Vivienne still recalls seeing Richard with his legs pedalling rapidly as he sped across the ground on the popular child’s bike of that era nicknamed the ‘fairycycle’.  

They both appreciated their safe and secure upbringing enjoying quiet Christmas’s together with a few close relatives and even when their paths took them in different directions, they remained good friends with a great rapport and comfortable in each other’s company. Richard was always very fond of his sister but also couldn’t wait for her to get married and leave home so he could inherit her bedroom however after waiting patiently for this happen his plan was scuppered when his grandma moved in instead! This gave Vivienne a little chuckle at the time having been pestered constantly to tie the knot.

Growing up in Twickenham, Richard passed his eleven plus with ease and attended the best Boy’s Grammer School in the area which would certainly hold him in good stead throughout his career, Richard was sharp as a knife, a confident lad and already showing signs of having the gift of the gab plus a real knack of making friends, with some of you here today as his lifelong friends for over 65 years namely Ken and Robin who formed part of the group known as the Young Pretenders, all meeting annually in the summer for the past 30 years and to Richard this was a very important and a valued friendship group that he held with a great deal of affection. 

Richard’s career path would typify his character a hard worker, charming, good with people and a fantastic communicator but the ideal person equipped to give us the best insight into Richard’s background is one of his best friends Tony, who shared these wonderful memories with me about the various sides to Richard having meet him in 1968 when working together in the Olivetti Sales and Management Training Centre in Haslemere. Tony was there to replace Richard or Dick as he was known then and to create a smooth transition within the workplace. But little did anyone know just what an impact this would have on the 2 of them and their future as friends, Tony for the first 3 months or so watched his every move, listened to his advice and even copied his jokes especially as they both shared the same sense of humour! Tony mused that Richard was your true dapper gentlemen, always extremely smartly dressed and often took on the role as Tony’s personal shopper, costing Tony a fortune in the process but it ensured he looked the part too, ready for their many nights out in Guildford or Haslemere and needless to say with that gift of the gab again, his looks and witty personality they had some memorable and extremely fun times through the years, Tony even recalls the time they attended the Cannes Film Festival, staying in a slightly sleazy apartment they nevertheless donned their best evening suits and walked the red carpet, a treasured memory.

This chance meeting at Olivetti really was the start of something very special, even when Richard went off to become a manager in Croydon and his career took him on a different pathway via some office supplies companies, a spell in Oman in the Middle East which certainly left an impression on him and onto roles in the car industry with Audi and VW as part of the Inchcape Group, Tony will forever remember the fond memories of their shared flats, shared holidays, shared clothing  and a shared love of being just little rascals when together, so as you can imagine Tony was beyond proud when Richard asked him to be his Best Man when he married Jane in 1986, returning the compliment when Tony married as well some years later.

But Tony wasn’t the only lifelong friend that Richard would make during his salesmen years, for in 1982, whilst both selling the Commodore ‘PET’, he would encounter a fellow salesman, Paul, meeting in the Petjet, the private small jet owned by Jack Tramiel, the CEO of Commodore, they hit it off immediately while travelling to the Hannover International Fair.

Richard and Paul took the pilots out for dinner that evening which inspired Paul to start gliding and later power flying, Richard flew on many occasions with Paul, as both being members of a private aircraft club, they would often hire a plane to fly to Jersey or Scotland but one memorable flight was their trip to visit Tony, who had recently relocated to South West France, flying to Bergerac airport they stayed a few nights enjoying Tony’s hospitality before flying back home. 

Richard by now had also developed a passion for all things aeronautical, often visiting air shows in later years and was visibly moved to tears whilst witnessing a Spitfire fly past when attending a Remembrance celebration at Seagry near Chippenham, a very special moment for him.

Paul’s friendship with Richard would continue to grow, living in Oregon now, he still recalls that meeting Richard in the way he did gave him a gift that he has treasured forevermore and a cherished relationship that also included meeting The Prince of Wales, this whilst both volunteering for the Prince’s Trust Charity where they helped many young people start their own businesses, one in particular being a gardening venture which Richard being the type of generous person he was duly employed the appreciative couple to work on his own garden, cementing Richard’s thoughtful and helpful approach to others.

