Tag: The Conversation

Economic marginalisation.

For those looking for answers to the crisis in liberal democracy, this may well be it.

In yesterday’s post Tensions abound in many societies I offered a viewpoint that the ‘left’ arguing with the ‘right’ in politics was utterly inappropriate. Simply for we, as in the people who live on this planet, have to start working together if we wish to have a future for mankind on Planet Earth.

Yesterday’s post also referred to Inductive and Deductive Reasoning with me proposing that the future had to be built on a universally acknowledged relationship between ’cause’ and ‘effect’. A relationship that was built on a clear axiom, or theorem; as we see all around us in both the physical and natural worlds.

This idea does take a little time to filter through and I would be the first to say that I had to spend quite a while reflecting on the idea to fully understand the difference, the power, of deductive reasoning. Plus how something that was a behaviourial ‘law’ could be seen as much as an axiom as is, for example, the calculation of the speed of light, or the relationship of gravity to mass.

So returning to economics.

Quite recently there was an essay published on The Conversation blogsite written by Professor Andrew Cumbers of the University of Glasgow.

His thesis is that there is a direct relationship between “… about how well dispersed economic decision-making power is and how much control and financial security people have over their lives.“

That relationship is the core message of his essay.

In other words, as I see it, there is an axiom, a theorem, that governs the relationship between the leadership process of a country and the degree to which that country’s society could be classed as a democratic society.

Here is Professor Cumbers’s essay as published by The Conversation blogsite and republished here within the terms of The Conversation.

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New index of economic marginalisation helps explain Trump, Brexit and alt.right

January 12, 2017 10.03am EST

Author:
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“My fellow disenfranchised Americans …” EPA

If 2016 brought Brexit, Donald Trump and a backlash against cosmopolitan visions of globalisation and society, the great fear for 2017 is further shocks from right-wing populists like Geert Wilders in Holland and Marine Le Pen in France. A new mood of intolerance, xenophobia and protectionist economics seems to be in the air.

In a world of zero-hour contracts, Uber, Deliveroo and the gig economy, access to decent work and a sustainable family income remains the main fault line between the winners and losers from globalisation. Drill into the voter data behind Brexit and Trump and they have much to do with economically marginalised voters in old industrial areas, from South Wales to Nord-Pas-de-Calais, from Tyneside to Ohio and Michigan.

These voters’ economic concerns about industrial closures, immigrants and businesses decamping to low-wage countries seemed ignored by a liberal elite espousing free trade, flexible labour and deregulation. They turned instead to populist “outsiders” with simplistic yet ultimately flawed political and economic narratives.

Much has been said about the crisis of liberal political democracy, but these trends look inextricably linked with what is sometimes referred to as economic democracy. This is about how well dispersed economic decision-making power is and how much control and financial security people have over their lives. I’ve been involved in a project to look at how this compares between different countries. The results say much about the point we have reached, and where we might be heading in future.

The index

Our economic democracy index looked at 32 countries in the OECD (omitting Turkey and Mexico, which had too much missing data). While economic democracy tends to focus on levels of trade union influence and the extent of cooperative ownership in a country, we wanted to take in other relevant factors.

We added three additional indicators: “workplace and employment rights”; “distribution of economic decision-making powers”, including everything from the strength of the financial sector to the extent to which tax powers are centralised; and “transparency and democratic engagement in macroeconomic decision-making”, which takes in corruption, accountability, central bank transparency and different social partners’ involvement in shaping policy.

What is striking is the basic difference between a more “social” model of northern European capitalism and the more market-driven Anglo-American model. Hence the Scandinavian countries score among the best, with their higher levels of social protection, employment rights and democratic participation in economic decision-making. The reverse is true of the more deregulated, concentrated and less democratic economies of the English-speaking world. The US ranks particularly low, with only Slovakia below it. The UK too is only 25th out of 32.

Economic Democracy Index, figures from 2013. Andrew Cumbers
Economic Democracy Index, figures from 2013. Andrew Cumbers

Interestingly, France ranks relatively highly. This reflects its strong levels of job protection and employee involvement in corporate decision-making – the fact that the far right has been strong in France for a number of years indicates its popularity stems from race at least as much as economics.

Yet leading mainstream presidential candidates François Fillon and Emmanuel Macron are committed to reducing France’s protections. These are often blamed – without much real evidence – for the country’s sluggish job creation record. There is a clear danger both here and in the Netherlands that a continuing commitment to such neoliberal labour market policies might push working class voters further towards Le Pen and Wilders.

One other notable disparity in the index is between the scores of Austria and Germany, despite their relatively similar economic governance. Germany’s lower ranking reflects the growth of labour market insecurity and lower levels of job protection, particularly for part-time workers as part of the Hartz IV labour market reforms in the 1990s that followed reunification.

The index also highlights the comparatively poor levels of economic democracy in the “transition” economies of eastern Europe. The one very interesting exception is Slovenia, which merits further study. It might reflect both its relatively stable transition from communism and the civil war in the former Yugoslavia, and the continuing presence of active civil society elements in the trade union and cooperative movements. Southern European economies also tend to rank below northern European countries, as does Japan.

Poverty and inequality

The index provides strong evidence that xenophobic politics may be linked to changing levels of economic participation and empowerment – notwithstanding the French data. We found that the greater the poverty and inequality in a country, the lower the rates of economic democracy.

These findings suggest, for example, that the Anglo-American-led attack on trade unions and flexible labour policies may actually drive up poverty and inequality by cutting welfare benefits and driving up individual employment insecurity. While the OECD itself advocated these policies until recently, countries with high levels of economic democracy such as Norway, Denmark and Iceland have much lower levels of poverty than countries such as the US and UK.

Far right activists in Budapest, Hungary, February 2016. EPA
Far right activists in Budapest, Hungary, February 2016. EPA

Far-right populism is on the march everywhere, including the Nordic countries. But Brexit, Trump and the more serious shift to the far right in Eastern Europe have been accompanied by diminishing economic security and rights at work, disenfranchised trade unions and cooperatives, and economic decision-making concentrated among financial, political and corporate elites.

We will monitor these scores in future to see what happens over time. It will be interesting to see how the correlations between economic democracy, poverty and voting patterns develop in the coming years. For those looking for answers to the crisis in liberal democracy, this may well be it.

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 I shall be writing to Professor Cumbers asking if my analysis of that relationship is supported by his research.

For if it is then we do have a very clear axiom that few would disagree with. That is the political consensus this world needs now.

Oh, and we will be back to dogs tomorrow! 😉

The rights and wrongs of hunting!

The philosophy of hunting in terms of it being ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.

Anyone who comes here for more than a couple of visits will know that both Jean and I are opposed to hunting completely. Period!

That’s not surprising as there have been a number of posts over the years describing how we feed the wild deer. Here’s three more photographs that haven’t previously been shared with you.

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p1150179But, of course, the opinions of Jean and me are not, and should not be, the rule for the wider population of this part of Oregon.

All I would ask is that there is a proper, mature discussion as to the pros and cons of hunting wild animals in this, the twenty-first century.

All of which leads me to a recent essay posted on The Conversation site and republished here within the terms of that site.

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Is hunting moral? A philosopher unpacks the question

January 4, 2017 8.37pm EST

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Three generations of a Wisconsin family with a nine-point buck. Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources/Flickr, CC BY-ND
Three generations of a Wisconsin family with a nine-point buck. Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources/Flickr, CC BY-ND

Every year as daylight dwindles and trees go bare, debates arise over the morality of hunting. Hunters see the act of stalking and killing deer, ducks, moose and other quarry as humane, necessary and natural, and thus as ethical. Critics respond that hunting is a cruel and useless act that one should be ashamed to carry out.

As a nonhunter, I cannot say anything about what it feels like to shoot or trap an animal. But as a student of philosophy and ethics, I think philosophy can help us clarify, systematize and evaluate the arguments on both sides. And a better sense of the arguments can help us talk to people with whom we disagree.

Three rationales for hunting

One central question is why people choose to hunt. Environmental philosopher Gary Varner identifies three types of hunting: therapeutic, subsistence and sport. Each type is distinguished by the purpose it is meant to serve.

Therapeutic hunting involves intentionally killing wild animals in order to conserve another species or an entire ecosystem. In one example, Project Isabella, conservation groups hired marksmen to eradicate thousands of feral goats from several Galapagos islands between 1997 and 2006. The goats were overgrazing the islands, threatening the survival of endangered Galapagos tortoises and other species.

Subsistence hunting is intentionally killing wild animals to supply nourishment and material resources for humans. Agreements that allow Native American tribes to hunt whales are justified, in part, by the subsistence value the animals have for the people who hunt them.

Crawford Patkotak, center, leads a prayer after his crew landed a bowhead whale near Barrow, Alaska. Both revered and hunted by the Inupiat, the bowhead whale serves a symbol of tradition, as well as a staple of food. AP Photo/Gregory Bull
Crawford Patkotak, center, leads a prayer after his crew landed a bowhead whale near Barrow, Alaska. Both revered and hunted by the Inupiat, the bowhead whale serves a symbol of tradition, as well as a staple of food. AP Photo/Gregory Bull

In contrast, sport hunting refers to intentionally killing wild animals for enjoyment or fulfillment. Hunters who go after deer because they find the experience exhilarating, or because they want antlers to mount on the wall, are sport hunters.

These categories are not mutually exclusive. A hunter who stalks deer because he or she enjoys the experience and wants decorative antlers may also intend to consume the meat, make pants from the hide and help control local deer populations. The distinctions matter because objections to hunting can change depending on the type of hunting.

What bothers people about hunting: Harm, necessity and character

Critics often argue that hunting is immoral because it requires intentionally inflicting harm on innocent creatures. Even people who are not comfortable extending legal rights to beasts should acknowledge that many animals are sentient – that is, they have the capacity to suffer. If it is wrong to inflict unwanted pain and death on a sentient being, then it is wrong to hunt. I call this position “the objection from harm.”

If sound, the objection from harm would require advocates to oppose all three types of hunting, unless it can be shown that greater harm will befall the animal in question if it is not hunted – for example, if it will be doomed to slow winter starvation. Whether a hunter’s goal is a healthy ecosystem, a nutritious dinner or a personally fulfilling experience, the hunted animal experiences the same harm.

But if inflicting unwanted harm is necessarily wrong, then the source of the harm is irrelevant. Logically, anyone who commits to this position should also oppose predation among animals. When a lion kills a gazelle, it causes as much unwanted harm to the gazelle as any hunter would – far more, in fact.

Lions attack a water buffalo in Tanzania. Oliver Dodd/Wikipedia, CC BY
Lions attack a water buffalo in Tanzania. Oliver Dodd/Wikipedia, CC BY

Few people are willing to go this far. Instead, many critics propose what I call the “objection from unnecessary harm”: it is bad when a hunter shoots a lion, but not when a lion mauls a gazelle, because the lion needs to kill to survive.

Today it is hard to argue that human hunting is strictly necessary in the same way that hunting is necessary for animals. The objection from necessary harm holds that hunting is morally permissible only if it is necessary for the hunter’s survival. “Necessary” could refer to nutritional or ecological need, which would provide moral cover for subsistence and therapeutic hunting. But sport hunting, almost by definition, cannot be defended this way.

Sport hunting also is vulnerable to another critique that I call “the objection from character.” This argument holds that an act is contemptible not only because of the harm it produces, but because of what it reveals about the actor. Many observers find the derivation of pleasure from hunting to be morally repugnant.

In 2015, American dentist Walter Palmer found this out after his African trophy hunt resulted in the death of Cecil the lion. Killing Cecil did no significant ecological damage, and even without human intervention, only one in eight male lions survives to adulthood. It would seem that disgust with Palmer was at least as much a reaction to the person he was perceived to be – someone who pays money to kill majestic creatures – as to the harm he had done.

The hunters I know don’t put much stock in “the objection from character.” First, they point out that one can kill without having hunted and hunt without having killed. Indeed, some unlucky hunters go season after season without taking an animal. Second, they tell me that when a kill does occur, they feel a somber union with and respect for the natural world, not pleasure. Nonetheless, on some level the sport hunter enjoys the experience, and this is the heart of the objection.

Is hunting natural?

In discussions about the morality of hunting, someone inevitably asserts that hunting is a natural activity since all preindustrial human societies engage in it to some degree, and therefore hunting can’t be immoral. But the concept of naturalness is unhelpful and ultimately irrelevant.

A very old moral idea, dating back to the Stoics of ancient Greece, urges us to strive to live in accordance with nature and do that which is natural. Belief in a connection between goodness and naturalness persists today in our use of the word “natural” to market products and lifestyles – often in highly misleading ways. Things that are natural are supposed to be good for us, but also morally good.

Setting aside the challenge of defining “nature” and “natural,” it is dangerous to assume that a thing is virtuous or morally permissible just because it is natural. HIV, earthquakes, Alzheimer’s disease and post-partum depression are all natural. And as The Onion has satirically noted, behaviors including rape, infanticide and the policy of might-makes-right are all present in the natural world.

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Alberta, Canada, commemorates a place where indigenous peoples of the North American Plains killed buffalo for more than 6,000 years by driving them over a cliff.

Hard conversations

There are many other moral questions associated with hunting. Does it matter whether hunters use bullets, arrows or snares? Is preserving a cultural tradition enough to justify hunting? And is it possible to oppose hunting while still eating farm-raised meat?

As a starting point, though, if you find yourself having one of these debates, first identify what kind of hunting you’re discussing. If your interlocutor objects to hunting, try to discover the basis for their objection. And I believe you should keep nature out of it.

Finally, try to argue with someone who takes a fundamentally different view. Confirmation bias – the unintentional act of confirming the beliefs we already have – is hard to overcome. The only antidote I know of is rational discourse with people whose confirmation bias runs contrary to my own.

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This is a very important essay from Joshua. Well done, that man!

I will just leave you all with this further image.

Two young stags keeping it together. (xxx)
Two young stags keeping it together. (Taken here at home in July, 2016.)

Best wishes to each of you; irrespective of your view on hunting!

Brexit – now what happens?

Here’s what is going to happen.

In the run-up to the EU referendum by the UK this Brit was tempted several times to offer an opinion on what I thought was the best decision. But I resisted. (I was qualified to vote as an overseas voter and had voted for Remain.)

My resistance was because it seemed inappropriate to pass any form of opinion before the die had been cast, so to speak. I hadn’t been living in the country for over eight years and, inevitably, was out of touch with feelings.

The Conversation blogsite yesterday had a series of articles on the aftermath of the Brexit decision but the one that seemed most useful to share with you all was an article by Gavin Barrett,  a Professor of European Constitutional and Economic Law at University College in Dublin. For many readers, including me, both within and without the UK this seemed a valuable primer.

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Britain votes to leave the EU, Cameron quits – here’s what happens next

June 23, 2016 11.41pm EDT

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Leave ahead. Anthony Devlin / PA Wire

Author

Associate Professor, Jean Monnet Professor of European Constitutional and Economic Law, University College Dublin

Britain has voted to leave the European Union. This is having an immediate effect on markets. It is also having immediate political ramifications. David Cameron has announced he will not continue in his role as British prime minister.

Legally speaking, though, the process of actually leaving will take some time. Britain will now enter a kind of phoney Brexit period. It is still a member of the EU. The referendum vote is not as such legally binding. It is advisory only – but if it is out it creates a political imperative for the UK government to arrange its exit of the EU.

The law governing Brexit is found in Article 50 of the EU Treaty. This is a provision adopted by EU member states in 2009 to govern Brexit-like scenarios. It puts a two-year time limit on withdrawal negotiations. When the two years is up (or on the date any agreement reached before this enters into force) the UK is officially out of the EU.