Working until he was 77 years old, Richard will always be known as a hard worker, a great salesman, a fantastic speaker and presenter who was highly thought off across all his companies he graced but it was never all work and no play for Richard, helped by being a self-confessed petrol head, not only from working in the trade but also from the pure joy he experienced in his leisure pastimes with his passion for cars, watching the Monaco Grand Prix with a friend in the 70’s to his own Ferrari and Formula 3 Race Track Driving Experiences that he absolutely adored were just 2 of his highlights, as well as owning a MGB and Porsche that he loved. 

Approaching his 60’s, Richard would also find love again, introduced by a friend, he met a lovely lady, Julie who subsequently relocated to Wiltshire to be with Richard. They would also go on to purchase a property in South West France to renovate, named Mason DeFrere which was once part of a Friary, used by the monks to study and pray whilst it was also located not far from his friend Tony and his wife Caroline, travelling regularly to France they enjoyed many good times, strolling around the markets and spending quality time as a foursome together. 

Richard and Julie also enjoyed a shared love of music, at times Richard could be moved to tears demonstrating a real sensitive side to him not often seen but he could lose himself to the tunes of The Eagles or Hollies and seeing live music from the likes of Fleetwood Mac, Eric Clapton, Tony Bennett, Simply Red and Billy Joel are particular fond memories for Julie. 

Julie appreciated Richard’s sharp wit which was often fuelled by his love of the radio programme recently chaired by Jack Dee called ‘I’m sorry I haven’t a clue’, he would cry with laughter and often use the one liners himself to entertain his friends, he was an out and out ‘wordsmith’ loving his crosswords and an avid reader of the humorous dictionary ‘Meaning of Liff’ which again would have him in stitches and characterised his sense of humour perfectly.

Richard and Julie relocated to Essex to be closer to her son and grandchildren but Richard’s heart always remained in Wiltshire so a decision was made for him to return and continue to spend time with his friends, he had always professed that his Parkinson diagnosis would not define him but as the time moved on and following a fall, he was very much grateful to his wonderful friends Gillie and Colin who visited every other day and remained by his side as he sadly lost his battle last month.

We have lost a truly respected and loved man who gave so much to so many and lived a full life surrounded by people who cared for him, so we can be comforted in the knowledge that he has left us all with some treasured memories of time spent in his company.  

Thank you, Richard 

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Reflection Music

How we love by Beth Neilson Chapman

We have shared some lovely memories and I have no doubt you will all have you own personal memories from times spent with Richard, we would now like to give you a little time to reflect on those while we listen to a lovely tune by Beth Neilson Chapman

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Poem

I would now like to share a poem chosen by Julie especially for today’s service and dedicated to Richard and his love of aviation – 

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds – and done a hundred things you have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung high in the sunlit silence.

Hov’ring there, I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung my eager craft through footless halls of air ….

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew—

And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

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Tributes

I would now like to invite Ken and Robin to share their tributes to their special friend while we hear in the background a popular song of Richard’s by The Hollies

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Farewell

“We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love…and then we return home.”

Richard, we have heard the impact that you had on so many people. Your character, humour and individuality that were so much a feature of your life will live on in our memories and create a beautiful legacy of love for your family and friends for much longer than the acute desolation we are feeling here today. 

Richard it is with such sadness we say goodbye to you, but we thank you so much for every little gift you have contributed to this life.

But most of all we thank you for your love and for your friendship; your warmth and care, and for your kind and humble heart.

We thank you Richard for everything you were and all that you gave, and may you now forever rest in peace with the certain knowledge that you were, are, and will always be, dearly loved and terribly missed. 

Farewell Richard Farewell

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“Always remember you matter, you’re important and you are loved, and you bring to this world things no one else can.”   

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Exit Music

Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow 

By Fleetwood Mac

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Now a selection of my photos.

Richard and me by the Piper Super Cub, registration R151.

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Richard and Alex, my son, in front of G-BPAS, a TB20, at another air show.

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Jeannie, Richard and Julie.

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R151 taking me and Richard to see Mont Blanc. It was the 25th August, 2006.

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Another view of the same valley; again the 25th August, 2006.

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The final photograph of Richard and me meeting the then Prince of Wales.

Background to the friendship.

(Previously published on LfD.)

I first met Richard Maugham when we were being treated to a private jet flight to the Hannover International Fair in 1982, some 43 years ago. We were both English and I was living in Tollesbury, Essex, near Colchester and Richard living near Ealing, West London.

The common thread was that all the passengers were major sellers of the Commodore ‘PET’.