Article 50 requires the UK to trigger the exit process by notifying its intention to withdraw. Not one, but rather a cascade of agreements, will follow this Brexit notification:

  1. The Article 50 exit agreement
  2. A separate treaty governing the UK’s future relationship with the EU – which could take many years to negotiate (and which, if it goes beyond trade, will require ratification by every single EU member state)
  3. Trade agreements between the UK and up to 134 other WTO members
  4. A tidying-up treaty between all the remaining EU states that removes all references to the UK from the EU treaties.

The initial main focus, however, will clearly be the Article 50 Brexit agreement.

How will it work?

The UK would be the first state to leave the EU but it is most likely that the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, will do the negotiating on behalf of the remaining 27 member states. They will no doubt cast a watchful eye on proceedings, before voting on the deal.

That vote will be by a weighted majority, with bigger states like Germany, France and Italy having a more powerful voice than smaller members (although in practice, strong efforts are made to ensure every member state can live with a deal before a matter is approved). Above and beyond this, should the Article 50 Brexit agreement venture beyond trade matters, it will then need to be ratified by every EU member state.

The European Parliament has a veto option, making it an important player too. Article 50 negotiations will thus have a lot of players with powerful voices – and many not necessarily be inclined to give the UK a very favourable deal lest “exiters” in their own countries get any ideas.

Powerful voices at play. EPA/Patrick Seeger
Powerful voices at play. EPA/Patrick Seeger

Could the UK delay giving Article 50 notification?

Legally, yes, the UK could delay giving Article 50 notification or avoid it altogether. But other EU states will probably refuse to negotiate until they get the notification.

Brexit campaigners have suggested adopting a swath of domestic laws so that the UK can short-circuit Article 50. But such measures would violate EU law and probably won’t see the light of day. Enacting them would pointlessly violate EU and international law, alienate the UK’s future negotiating partners and jeopardise the UK’s future relationship with the EU.

Can the UK withdraw notification?

This might be attempted if, for instance, the UK doesn’t like the way negotiations are going. It is unclear if it is legally permissible. The EU Treaty certainly doesn’t prohibit it in so many words. Political misgivings would abound – but might possibly be met by having a second referendum to reject any Article 50 deal ultimately reached.

Ireland, after all, had referendum second thoughts on the Lisbon and Nice Treaties, Denmark had them on the Maastricht Treaty and France and Holland agreed to a Lisbon Treaty deal very similar to the 1994 Constitutional Treaty earlier rejected by both states in referendum.

What will the UK get from negotiations?

That depends on how (and who) conducts the negotiations for the UK, and what the other states are prepared to offer it. Even assuming they prove pleasantly amenable, the UK will be left with awkward choices.

Does it want continued access to the single market with its 500m consumers? If so, it is may have

On the outside. EPA/Laurent Dubrule
On the outside. EPA/Laurent Dubrule

to make Norway-like concessions – including continued EU migration and cash payments for the privilege. Does it want to block out EU migrants? Then it may well have to say goodbye to single European market access.

No matter what the UK chooses, it will unavoidably find itself outside the corridors of power in the EU for the first time in over forty years.

Is there any way back in?

Article 50 does envisage the possibility of UK re-entry to the EU one day – but subject to a unanimous vote of member states. This pretty much guarantees it will only ever happen by the UK accepting the euro currency, participation in the Schengen area of free movement and no rebate.

Welcome to the brave new world of Brexitland.

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All I can say is that when I wrote up my post on comfort dogs I had no idea that matters Europe would be creating an enormous need for them. Better put in the words of Per and Val:

One dissatisfied member has soundly rejected club Europe’s management. It needs to radically improve before other leave. The managers must sure be in need of comfort dogs today.

Per Kuroski of the Tea With FT blog.

I hope David Cameron has a dog!

Val Boyko of the Find Your Middle Ground blog.

From The Boston Magazine, April 2013.
From The Boston Magazine, April 2013.

Interesting times!

The magic of touch!

At all levels and in so many ways it is life-giving.

dt14Animals must see touch as a natural way of living. We humans are less natural about touch especially with people that we don’t know so well. Not everyone, of course, but as a general statement it is probably not wrong.

The topic of touch has come to me today as a result of a recent item read over on The Conversation blogsite; specifically about the importance of touch between a doctor and his or her patient. Here it is republished within the terms of The Conversation:

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Touch creates a healing bond in health care

May 23, 2016 8.23pm EDT

Touch is a powerful tool in medicine. Hands via www.shutterstock.com
Touch is a powerful tool in medicine. Hands via http://www.shutterstock.com

In contemporary health care, touch – contact between a doctor’s hand and a patient – appears to be on its way out. The expanding role of CT and MRI imaging is decreasing reliance on touch as a way of making diagnoses. Pressures to move patients through the system more quickly leave health professionals with fewer opportunities to make contact. Our experience suggests that when doctors spend fewer minutes with patients, less time is available for touch.

Yet despite the rise of scanners, robots and other new medical technologies, the physician’s hand remains one of medicine’s most valuable diagnostic tools. Touch creates a human bond that is particularly needed in this increasingly hands-off, impersonal age. Medical practice is replete with situations where touch does more than any words to comfort and reassure.

The USC psychologist Leo Buscaglia, whose habit of hugging those he met soon earned him the sobriquet “Doctor Love,” bemoaned our neglect of touch in his book, “Love,” in these terms:

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.

For thousands of years, touch has been recognized as an essential part of the healing arts. Native American healers relied on touch to draw out sickness, and kings and queens were long believed to possess the “Royal Touch,” through which the mere laying on of hands could heal. The Bible contains numerous stories of the healing power of touch.

Touch is an essential part of our well-being

An indication of our need for touch can be found among our primate relatives. Psychologists have observed that many such species spend upwards of five hours of each day touching one another, partly through grooming. For many human beings, however, the daily dose of touching would be measured not in hours but minutes, perhaps even seconds.

Lack of touch can be hazardous to health. In experiments with primates some 60 years ago,

A young mother participates in a ‘Kangaroo Mother’ program at the National Maternity Hospital in El Salvador. Luis Galdamez/Reuters
A young mother participates in a ‘Kangaroo Mother’ program at the National Maternity Hospital in El Salvador. Luis Galdamez/Reuters

researcher Harry Harlow demonstrated that young monkeys deprived of touch did not grow and develop normally. Mere food, water and shelter are not sufficient – to thrive, such creatures need to touch and be touched.

The same can be said for human beings. During the 20th century, wars landed many babies in orphanages, where their caretakers observed that no matter how well the infants were fed, they would fail to thrive unless they were held and cuddled on a frequent basis. Touch offers no vitamins or calories, yet it plays a vital role in sustaining life.

More recent studies have corroborated these findings. “Kangaroo care,” using papoose-like garments to keep babies close to their mothers, decreases the rate at which they develop blood infections. Touching also improves weight gain and decreases the amount of time that newborns need to remain in the hospital.

Touch creates a bond between doctor and patient

Novelist and physician Abraham Verghese has argued that touching is one of the most important features of the patient-physician interaction. When he examines a patient, he is not merely collecting information with which to formulate a diagnosis, but also establishing a bond that provides comfort and reassurance.

The notion that touch can reassure and comfort has a scientific basis. Ten years ago researchers used MRI scans to look at the brains of women undergoing painful stimuli. When subjects experience pain, certain areas of the brain tend to “light up.” The researchers studied subjects when they were alone, when they were holding a stranger’s hand, and when they were holding their husband’s hand.

They found the highest levels of pain activation when the women were alone. When they were holding a stranger’s hand, the pain response was decreased. And levels of activation were lowest of all when they were holding their husband’s hand. Interesting, the higher the quality of subjects’ marriages, the more pain responses were blunted.

Touch from parents helps kids in intensive care

We have been studying this phenomenon in our own institution, looking at the effect of touch not only on patients but on the parents of patients admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit.

The project, called ROSE (Reach Out, Soothe, and Embrace), sought to determine whether increasing opportunities to touch patients could promote parent well-being without compromising patient safety.