Richard and I hit it off straight away. Richard was a fellow salesman. I was ex-IBM Office Products Division and Richard was ex-Olivetti.

Both of us also volunteered for the Prince’s Youth Business Trust, a charity headed by Prince of Wales, as he was then, helping young people start their own business.

My tribute to Richard who will always be missed.

The US decline in butterflies

The natural world is quite remarkable!

This article was published in The Conversation last Thursday, the 6th March, 2025.

Where we live in rural Southern Oregon is glorious and photos of our locale have been published before. However, I wanted to share this article with you all.

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Butterflies declined by 22% in just 2 decades across the US – there are ways you can help save them

The endangered Karner blue butterfly has struggled with habitat loss. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Eliza Grames, Binghamton University, State University of New York

If the joy of seeing butterflies seems increasingly rare these days, it isn’t your imagination.

From 2000 to 2020, the number of butterflies fell by 22% across the continental United States. That’s 1 in 5 butterflies lost. The findings are from an analysis just published in the journal Science by the U.S. Geological Survey’s Powell Center Status of Butterflies of the United States Working Group, which I am involved in.

We found declines in just about every region of the continental U.S. and across almost all butterfly species.

Overall, nearly one-third of the 342 butterfly species we were able to study declined by more than half. Twenty-two species fell by more than 90%. Only nine actually increased in numbers.

An orange butterfly with black webbing and spots sits on a purple flower.
West Coast lady butterflies range across the western U.S., but their numbers have dropped by 80% in two decades. Renee Las Vegas/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Some species’ numbers are dropping faster than others. The West Coast lady, a fairly widespread species across the western U.S., dropped by 80% in 20 years. Given everything we know about its biology, it should be doing fine – it has a wide range and feeds on a variety of plants. Yet, its numbers are absolutely tanking across its range.

Why care about butterflies?

Butterflies are beautiful. They inspire people, from art to literature and poetry. They deserve to exist simply for the sake of existing. They are also important for ecosystem function.

Butterflies are pollinators, picking up pollen on their legs and bodies as they feed on nectar from one flower and carrying it to the next. In their caterpillar stage, they also play an important role as herbivores, keeping plant growth in check.

A closeup of a caterpillar eating a leaf.
A pipevine swallowtail caterpillar munches on leaves at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, Md. Herbivores help keep plant growth in check. Judy Gallagher/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Butterflies can also serve as an indicator species that can warn of threats and trends in other insects. Because humans are fond of butterflies, it’s easy to get volunteers to participate in surveys to count them.

The annual North American Butterfly Association Fourth of July Count is an example and one we used in the analysis. The same kind of nationwide monitoring by amateur naturalists doesn’t exist for less charismatic insects such as walking sticks.

What’s causing butterflies to decline?

Butterfly populations can decline for a number of reasons. Habitat loss, insecticides, rising temperatures and drying landscapes can all harm these fragile insects.

A study published in 2024 found that a change in insecticide use was a major factor in driving butterfly declines in the Midwest over 17 years. The authors, many of whom were also part of the current study, noted that the drop coincided with a shift to using seeds with prophylactic insecticides, rather than only spraying crops after an infestation.

The Southwest saw the greatest drops in butterfly abundance of any region. As that region heats up and dries out, the changing climate may be driving some of the butterfly decline there. Butterflies have a high surface-to-volume ratio – they don’t hold much moisture – so they can easily become desiccated in dry conditions. Drought can also harm the plants that butterflies rely on.

Only the Pacific Northwest didn’t lose butterfly population on average. This trend was largely driven by an irruptive species, meaning one with extremely high abundance in some years – the California tortoiseshell. When this species was excluded from the analyses, trends in the Pacific Northwest were similar to other regions.

A butterfly on a leaf
The California tortoiseshell butterfly can look like wood when its wings are closed, but they’re a soft orange on the other side. Walter Siegmund/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

When we looked at each species by its historical range, we found something else interesting.

Many species suffered their highest losses at the southern ends of their ranges, while the northern losses generally weren’t as severe. While we could not link drivers to trends directly, the reason for this pattern might involve climate change, or greater exposure to agriculture with insecticides in southern areas, or it may be a combination of many stressors.

There is hope for populations to recover

Some butterfly species can have multiple generations per year, and depending on the environmental conditions, the number of generations can vary between years.

This gives me a bit of hope when it comes to butterfly conservation. Because they have such short generation times, even small conservation steps can make a big difference and we can see populations bounce back.

The Karner blue is an example. It’s a small, endangered butterfly that depends on oak savannas and pine barren ecosystems. These habitats are uncommon and require management, especially prescribed burning, to maintain. With restoration efforts, one Karner blue population in the Albany Pine Bush Preserve in New York rebounded from a few hundred individuals in the early 1990s to thousands of butterflies.

Similar management and restoration efforts could help other rare and declining butterflies to recover.

What you can do to help butterflies recover

The magnitude and rate of biodiversity loss in the world right now can make one feel helpless. But while national and international efforts are needed to address the crisis, you can also take small actions that can have quick benefits, starting in your own backyard.

Butterflies love wildflowers, and planting native wildflowers can benefit many butterfly species. The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation has guides recommending which native species are best to plant in which parts of the country. Letting grass grow can help, even if it’s just a strip of grass and wildflowers a couple of feet wide at the back of the yard.

Butterflies on wildflowers in a small garden.
A patch of wildflowers and grasses can become a butterfly garden, like this one in Townsend, Tenn. Chris Light, CC BY-SA

Supporting policies that benefit conservation can also help. In some states, insects aren’t considered wildlife, so state wildlife agencies have their hands tied when it comes to working on butterfly conservation. But those laws could be changed.

The federal Endangered Species Act can also help. The law mandates that the government maintain habitat for listed species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in December 2024 recommended listing the monarch butterfly as a threatened species. With the new study, we now have population trends for more than half of all U.S. butterfly species, including many that likely should be considered for listing.

With so many species needing help, it can be difficult to know where to start. But the new data can help concentrate conservation efforts on those species at the highest risk.

I believe this study should be a wake-up call about the need to better protect butterflies and other insects – “the little things that run the world.”

Eliza Grames, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences, Binghamton University, State University of New York

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Thank you, Eliza, for promoting this article.

If only one person is inspired to make the changes Eliza recommends then republishing this article has been a success.

Why do we love dogs?

A fifteen-minute programme from the BBC.

I recently listened to this episode. It is part of a series on the BBC (Radio 4) that is entitled Why Do We Do That?

Hopefully you can also listen to the programme by using this link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0027v43

The information about this episode is published below.

Ella Al-Shamahi asks why do we love dogs? Dogs evolved from wolves but why did they choose us humans to be their best friends? They say dogs are a man’s best friend but all dogs, even chihuahuas are descended from wolves, the grey wolf, a majestic, fierce and incredibly dangerous species. How did this happen but more importantly, why did we start trusting wolves? And when did wolves turn into dogs? Dogs have been a part of our story for a long time. They are depicted in cave and rock art and dogs are a part of our story because of how useful they are. From the mundane everyday hunting and guarding to the epic stories of life saving dogs . But how did we get here? Oxford Professor Greger Lawson studies ancient dog DNA and thinks the evolution from wolves into dogs began when we both realised we could help each other.

Enjoy!

My stray into British politics

A riveting talk by Sir John Major.

(Images may be subject to copyright. If I am emailed that I am infringing the copyright of the New Statesman this photograph will be removed.)

Wikipedia speak of Sir John as follows:

Sir John Major (born 29 March 1943) is a British retired politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990 to 1997. He previously held Cabinet positions under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, his last as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1989 to 1990. Major was Member of Parliament (MP) for Huntingdon, formerly Huntingdonshire, from 1979 to 2001. Since stepping down as an MP in 2001, Major has focused on writing and his business, sporting, and charity work, and has occasionally commented on political developments in the role of an elder statesman.

(More of the Wikipedia article is here.)

On yesterday’s World This Weekend the programme was entirely devoted to a speech that John Major gave on February 16th. His theme was: “We are moving into a more dangerous world“

BBC Sounds have a recording of that speech that will stay available for 29 days. That link is here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00282l8

I sincerely hope you can listen to it, for I found the talk riveting!

Venus and Valentine’s Day

The role of the planet today!

From that post: Venus, named for the Roman goddess of love, reaches its greatest brilliancy on Valentine’s Day, February 14. Venus is currently blazing, low in the west after sunset, with Saturn below.

Wherever you are, try spotting Venus.

Dear Richard

A few last words from Paul!

I first met Richard Maugham when we were being treated to a private jet flight to the Hannover International Fair in 1982, some 43 years ago. We were both English and I was living in Tollesbury, Essex, near Colchester and Richard living near Ealing, West London.