Instead of merely determining whether patients could be taken off the ventilator or fed, we also identified patients who could be safely touched and even held in their parents’ arms. When a patient was deemed safe to hold, a magnet bearing the image of a red rose embraced by two hands was placed on the door to the patient’s room.

While we are still analyzing the results and further study is needed to fully delineate the health benefits of touch, several findings are already clear.

First, increasing opportunities for touch does not compromise patient safety. Second, the subjective well-being of family members is enhanced when touching is encouraged. Third, promoting touch empowers family members to become more involved in their child’s care.

To be sure, inappropriate and unsafe touching can be harmful. But when touch is encouraged in the right ways and for the right reasons, it is good for patients, family, friends and health professionals alike. Touch is one of the most fundamental and effective ways to create a sense of connection and community among human beings.

In the words of the 20th-century theologian Henri Nouwen, who wrote in his book, “Out of Solitude”:

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.

So next time you find yourself confronted by a person in distress, remember the power of touch. Medicines and words both have healing power, but so does touch, and it is perhaps the most widely available, financially responsible and safest tool in the healing arts. When we touch, we connect, and when we connect, we create a healing bond for which there is simply no substitute.

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“When we touch, we connect, and when we connect, we create a healing bond for which there is simply no substitute.”

P1140965
Jean with my mother back in July, 2014.

P1150928The healing touch!

Or to repeat the elegant words of Leo Buscaglia:

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.

3175758.largeWho have you given a hug today?

Reflections on the internet.

An interesting item that recently crossed my ‘screen’.

I make no apologies for cutting corners for today’s post. Because the last few days of looking after, and worrying about, Hazel have soaked up so much of our time and energy that I just couldn’t find the creative impulse to do much more than ‘copy and paste’.

That’s not to downplay the great interest of this article that appeared over on The Conversation blogsite a few days ago.

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Why the Internet isn’t making us smarter – and how to fight back

April 15, 2016 5.58am EDT

Professor of Psychology, University of Michigan

Disclosure statement: David Dunning has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Templeton Foundation in the past.

In the hours since I first sat down to write this piece, my laptop tells me the National Basketball Association has had to deny that it threatened to cancel its 2017 All-Star Game over a new anti-LGBT law in North Carolina – a story repeated by many news sources including the Associated Press. The authenticity of that viral video of a bear chasing a female snowboarder in Japan has been called into question. And, no, Ted Cruz is not married to his third cousin. It’s just one among an onslaught of half-truths and even pants-on-fire lies coming as we rev up for the 2016 American election season.

The longer I study human psychology, the more impressed I am with the rich tapestry of knowledge each of us owns. We each have a brainy weave of facts, figures, rules and stories that allows us to address an astonishing range of everyday challenges. Contemporary research celebrates just how vast, organized, interconnected and durable that knowledge base is.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that our brains overdo it. Not only do they store helpful and essential information, they are also receptive to false belief and misinformation.

Just in biology alone, many people believe that spinach is a good source of iron (sorry, Popeye), that we use less than 10 percent of our brains (no, it’s too energy-guzzling to allow that), and that some people suffer hypersensitivity to electromagnetic radiation (for which there is no scientific evidence).

But here’s the more concerning news. Our access to information, both good and bad, has only increased as our fingertips have gotten into the act. With computer keyboards and smartphones, we now have access to an Internet containing a vast store of information much bigger than any individual brain can carry – and that’s not always a good thing.

Better access doesn’t mean better information

This access to the Internet’s far reaches should permit us to be smarter and better informed. People certainly assume it. A recent Yale study showed that Internet access causes people to hold inflated, illusory impressions of just how smart and well-informed they are.

But there’s a twofold problem with the Internet that compromises its limitless promise.

First, just like our brains, it is receptive to misinformation. In fact, the World Economic Forum lists “massive digital misinformation” as a main threat to society. A survey of 50 “weight loss” websites found that only three provided sound diet advice. Another of roughly 150 YouTube videos about vaccination found that only half explicitly supported the procedure.

Rumor-mongers, politicians, vested interests, a sensationalizing media and people with intellectual axes to grind all inject false information into the Internet.

So do a lot of well-intentioned but misinformed people. In fact, a study published in the January 2016 Proceedings of National Academy of Science documented just how quickly dubious conspiracy theories spread across the Internet. Specifically, the researchers compared how quickly these rumors spread across Facebook relative to stories on scientific discoveries. Both conspiracy theories and scientific news spread quickly, with the majority of diffusion via Facebook for both types of stories happening within a day.

Making matters worse, misinformation is hard to distinguish from accurate fact. It often has the exact look and feel as the truth. In a series of studies Elanor Williams, Justin Kruger and I published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2013, we asked students to solve problems in intuitive physics, logic and finance. Those who consistently relied on false facts or principles – and thus gave the exact same wrong answer to every problem – expressed just as much confidence in their conclusions as those who answered every single problem right.

For example, those who always thought a ball would continue to follow a curved path after rolling out of a bent tube (not true) were virtually as certain as people who knew the right answer (the ball follows a straight path).

Defend yourself

So, how so we separate Internet truth from the false?

First, don’t assume misinformation is obviously distinguishable from true information. Be careful. If the matter is important, perhaps you can start your search with the Internet; just don’t end there. Consult and consider other sources of authority. There is a reason why your doctor suffered medical school, why your financial advisor studied to gain that license.

Second, don’t do what conspiracy theorists did in the Facebook study. They readily spread stories that already fit their worldview. As such, they practiced confirmation bias, giving credence to evidence supporting what they already believed. As a consequence, the conspiracy theories they endorsed burrowed themselves into like-minded Facebook communities who rarely questioned their authenticity.

Instead, be a skeptic. Psychological research shows that groups designating one or two of its members to play devil’s advocates – questioning whatever conclusion the group is leaning toward – make for better-reasoned decisions of greater quality.

If no one else is around, it pays to be your own devil’s advocate. Don’t just believe what the Internet has to say; question it. Practice a disconfirmation bias. If you’re looking up medical information about a health problem, don’t stop at the first diagnosis that looks right. Search for alternative possibilities.

Seeking evidence to the contrary

In addition, look for ways in which that diagnosis might be wrong. Research shows that “considering the opposite” – actively asking how a conclusion might be wrong – is a valuable exercise for reducing unwarranted faith in a conclusion.

After all, you should listen to Mark Twain, who, according to a dozen different websites, warned us, “Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.”

Wise words, except a little more investigation reveals more detailed and researched sources with evidence that it wasn’t Mark Twain, but German physician Markus Herz who said them. I’m not surprised; in my Internet experience, I’ve learned to be wary of Twain quotes (Will Rogers, too). He was a brilliant wit, but he gets much too much credit for quotable quips.

Misinformation and true information often look awfully alike. The key to an informed life may not require gathering information as much as it does challenging the ideas you already have or have recently encountered. This may be an unpleasant task, and an unending one, but it is the best way to ensure that your brainy intellectual tapestry sports only true colors.

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The way the world now communicates, for good and bad, using the internet is staggering. As the website Internet Live Stats reveals: (as of this moment today)

3,352,197,085 Internet Users in the world

1,016,623,500 Total number of Websites

2,060,120 Blog posts written today

So with that last figure in mind, I’ll send this for posting without delay! 😉

Hugging trees this weekend.

“The Spring is sprung, the grass is riz!”

Our delivery of trees arrived yesterday from the Arbor Day Foundation and that means that much of today will be spent in getting those trees planted.

Plus the recent wet spell has stopped me taking that first cut of the grass from around the house. So there’s another task for this relatively decent weekend coming up. And the vegetable garden needs some attention. And so on!

All of which is my way of saying that I won’t be paying my normal level of attention to Learning from Dogs for the next few days.

Rather aptly comes this item that was recently published over on The Conversation and is republished here within their kind terms.

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Hug a tree – the evidence shows it really will make you feel better

March 18, 2014.

Author

Lecturer, School of Environmental Sciences, Charles Sturt University.

We know that trees have many benefits. In forests they provide habitat, wood, biodiversity and ecosystem services. In cities, they can mitigate the urban heat island effect by cooling the air and reducing greenhouse gases.