The common thread was that all the passengers were major sellers of the Commodore ‘PET’.

Richard and I hit it off straight away. Richard was a fellow salesman. I was ex-IBM Office Products Division and Richard was ex-Olivetti.

Both of us also volunteered for the Prince’s Youth Business Trust, a charity headed by Prince of Wales, as he was then, helping young people start their own business.

The Prince of Wales, me, and Richard Maugham

Gillie and Colin, a couple who know Richard, recently sent me the following email:

Dear Paul,

I write to inform you that Richard passed away today at 2.50 GMT.

Both Colin and I were at his hospital bedside.

Our thoughts and condolences are with you.

Gillie and Colin.

The ‘today’ in the above email was Sunday, 9th February, 2025.

Richard will never be forgotten.

Richard will be sorely missed.

Critical thinking!

Thinking it through thanks to a recent issue of Skeptical Inquirer.

Melanie Trecer-King is the creator of Thinking is Power and the associate professor of biology at the Massasoit Community College, where she teaches a science course designed to equip her students with essential critical thinking, information literacy, and science literacy skills.

The article was published in the November/December, 2024 issue of the magazine. I believe it is free to share.

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Most people agree that critical thinking is an important skill that should be taught in schools. And most educators think they teach critical thinking. I know I did. After all, I was a science educator, and science is critical thinking. Isn’t it?

For years, I taught general-education biology, a course commonly taken by undergraduates who aren’t science majors. And while I love biology, I grew more and more frustrated with the content. I asked myself: If I had one semester to teach the average student what they need to know about the process of science and critical thinking, what would it look like?

Thankfully, my college allowed me to replace my traditional introductory biology course with a course titled Science for Life, designed to teach critical thinking, information literacy, and science literacy skills (Trecek-King 2022). Since my conversion, I’ve been sharing my new path with anyone who will listen about the value of teaching critical thinking.

Yet conversations with Bertha Vazquez, director of education for the Center for Inquiry, gave me pause. In a recent podcast conversation with the two of us and Daniel Reed (of the West Virginia Skeptics Society), Vazquez was adamant. Educators do teach critical thinking: the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) require students to ask questions, plan and carry out investigations, analyze and interpret data, construct explanations, and engage in arguments from evidence.

As a science communicator, I constantly fight misconceptions around certain terms. Theory and skepticism are prime examples. So imagine my surprise (and embarrassment) when I realized that, as a critical thinking educator, I had overlooked an important first step in critical thinking: defining terms. The irony.

What Is Critical Thinking?

While we can all agree that it’s important to teach critical thinking, there’s not always agreement on what we mean by the term.

In his book Critical Thinking, Jonathan Haber (2020) explains how the concept emerged and some of the ways it’s currently defined. John Dewey, in his 1910 work How We Think, proposed one of the first modern definitions of reflective thinking, describing it as an “active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief” (Dewey 1910, 6).

In his 1941 dissertation, Edward Glaser identified three components of critical thinking: “(1) an attitude of being disposed to consider in a thoughtful way the problems and subjects that come within the range of one’s experiences, (2) knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning, and (3) some skill in applying those methods” (Glaser 1941, 5–6). That same year, Glaser and Goodwin Watson published the Watson-Glaser Tests of Critical Thinking (now the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal), a widely used standardized test for assessing critical thinking skills.

Critical thinking’s “big bang” moment, according to Haber, came in the early 1980s when the state of California (Harmon 1980, 3) mandated that all students in its university system complete a course that teaches “an understanding of the relationship of language to logic, leading to the ability to analyze, criticize and advocate ideas, reason inductively and deductively, and reach factual or judgmental conclusions based on sound inferences drawn from unambiguous statements of knowledge or belief.”

And the Delphi Report (Facione 1990, 2), in which Peter Facione worked with critical thinking experts to create a consensus definition, concludes that critical thinking is a “purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations upon which that judgment is based.”

From these (and many other) definitions, Haber identifies three interconnected parts of critical thinking: knowledge of critical thinking components, such as logic and argumentation; the skills to put the knowledge to use in real-world situations; and the dispositions needed to prioritize critical thinking honestly and ethically.

This problem-solving view of critical thinking forms the basis of many of the current educational standards, including the NGSS and Common Core, which ask students to think deeply within a specific domain. And it is one scientists themselves use when trying to understand issues.

These are worthy educational goals to be sure. However, in my experience teaching general-education biology, I’ve come to realize that this approach is incomplete.

If critical thinking requires deep knowledge, then our ability to analyze topics is limited to areas in which we possess sufficient expertise. Pedagogy that encourages “independent” thinking outside these areas can have the unintended consequence of teaching students to overestimate their abilities. The best minds know they can’t know everything. Even experts rely on other experts and sources.

Additionally, in the classroom, students are provided with reliable content from which to critically analyze. In the “real world,” these guardrails are nonexistent. Not only is misinformation ubiquitous, disinformation purveyors exploit our biases and emotions to manipulate our reasoning.

And finally, we can’t address science misinformation, from evolution to vaccines to climate change, by giving students more content knowledge. We don’t fall for science denial and pseudoscience because we don’t have the facts but because of our emotions, desires, identities, and biases.

I now have a better understanding of what my colleague and friend Andy Norman means when he says that critical thinking suffers from a branding problem.

Yes, And …?

Using the above definition(s), I was teaching my biology students how to think critically. For example, I didn’t just ask them to memorize the stages of mitosis but to explore the mutations that could disrupt the cell cycle and lead to cancer. But to what end? If (or when) my former students are touched by cancer, will they remember how proto-oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes can lead to unregulated cell growth? Is that even what they need to know? I argue that, especially for students who aren’t going to be scientists, it’s far more important to teach students how and why the process of science results in reliable knowledge … and how to find it.

My Science for Life course and my Thinking Is Power resource are both based on the same premise. Knowledge may be power, but there’s too much to know. Even more, knowledge is a process; it’s not just what we know but how we know. It’s not just a noun but a verb. When we need reliable knowledge, can we find it and use it to make wiser decisions? And how do we know what information to ignore?

As a science educator, I want my students to understand how the process of science produces knowledge and why it’s reliable. Why aren’t comments such as “it worked for me” or “I know what I saw” sufficient evidence? I’ve come to realize that an essential—and often overlooked—ingredient is why we need science in the first place.

Richard Feynman famously said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” Science is how we correct for this tendency toward self-deception. That’s why I spend the first third of the semester exploring how we come to our beliefs, the limits of our perception and memory, the importance of skepticism, the cognitive biases that can lead our thinking astray, and the logical fallacies we use to convince ourselves (and others) that our conclusions are justified.

Influential voices in the skeptical community played a crucial role in shaping the ingredients of critical thinking I use in Science for Life and Thinking Is Power, which include the following:

  • Being aware of our limitations: Understanding that our perception and memory are flawed, and the biases and heuristics our brains rely on to make fast and easy decisions can lead us astray.
  • Arguing with evidence and logic: Using arguments that are well-structured and supported by evidence. This includes understanding how the different types of arguments work (i.e., deductive, inductive, and abductive) and avoiding logical fallacies.
  • Thinking about our thinking (metacognition): Actively examining and questioning our own thought processes—including the source of our knowledge, assumptions, intuitions, motivations, emotions, and biases—and how they might influence our judgments.
  • Embracing nuance and uncertainty: Avoiding the black-or-white thinking that can lead to oversimplified conclusions and accepting that our knowledge is never perfect or complete.
  • Seeking objectivity: Actively working to counter the limitations that prevent us from accurately understanding the world. This includes seeking diverse perspectives, separating our identity from our beliefs, and prioritizing accuracy over ego.
  • Having curiosity and open-mindedness: Possessing a desire to learn and understand by asking questions and seeking out information, even if it contradicts what we want to believe.
  • Maintaining healthy skepticism: Balancing gullibility and doubt and proportioning our beliefs to the available evidence. And remembering that claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
  • Exhibiting intellectual humility: Recognizing the limitations of our knowledge, being open to the expertise of others, and being willing to change our minds with evidence.

In my experience, giving students this foundation is essential for helping them become better consumers of information and science. Without an awareness that our emotions and existing beliefs can drive our reasoning, search engines and low-quality sources become tools to confirm our biases. And without an understanding of how our identities and worldviews can alter our standards of evidence, pseudoscience and science denial provide cover for what we want or don’t want to believe.

The logic of science’s practices, from carefully controlling experimental variables to making the findings available to other experts for scrutiny and replication, falls into place once students understand the problems it’s addressing. Simply put, science is our shield against self-deception.