But, perhaps surprisingly, there is increasing evidence that trees are also good for our mental health.

Are we all tree-huggers?

The idea that humans are intimately connected to the earth has persisted throughout human history and across cultures. In the western world, this connection was most recently described by eminent biogeographer E.O. Wilson in his 1984 book Biophilia. Wilson notes that humans naturally like to be around other living things.

This theory helps to explain why people prefer green scenes to urban scenes, why pet owners are happier and healthier, and possibly why we’re so obsessed with cute and cuddly animals.

This hypothesis was the basis of “connection to nature”. Psychologists have now developed multiple scales used by researchers to determine how connected a person is, and how we might be able to increase our connection to our benefit.

Connection to nature research is still developing, but early results seem to indicate that how connected to nature you are is related to your environmental behaviours, such as participation in recycling programs and an increase in overall well-being and happiness.

Because it is still a new line of research, the relative connection to nature of folks who live in urban areas and cities versus those of us living in rural places has yet to be established. But many researchers and environmental educators have come to suspect that we are becoming disconnected from nature.

Nature-deficit disorder

This disconnect from nature was set out in 2005 by American writer Richard Louv in his book The Last Child in the Woods. Louv coined the term “nature-deficit disorder” which means that modern humans have become disconnected from nature through our daily activities and this disconnect has had negative consequences in terms of mental and physical health. Proof of this hypothesis so far lies in studies that show how people with “modern” ailments, such as ADHD, anxiety or depression feel better with exposure to nature.

Based in North America, the Children & Nature Network has pages and pages of summarised research from academics around the world that seems to indicate a strong likelihood this disconnect is a real phenomenon. The sheer number of studies and their results showing the miracle cure of nature can be overwhelming at times.

There are studies represented such as:

Do yourself a favour, skim the pages of research summarised in short abstract form on the Children & Nature Network website. You may start to wonder why we’re not hearing more about getting our children and ourselves back outside.

This research also clearly highlights the important role that urban trees play in cities: their enormous social and psychological benefits may be even greater than ecological benefits.

Stressed at work? Your office might benefit from some folliage. srv007/Flickr, CC BY-NC
Stressed at work? Your office might benefit from some folliage. srv007/Flickr, CC BY-NC

Reconnecting with the natural world

So what are our next steps? As I see it, there are two things that must be done.

First, as researchers we really need to directly test the idea of a disconnect particularly between urban/built up areas and more rural areas with plentiful trees. We need to know if people living in areas with fewer trees and natural environments are more disconnected from nature than those living in places where there are abundant trees and wildlife. Deeper still, we could also ask what interventions seem to connect folks to nature in a meaningful way?

Second and most importantly, if we are disconnected from nature, what can we do about it? Fortunately the above studies and resources show us many different activities and ideas we can use to increase our nature exposure.

Just a few ideas to try:

  • Bring a plant into your office.
  • Ask council to plant a street tree outside your office window or better yet all around town.
  • When walking, choose the path through the park instead of around it.
  • Take your children to the park, to the natural sections as well as the play equipment.
  • Practise the art of gardening or even veggie gardening.
  • Plant a tree.
  • Spend some time sitting under a tree. And if you’re so inclined, maybe even give it a cuddle.

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Setting a fine example!
Setting a fine example!

You all have a lovely weekend hugging as many trees as you can!

Oh, and let me give you that full silly verse that started out in the sub-title.

The Original and Well-Known Rhyme by Anonymous

The spring is sprung, the grass is riz.

I wonder where the boidie is.

They say the boidie’s on the wing.

But that’s absoid. The wing is on the bird.

Take care everyone.

The arrow of time.

Everything, eventually, falls into decay.

What is deeply fascinating, at a number of levels, is how time only goes one way. At every single level of our experience, from the scale of the universe down to the tiniest particle known to science, it all flows forward. The arrow of time!

I was reminded of this interesting question of time in a book that has been published by a local Oregon author, John Taylor Our Curious UNIVERSE (the book is not available online otherwise I would have linked to it.)

It got me thinking of age. How we are all aging. How there is nothing that we can do to stop it. How the only thing we can do is to change our relationship with age. That then reminded me of an item that was published on The Conversation site a week ago that I wanted to share with you – share within the terms provided by The Conversation. The article was called It’s time to measure 21st century aging with 21st century tools.

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It’s time to measure 21st century aging with 21st century tools

March 4, 2016

Authors

  1. Professor of Economics, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York)

  2. Deputy Director of World Population Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)

Disclosure statement

The research was conducted in the framework of the European Research Council ERC-2012-AdG 323947-Re-Ageing

Sergei Scherbov receives funding from the European Research Council ERC-2012-AdG 323947-Re-Ageing

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The populations of most countries of the world are aging, prompting a deluge of news stories about slower economic growth, reduced labor force participation, looming pension crises, exploding health care costs and the reduced productivity and cognitive functioning of the elderly.

These stories are dire, in part because the most widely used measure of aging – the old-age dependency ratio, which measures the number of older dependents relative to working-age people – was developed a century ago and implies the consequences of aging will be much worse than they are likely to be. On top of that, this ratio is used in political and economic discussions of topics such as health care costs and the pension burden – things it was not designed to address.

Turning 65 in 2016 doesn’t mean the same thing as hitting 65 in 1916. So instead of relying on the old-age dependency ratio to figure out the impact of aging, we propose using a series of new measures that take changes in life expectancy, labor participation and health spending into account. When you take these new realities into account, the picture looks a lot brighter.

How facts from the census questionnaire were tabulated into statistics in 1950. The U.S. National Archives/Flickr
How facts from the census questionnaire were tabulated into statistics in 1950. The U.S. National Archives/Flickr

Our tools to measure aging have aged

The most commonly used measure of population aging is the “old-age dependency ratio,” which is the ratio of the number of people 65 years or older to those 20 to 64.

But, since the old-age dependency ratio was introduced in the early 1900s, most countries have experienced a century of rising life expectancy, and further increases are anticipated.

For instance, in 1914, life expectancy at birth in Sweden was 58.2 years (average for both sexes). By 2014, it had risen to 82.2 years. In 1935, when the U.S Social Security Act was signed into law, 65-year-olds were expected to live 12.7 more years, on average. In 2013, 65 year-olds may expect to live 19.5 years more.

But these changes aren’t reflected in the conventional statistics on aging. Nor is the fact that many people don’t just stop working when they turn 65, and that people are staying healthier for longer.

To get a better sense of what population aging really means today, we decided to develop a new set of measures that take these new realities into account to replace the old-age dependency ratio. And instead of one ratio, we created several ratios to evaluate health care costs, labor force participation and pensions.

Who retires at 65 anymore?

One of these new realities is that the number of people working into their late 60’s and beyond is going up. In 1994, 26.8 percent of American men aged 65-69 participated in the labor force. That figure climbed to 36.1 percent in 2014 and is forecast to reach 40 percent by 2024. And the trend is similar for even older men, with 17 percent of those aged 75-79 expected to still be working in a decade, up from just 10 percent in 1994.

Clearly, these older people did not get the message that they were supposed to become old-age dependents when they turned 65.

Depot Supervisor Eric Headley, 74, takes a call on his mobile phone while at work for Pimlico Plumbers in London July 29, 2010. Britain announced plans to scrap the fixed retirement age next year, saying it wanted to give people the chance to work beyond 65, but business leaders warned the move would create serious problems. REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett (BRITAIN - Tags: POLITICS SOCIETY) - RTR2GUL1
Depot Supervisor Eric Headley, 74, takes a call on his mobile phone while at work for Pimlico Plumbers in London July 29, 2010. Britain announced plans to scrap the fixed retirement age next year, saying it wanted to give people the chance to work beyond 65, but business leaders warned the move would create serious problems. REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett.

This isn’t unique to the U.S. Rates like these in many countries have been rising. In the U.K., for instance, the labor force participation rate of 65- to 69-year-old men was 24.2 percent in 2014, and in Israel it was 50.2 percent, up from 14.8 percent and 27.4 percent, respectively, in 2000. In part this is because older people now often have better cognitive functioning than their counterparts who were born a decade earlier.

So, instead of assuming that people work only from ages 20 to 64 and become old-age dependents when they hit 65, we have computed “economic dependency ratios” that take into account observations and forecasts of labor force participation rates. This tells us how many adults not in the labor force there are for every adult in the labor force, giving us a more accurate picture than using 65 as a cutoff point. We used forecasts produced by the International Labour Organization to figure this out.

The old-age dependency ratio in the U.S. is forecast to increase by 61 percent from 2013 to 2030. But using our economic dependency ratio, the ratio of adults in the labor force to adults not in the labor force increases by just 3 percent over that period.

Clearly, doom and gloom stories about U.S. workers having to support so many more nonworkers in the future may need to be reconsidered.

Is the health care burden going to be so high?

Another reality is that while health care costs will go up with an older population, they won’t rise as much as traditional forecasts estimate.

Instead of assuming that health care costs rise dramatically on people’s 65th birthdays, as the old-age dependency ratio implicitly does, we have produced an indicator that takes into account the fact that most of the health care costs of the elderly are incurred in their last few years of life. Increasing life expectancy means those final few years happen at ever later ages.

In Japan, for example, when the burden of the health care costs of people aged 65 and up on those 20-64 years old is assessed using only the conventional old-age dependency ratio, that burden is forecast to increase 32 percent from 2013 to 2030. When we compute health care costs based on whether people are in the last few years of their lives, the burden increases only 14 percent.

Pension ages are going up

The last reality we considered concerns pensions.

In most OECD countries, the age at which someone can begin collecting a full public pension is rising. In a number of countries, such as Sweden, Norway and Italy, pension payouts are now explicitly linked to life expectancy.

In Germany, the full pension age will rise from 65 to 67 in 2029. In the U.S., it used to be 65, is now 66 and will soon rise to 67.

Instead of assuming that everyone receives a full public pension at age 65, which is what the old-age dependency ratio implicitly does, we have computed a more realistic ratio, called the pension cost dependency ratio, that incorporates a general relationship between increases in life expectancy and the pension age. The pension cost dependency ratio shows how fast the burden of paying public pensions is likely to grow.

For instance, in Germany, the old-age dependency ratio is forecast to rise by 49 percent from 2013 to 2030, but 65-year-old Germans will not be eligible for a full pension in 2030. Our pension cost dependency ratio increases by 26 percent over the same period. Instead of indicating that younger Germans will have to pay 49 percent more to support pensioners in 2030 compared to what they paid in 2013, taking planned increases in the full pension age into account, we see that the increase is 26 percent.

Pranom Chartyothin, a 72-year-old bus conductor, sells and collects bus tickets in downtown Bangkok, Thailand, February 3, 2016. Such scenes will only become more common in Thailand as its population rapidly ages, unlike its neighbours with more youthful populations. The World Bank estimates the working-age population will shrink by 11 percent by 2040, the fastest contraction among Southeast Asia's developing countries. Thailand's stage of economic development, the rising cost of living and education, and a population waiting longer to get married are among the reasons it is ageing more quickly than its neighbours. An effective contraception programme in the 1970s also played a part, said Sutayut Osornprasop, a human development specialist at the World Bank in Thailand. Picture taken February 3, 2016. REUTERS/Jorge Silva TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY - RTX269SM
Pranom Chartyothin, a 72-year-old bus conductor, sells and collects bus tickets in downtown Bangkok, Thailand, February 3, 2016. Such scenes will only become more common in Thailand as its population rapidly ages, unlike its neighbours with more youthful populations. The World Bank estimates the working-age population will shrink by 11 percent by 2040, the fastest contraction among Southeast Asia’s developing countries. Thailand’s stage of economic development, the rising cost of living and education, and a population waiting longer to get married are among the reasons it is ageing more quickly than its neighbours. An effective contraception programme in the 1970s also played a part, said Sutayut Osornprasop, a human development specialist at the World Bank in Thailand. Picture taken February 3, 2016. REUTERS/Jorge Silva.

Sixty-five just isn’t that old anymore

In addition to this suite of measures focused on particular aspects of population aging, it is also useful to have a general measure of population aging. We call our general measure of population aging the prospective old-age dependency ratio.

People do not suddenly become old-age dependents on their 65th birthdays. From a population perspective, it makes more sense to classify people as being old when they are getting near the end of their lives. Failing to adjust who is categorized as old based on the changing characteristics of people and their longevity can make aging seem faster than it will be.

In our prospective old-age dependency ratio, we define people as old when they are in age groups where the remaining life expectancy is 15 years or less. As life expectancy increases, this threshold of old age increases.

In the U.K., for instance, the conventional old-age dependency ratio is forecast to increase by 33 percent by 2030. But when we allow the old-age threshold to change with increasing life expectancy, the resulting ratio increases by just 13 percent.

Populations are aging in many countries, but the conventional old-age dependency ratio makes the impact seem worse than it will be. Fortunately, better measures that do not exaggerate the effects of aging are now just a click away.

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Yes, we live in interesting times!

Dogs are dirty – Thank Goodness!

A fascinating new study offering insight into the health of our gut!

P1150755It doesn’t take too much imagination to appreciate that living in a house and sharing it with nine dogs and four cats doesn’t lend itself to perfect hygiene! Indeed, just yesterday morning we found evidence of mice in one of our bedroom cabinets. Plus both the bedroom and the main living room are never completely free of fleas, as my skin attests to. Then let’s not even speak of the hair and dust around the house!

Plus we live in a very rural location and the dog traffic in and out of the house is a consequence of our lifestyle choices that we do accept (99% of the time! 😉 ).

But possibly living a healthier life as a consequence of our ‘dirty’ animals was not something that would have ever crossed my mind until now, thanks to a recent essay published over on The Conversation site.

Read it and come to your own conclusion. It is republished within the generous terms of The Conversation; viz:

We believe in the free flow of information. We use a Creative Commons Attribution NoDerivatives licence, so you can republish our articles for free, online or in print.

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If being too clean makes us sick, why isn’t getting dirty the solution?

January 13, 2016 5.59am EST

Author: Associate Professor of Surgery, Duke University
image-20151216-30102-sybi4b
Wash up. Riccardo Meneghini/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND.

Today rates of allergic, autoimmune and other inflammatory diseases are rising dramatically in Western societies. If that weren’t bad enough, we are beginning to understand that many psychiatric disorders, including depression, migraine headaches and anxiety disorders, are associated with inflammation. Perhaps the most startling observation is that our children are afflicted with the same inflammatory problems, contributing to the fact that over 40 percent of US children are on medications for some chronic condition.

And the cause, according to the “hygiene hypothesis,” is that being too clean causes a malformation of the immune system, leading to a wide range of inflammatory diseases. The original idea was that decreased infections in childhood due to hygiene led to a weak immune system, prone to become allergic and inflamed.

If the problem is that we are too clean, then, hypothetically, the issue can be easily resolved. We just need to get dirty, right? Wrong.

Getting dirty doesn’t help our immune system and generally makes inflammation worse. Much worse. That means there is something very wrong with the hygiene hypothesis.

Biodiversity is the real issue

What we actually have is a biodiversity problem. Our clean, indoor-centered lives and a Western diet rich in processed foods have depleted our biomes – the bacteria and worms that naturally live in our bodies, our guts in particular. These organisms play a role in the development and regulation of our immune systems, and scientists have identified the loss of biodiversity as being central to the high rates of inflammatory disease in the developed world.

Giving up soap won’t help your biome. Bar of soap via www.shutterstock.com.
Giving up soap won’t help your biome. Bar of soap via http://www.shutterstock.com.

The hygiene hypothesis was right…in its day

An increase in inflammatory disorders, like allergies, was first observed about 150 years ago among the aristocracy in Europe, then reached the entire population of the industrialized world by the 1960s, and seems only to have climbed steadily since then.