Now instead of asking students to think critically about the biology of cancer, I teach them how to evaluate sources to find reliable information, how to recognize pseudoscientific “treatments,” and how their need for hope and answers makes them vulnerable to misinformation.

The Take-Home Message

I have no doubt that most educators teach critical thinking. But for pedagogical and communication purposes, it would be beneficial to clarify what we mean—and just as importantly to ask ourselves what we want our students to learn.

The dominant view of critical thinking in education is problem-solving in specific domains, which is absolutely a valuable skill. However, many skeptics view critical thinking as good thinking in a broader sense. My own teaching shifted toward this latter framework after I realized that problem-solving skills are insufficient without a foundation in better thinking. We may be born with the ability to think, but we must be taught to think well, and our primate brains aren’t adapted to today’s tidal wave of misinformation.

I’m grateful to the skeptical community for challenging my assumptions about critical thinking and my friend Bertha Vazquez for encouraging me to think more deeply about the good work science educators do in their classrooms every day. This article is the result of my attempt to reconcile what critical thinking means to educators and what it means to skeptics, and my hope is that it opens a conversation about how we can better serve our students. Maybe it will even start a critical thinking revolution, especially in science education.

Let the critical thinking revolution begin!

Acknowledgments

My thanks go to those on this brief list of skeptical thinkers/authors who’ve influenced my understanding of critical thinking: James Alcock, Timothy Caulfield, John Cook, Brian Dunning, Julia Galef, Adam Grant, David Robert Grimes, Jon Guy, Harriet Hall, Guy Harrison, Daniel Kahneman, David McRaney, Steven Novella, Carl Sagan, Michael Shermer, and Carol Tavris.

Special thanks to Bertha Vazquez, Daniel Pimentel, Andy Norman, Daniel Reed, and Jon Guy for their helpful feedback on this article.

References

Dewey, John. 1910. How We Think. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company.

Facione, Peter A. 1990. Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for Purposes of Educational Assessment and Instruction—The Delphi Report. Millbrae, CA: California Academic Press.

Glaser, Edward M. 1941. An Experiment in the Development of Critical Thinking. New York, NY: Teachers College, Columbia University.

Haber, Jonathan. 2020. Critical Thinking. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Harmon, Harry. 1980. Executive Order No. 338: General Education-Breadth Requirements. The California State University and Colleges.

Trecek-King, Melanie. 2022. Teach skills, not facts. Skeptical Inquirer 46(1): 39–42.

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I hope others have read this fascinating article and repeat the statement: ‘While we can all agree that it’s important to teach critical thinking, there’s not always agreement on what we mean by the term.’

Whatever, the article was superb.

The geological history of Planet Earth

We live on a profoundly ancient and beautiful planet.

I follow the photographic website Ugly Hedgehog and have been doing for some time. There has been a post recently from the section Photo Gallery and ‘greymule’ from Colorado called his entry ‘A Couple of Desert Scenes’ and I will display just one of his images from that post.

It makes a wonderful connection to today’s post which is from The Conversation.

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Evidence from Snowball Earth found in ancient rocks on Colorado’s Pikes Peak – it’s a missing link

Rocks can hold clues to history dating back hundreds of millions of years. Christine S. Siddoway

Liam Courtney-Davies, University of Colorado Boulder; Christine Siddoway, Colorado College, and Rebecca Flowers, University of Colorado Boulder

Around 700 million years ago, the Earth cooled so much that scientists believe massive ice sheets encased the entire planet like a giant snowball. This global deep freeze, known as Snowball Earth, endured for tens of millions of years.

Yet, miraculously, early life not only held on, but thrived. When the ice melted and the ground thawed, complex multicellular life emerged, eventually leading to life-forms we recognize today.

The Snowball Earth hypothesis has been largely based on evidence from sedimentary rocks exposed in areas that once were along coastlines and shallow seas, as well as climate modeling. Physical evidence that ice sheets covered the interior of continents in warm equatorial regions had eluded scientists – until now.

In new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, our team of geologists describes the missing link, found in an unusual pebbly sandstone encapsulated within the granite that forms Colorado’s Pikes Peak.

An illustration of an icy earth viewed from space
Earth iced over during the Cryogenian Period, but life on the planet survived. NASA illustration

Solving a Snowball Earth mystery on a mountain

Pikes Peak, originally named Tavá Kaa-vi by the Ute people, lends its ancestral name, Tava, to these notable rocks. They are composed of solidified sand injectites, which formed in a similar manner to a medical injection when sand-rich fluid was forced into underlying rock.

A possible explanation for what created these enigmatic sandstones is the immense pressure of an overlying Snowball Earth ice sheet forcing sediment mixed with meltwater into weakened rock below.

A hand holds a rock with dark seams through it and other colors.
Dark red to purple bands of Tava sandstone dissect pink and white granite. The Tava is also cross-cut by silvery-gray veins of iron oxide. Liam Courtney-Davies

An obstacle for testing this idea, however, has been the lack of an age for the rocks to reveal when the right geological circumstances existed for sand injection.

We found a way to solve that mystery, using veins of iron found alongside the Tava injectites, near Pikes Peak and elsewhere in Colorado.

A cliff side showing a long strip of lighter color Tava cutting through Pikes Peak Granite. The injectite here is 5 meters tall
A 5-meter-tall, almost vertical Tava dike is evident in this section of Pikes Peak granite. Liam Courtney-Davies

Iron minerals contain very low amounts of naturally occurring radioactive elements, including uranium, which slowly decays to the element lead at a known rate. Recent advancements in laser-based radiometric dating allowed us to measure the ratio of uranium to lead isotopes in the iron oxide mineral hematite to reveal how long ago the individual crystals formed.

The iron veins appear to have formed both before and after the sand was injected into the Colorado bedrock: We found veins of hematite and quartz that both cut through Tava dikes and were crosscut by Tava dikes. That allowed us to figure out an age bracket for the sand injectites, which must have formed between 690 million and 660 million years ago.

So, what happened?

The time frame means these sandstones formed during the Cryogenian Period, from 720 million to 635 million years ago. The name is derived from “cold birth” in ancient Greek and is synonymous with climate upheaval and disruption of life on our planet – including Snowball Earth.

While the triggers for the extreme cold at that time are debated, prevailing theories involve changes in tectonic plate activity, including the release of particles into the atmosphere that reflected sunlight away from Earth. Eventually, a buildup of carbon dioxide from volcanic outgassing may have warmed the planet again.

University of Exeter professor Timothy Lenton explains why the Earth was able to freeze over.

The Tava found on Pikes Peak would have formed close to the equator within the heart of an ancient continent named Laurentia, which gradually over time and long tectonic cycles moved into its current northerly position in North America today.

The origin of Tava rocks has been debated for over 125 years, but the new technology allowed us to conclusively link them to the Cryogenian Snowball Earth period for the first time.

The scenario we envision for how the sand injection happened looks something like this:

A giant ice sheet with areas of geothermal heating at its base produced meltwater, which mixed with quartz-rich sediment below. The weight of the ice sheet created immense pressures that forced this sandy fluid into bedrock that had already been weakened over millions of years. Similar to fracking for natural gas or oil today, the pressure cracked the rocks and pushed the sandy meltwater in, eventually creating the injectites we see today.

Clues to another geologic puzzle

Not only do the new findings further cement the global Snowball Earth hypothesis, but the presence of Tava injectites within weak, fractured rocks once overridden by ice sheets provides clues about other geologic phenomena.

Time gaps in the rock record created through erosion and referred to as unconformities can be seen today across the United States, most famously at the Grand Canyon, where in places, over a billion years of time is missing. Unconformities occur when a sustained period of erosion removes and prevents newer layers of rock from forming, leaving an unconformable contact.

Unconformity in the Grand Canyon is evident here where horizontal layers of 500-million-year-old rock sit on top of a mass of 1,800-million-year-old rocks. The unconformity, or ‘time gap,’ demonstrates that years of history are missing. Mike Norton via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

Our results support that a Great Unconformity near Pikes Peak must have been formed prior to Cryogenian Snowball Earth. That’s at odds with hypotheses that attribute the formation of the Great Unconformity to large-scale erosion by Snowball Earth ice sheets themselves.

We hope the secrets of these elusive Cryogenian rocks in Colorado will lead to the discovery of further terrestrial records of Snowball Earth. Such findings can help develop a clearer picture of our planet during climate extremes and the processes that led to the habitable planet we live on today.

Liam Courtney-Davies, Postdoctoral Research Associate in Geological Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder; Christine Siddoway, Professor of Geology, Colorado College, and Rebecca Flowers, Professor of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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All I can add is fascinating.