When trying to understand why inflammatory diseases increased in the late 1800s and throughout the 20th century, scientists put their finger on things such as toilets and water treatment facilities. In those days, having a toilet was “hygiene.”

But times change. After generations of living with toilets and water treatment facilities, some of the wildlife in our bodies has been driven to the point of extinction. Our loss of contact with the soil due to indoor working environments has further depleted the wildlife of our bodies. And the typical Western diet doesn’t help either.

Even if you were to never use soap again for the rest of your life, you would not recover the wildlife your body is missing. Many of the lost organisms of our body don’t exist in North America in the wild, and others you simply won’t come across in your daily life.

On top of tremendous social difficulties imposed by a lack of soap, you’d likely increase your exposure to a lot of aggravating and even dangerous germs. The bacteria and viruses deposited on your shopping cart handle or the light switch at a hotel are generally not good. Those are often the germs of modern society that cause infection and inflammation. Your immune system would remain inflamed, and perhaps be even more agitated than before.

So what exactly are we missing? For practical purposes, it’s important to divide the wildlife of our bodies into two groups: microbes and more complex organisms such as worms. Microbes and worms affect our immune systems in different ways and both are important to be healthy. Biodiversity is the key.

A healthy crop of microbes and a few good worms

What would the gut biomes in our hunter-gatherer ancestors have looked like? A study by Jeffrey Gordon at Washington University in St. Louis showed that people living in modern preindustrial societies had more diverse micriobiome compositions than people living in the United States today. Seventy bacterial species Gordon found in preindustrial people’s biomes were present in very different amounts from those found in the modern U.S. participants.

While each group may have been exposed to different kinds of bacteria in their day-to-day life, the primary reason for the difference in diversity was attributed to diet. The preindustrial folks ate a diet rich in corn and cassava, compared to a U.S. diet rich in animal fat and protein.

And you might think that antibiotics are an issue, but they are usually less of a long-term problem for biodiversity. They can deplete bacteria in the gut microbiome, but the dangerous and disease-inducing tailspin is generally temporary. The microbiome usually recovers quite nicely, for the most part, although some lingering effects can remain.

The second group of organisms that we need are intestinal worms called helminths. These worms are called mutualists, because they benefit from us and we benefit from having them hanging around in our intestines. They used to naturally live in our gut. In fact, only 150 years ago most people in the West had intestinal worms that helped regulate immune function and prevent inflammatory disease. The culprit here isn’t diet, but cleanliness and sanitation.

Eat some fiber. Ali Karimian/Flickr, CC BY-SA.

If getting dirty won’t help your biome, what can you do?

When it comes to bacteria, a healthy diet is the critical ingredient. We can actually achieve a good mixture of gut bacteria very similar to that of our hunter-gatherer ancestors by adopting a good diet high in fiber and low in processed foods. The right diet helps the good bacteria in your gut flourish, and might make it easier for new varieties of good bacteria to take root.

In addition, there are some products that might, in theory, support a more hunter-gatherer-like bacterial flora, by exposing us to the kind of bacteria we don’t encounter anymore, but they haven’t been tested in clinical trials.

Probiotics, generally formulations of bacteria such as bifidobacteria and lactobacilli that grow readily in milk, are safe to use unless patients are severely ill. They could help support biodiversity in our guts if we need to take antibiotics.

Worms are a bit more challenging. There are two schools of thought on how to help helminth-less guts: one is to figure out what makes good worms good for us, and develop a drug that can do the same thing. The other is just to have these good worms living in your intestines.

Personally, I don’t think we can replicate complex biological relationships using a drug. My view is that modern medicine will eventually embrace the actual worm or maybe complex single-celled organisms called protozoans that work the same way, but research in this field is still in the early stages of development.

In the meantime, some intrepid people are going straight for the worm. As in actually acquiring worms in their gut. The challenge for these adventurers is to find a worm that has more benefits than disadvantages.

For instance, the same species of worm can have different effects in different people. The human hookworm, for instance, is commercially available and easily cultured at home. It has been found to treat multiple sclerosis and severe airway hypersensitivity but can also cause severe gastrointestinal distress in many patients.

For now, most individuals interested in immune health will focus on those factors that are risk-free, like avoiding chronic psychological stress, eating well and exercising, and watching out for vitamin D deficiency. These factors, all within our control, are important for avoiding a wide range of inflammation-related diseases, including allergy, autoimmunity, depression and cancer.

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It seems to me that another solution is having more and more dogs and fully embracing them into our lives.

P1150854My case rests!

Feeding our furry friends.

An insight into the eating behaviours of cats and dogs.

As it happens, Jean and I are vegetarians; Jean going way back in years to when she first turned away from meat. Thus the only meat that we purchase is from Cartwrights’, a local butcher in Grants Pass, where we buy hearts and liver for the dogs. The cats are fed on dried cat biscuits and canned cat food.

All owners of cats and dogs know that they have very different eating habits, and behaviours.

So to put some flesh on the bone, so to speak, about the eating behaviours of cats and dogs I am going to republish a recent essay that appeared over on The Conversation. As always, it is republished within the terms of The Conversation.

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Why cats are fussy eaters but dogs will consume almost anything

by Hannah Rowland, Lecturer in Ecology and Evolution & Research Fellow at Zoological Society of London, University of Cambridge

November 13, 2015

Anyone who’s watched a cat throwing up after munching on grass knows that our feline friends aren’t natural plant eaters. So you might be surprised to discover that these carnivorous animals share some important genes that are more typically associated with herbivores. And this might help explain why cats aren’t always easy to please when it comes to food.

New research suggests that cats possess the genes that protect vegetarian animals from ingesting poisonous plants by giving them the ability to taste bitter. Animals use their sense of taste to detect whether a potential food is nutritious or harmful. A sweet taste signals the presence of sugars, an important source of energy. A bitter taste, on the other hand, evolved as a defence mechanism against harmful toxins commonly found in plants and unripe fruits.

Evolution has repeatedly tweaked animals’ taste buds to suit various dietary needs. Changes in an animal’s diet can eliminate the need to sense certain chemicals in food, and so receptor genes mutate, destroying their ability to make a working protein.

I can haz chlorophyll. Lisa Sympson/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
I can haz chlorophyll. Lisa Sympson/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

One example of this comes from strictly meat-eating cats, who can no longer taste sweetness. But if bitter detection evolved to warn of plant toxins, then it stands to reason that cats, which (usually) eschew plants, shouldn’t be able to taste bitter either. Humans and other vegetable-munching animals can taste bitter because we possess bitter taste receptor genes. If cats have lost the ability to taste bitterness, we should find that their receptor genes are riddled with mutations.

Geneticists at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia scoured the genome of cats and other carnivorous mammals like dogs, ferrets, and polar bears to see if our carnivorous cousins have bitter genes. They were surprised to find that cats have 12 different genes for bitter taste. Dogs, ferrets, and polar bears are equally well endowed. So, if meat eating animals are unlikely to encounter any bitter morsels, why do they boast genes for tasting bitterness?

Taste test

To find out, Peihua Jiang, a molecular biologist at Monell, put cat taste buds to the test. He inserted the cat taste receptor gene into human tissue cells in the lab. When combined, the cell and the gene act as a taste receptor that responds to chemicals dropped onto it.

Jiang discovered that the cat’s taste receptors responded to bitter chemicals found in toxic plants and to compounds that also activate human bitter receptors. The cat bitter taste receptor, known as Tas2r2, responded to the chemical denatonium benzoate, a bitter substance commonly smeared on the fingernails of nail-biting children.

So why have cats retained the ability to detect bitter tastes? Domestic cats owners know how unpredictable cats’ dietary choices can be. Some of the “presents” cats bring to their owners include frogs, toads, and other animals that can contain bitter and toxic compounds in their skin and bodies. Jiang’s results show that bitter receptors empower cats to detect these potential toxins, giving them the ability to reject noxious foods and avoid poisoning.

Hair of the dog. Michal Hrabovec/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA
Hair of the dog. Michal Hrabovec/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

But how often do meat-loving cats actually get exposed to bitter and toxic compounds in their diet, compared with the plethora of plant toxins that their vegetarian counterparts have to contend with? Jiang suggests this is not enough to explain why cats have retained such an arsenal of receptors.

Instead, cat taste receptors may have evolved for reasons other than taste. In humans, bitter taste receptors are found not only in the mouth, but also in the heart and in the lungs, where they are thought to detect infections. It remains to be seen if feline bitter receptor genes also double-up as disease detectors.

The discovery of feline bitter receptors might explain why cats have got a reputation as picky eaters. But their unfussy canine counterparts have a similar number of bitter taste receptors – so why are cats so finicky? One answer might lie in how the cat receptors detect bitter-tasting compounds. Research published earlier this year by another team of researchers showed that some of the cat taste receptors are especially sensitive to bitter compounds, and even more sensitive to denatonium than the same receptor in humans.

Perhaps cats are also more sensitive to bitter chemicals than dogs, or they may detect a greater number of bitter compounds in their everyday diet. Food that tastes bland to us or to a dog could be an unpleasant gastronomic experience for cats. So rather than branding cats as picky, perhaps we should think of them as discerning feline foodies.

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Once again, I find it wonderful and incredible that there is so much knowledge and experience “out there” and how quickly a few clicks of a computer mouse can make it available to all of you wonderful readers!

And with that, it’s time to go off and feed the dogs. (Only showing off – Jean is the one who feeds both our dogs and our cats!)

Speaking of Jean – it’s her birthday today!

happy_birthday_alaskan_malamute_puppy_dog_card_postcard-r95e60e6e059748c58d5441d384bc8382_vgbaq_8byvr_512

Food, agriculture, and our climate.

Locavore or vegetarian? What’s the best way to reduce climate impact of food?

With Thanksgiving Day just behind us and Christmas just around the corner, this is the season of feasting.

Just last Monday I published an essay written by George Monbiot, Pregnant Silence, that highlighted the impact on our climate of modern food production. Here are a couple of paragraphs from that essay:

Freshwater life is being wiped out across the world by farm manure. In England, as I reported last week, the system designed to protect us from the tide of crap has comprehensively broken down. Dead zones now extend from many coasts, as farm sewage erases ocean life across thousands of square kilometres.

Livestock farming causes around 14% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions: slightly more than the output of the world’s cars, lorries, buses, trains, ships and planes. If you eat soya, your emissions per unit of protein are 20 times lower than eating pork or chicken, and 150 times lower than eating beef.

Thus it seemed both timely and appropriate to republish a further essay on the topic. This one published in The Conversation by Elliott Campbell, who is Associate Professor, Environmental Engineering, at the University of California.  It is republished here under the terms of essays published in The Conversation.

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Locavore or vegetarian? What’s the best way to reduce climate impact of food?

November 25, 2015

Elliott Campbell

This year’s Thanksgiving feast falls only a few days before the start of the global climate summit in Paris. Although the connections are not always obvious, the topic of food – and what you choose to eat – has a lot to do with climate change.

Our global agriculture system puts food on the table but it also puts greenhouse gases (GHG) in the air, which represent a huge portion of global emissions. GHG emissions come directly from farms such as methane from cows and nitrous oxide from fertilized fields, while other emissions come from the industries that support agriculture, such as fertilizer factories that consume fossil fuels.

Still other emissions come from natural lands, which have massive stocks of natural carbon stored in plants and soils. When natural lands are cleared to make room for more food production, the carbon in those natural pools is emitted to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

Adding all these emissions together makes agriculture responsible for between roughly one fifth and one third of all global anthropogenic, or man-made, greenhouse gas emissions.

How can these emissions be reduced? My own research through the University of California Global Food Initiative has focused on evaluating a wide range of factors from biofuels to local food systems.

Undoubtedly, broad emissions reductions must come from political action and industry commitments. Nevertheless, an enlightened consumer can also help achieve meaningful reductions in GHG emissions, particularly for the case of food. The trick is to understanding what food means for your personal carbon footprint and how to effectively shrink this footprint.

On par with electricity

Zooming in from the global picture on emissions to a single home reveals how important our personal food choices are for climate change. You can use carbon footprint calculators, such as the University of California CoolClimate Tool, to get an idea of how important food is in relation to choices we make about commuting, air travel, home energy use, and consumption of other goods and services.

For the average U.S. household, food consumption will be responsible for about the same GHG emissions as home electricity consumption for the average US household.

Measuring the greenhouse gas impact of different foods is complex but in general, it’s commonly agreed that plant-based diets have a lower carbon footprint. davidwoliver/flickr, CC BY-NC
Measuring the greenhouse gas impact of different foods is complex but in general, it’s commonly agreed that plant-based diets have a lower carbon footprint. davidwoliver/flickr, CC BY-NC

That’s a significant portion of an individual’s GHG footprint but it could be seen as a blessing in disguise. While you may be stuck with your home or your vehicle for some time and their associated GHG emissions, food is something we purchase with great frequency. And every trip to the grocery store or farmer’s market is another opportunity for an action that has a significant and lasting impact on our climate.

Making concrete decisions, though, is not always straight-forward. Many consumers are faced with a perplexing array of options from organic to conventional foods, supermarkets to farmers markets, and genetically modified organisms to more traditional varieties.

And in truth, the carbon footprint of many food options is disputed in the scientific literature. Despite the need for more research, there appears to be a very clear advantage for individuals to chose a more plant-based diet. A meat-intensive diet has more than twice the emissions of a vegan diet. Reducing the quantity of meat (particularly red meat) and dairy on the table can go a long way to reducing the carbon footprint of your food.

Food miles and water recycling

Local food systems are popularly thought to reduce GHG emissions through decreased food transport or food miles. But in many cases food miles turn out to be a meaningful but small piece of the overall GHG emissions from food.

For example, a broad analysis of the US food supply suggests that food miles may be responsible for less than 10% of the GHG emissions associated with food. This general trend suggests that where you get your food from is much less important than first-order issues, such as shifting to a more plant-based diet.

A little-appreciated way of reducing the carbon footprint of food is to recycle nearby water rather than pump it long distances. The Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency (PVWMA) Water Resources Center in California sanitizes wastewater for direct use or blending with ground (well) water. US Department of Agriculture, CC BY
A little-appreciated way of reducing the carbon footprint of food is to recycle nearby water rather than pump it long distances. The Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency (PVWMA) Water Resources Center in California sanitizes wastewater for direct use or blending with ground (well) water. US Department of Agriculture, CC BY

Where, then, does this leave a rapidly emerging local food movement?

For starters, there are some cases where food miles have greater importance. For example, food miles can play a big part in the carbon footprint of foods when airplanes or refrigeration are required during transport.

There is, however, untapped potential for locally produced food to deliver carbon savings around water and fertilizers.

When water is pumped long distances, it can add to food’s carbon footprint. Re-use of purified urban wastewater for irrigating crops represents one strategy for addressing this challenge but is only economically and environmentally feasible when food production is in close proximity to cities.

Using fossil fuels to produce fertilizers, such as ammonia, can also be a big piece of the carbon footprint of food. Nutrients in reclaimed wastewater and urban compost may provide a low-carbon alternative to fossil fuel-based fertilizers. But similar to water re-use, reusing nutrients is most easily done when there is a short distance between food production and consumption.

To be sure, buying local food doesn’t imply that food or nutrient recycling has happened. But developing local food systems could certainly be a first step towards exploring how to close the water and nutrient loop.

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I am sure many, as with me, tend not to follow through on all the links in an online essay. But there was one that really caught my eye. It was the CoolClimate Calculator on the Berkeley Edu website. It allows one to fill in a number of figures in terms of living, travel, food and more, and determine one’s total tons CO2/year emitted and how that compares with other people in your neighbourhood.  Unfortunately, it only calculates CO2/year for US locations. Does anyone know of similar calculators online in, say, the United Kingdom? Would love to know.