LW’s last resting place
Ascension Churchyard, Cambridge.
Frank Ramsey is buried nearby.
Quote of the Day
”It takes 15,000 casualties to train a major-general.”
- Ferdinand Foch
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
Ry Cooder | Feelin’ Bad Blues
Not that I’m feeling bad, mind. But this is a nice reflective track.
Long Read of the Day
How a hormone affects society
Testosterone is, IMHO, much overrated, and indeed responsible for much of what is depressing in human behaviour. So it was interesting to encounter this report of a discussion about its significance with Carole Hooven, a Harvard academic whose book, Testosterone: The Story of the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us was published in July.
Hooven, lecturer and co-director of undergraduate studies in Human Evolutionary Biology, waded directly into the nature versus nurture debate Thursday evening, laying out her case for the hormone’s function as a foundation for aspects of male behavior. She traced the role of testosterone in the natural world, pointing out its role in differentiating males from females across the animal kingdom. Its far higher levels in males — 10 to 20 times that in females — act as a switch that turns on genes, creating stronger, more heavily muscled individuals, along with more aggressive behavior.
Facts are sacred, but opinions are everywhere
Hadley Freeman has decided to stop being a columnist.
or someone who never actually wanted to be a columnist, I have written a heck of a lot of columns. I’ve been a Weekend columnist for five and a half years, and before that I was in the Guardian’s opinion section, and before that I was a columnist in the daily features section, G2, meaning I’ve foisted about 10 million of my random opinions on all of you. It has been a joy (for me, anyway), but now it is time to stop. I’ll still be doing interviews for the Guardian, but there is a tide in the affairs of man (all columnists love a random classic quote), and even an overly opinionated, 80s movies-obsessed, Jewish New Yorker (I’m WAWKIN’ here, I’m WAWKIN’!) knows when to step away from the table. So I’ll be banging on about fewer of my opinions, and writing more about those of others.
Like I said, I never wanted to be a columnist, but no one did when I started back in 2000…
I’ve always liked her writing, and hope to go on reading her, whatever she does next.
Chart of the Day
Remember Clubhouse? It was Silicon Valley’s Sensation du jour way back in February. And now?
From Google Trends via Exponential View.
Finally, some good news about Bolsonaro!
From the Daily Beast:
Brazil’s unvaccinated far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has been photographed nibbling a pizza slice on the street in New York City, where indoor diners have to have had at least one COVID-19 shot. Bolsonaro is in NYC to take part in the United Nations General Assembly, and, last week, he boasted that he would ignore a vaccine mandate for attendees. However, it seems the city’s restaurant managers aren’t letting him bend the rules. According to Brazilian newspaper Correio Braziliense, Bolsonaro’s tourism minister Gilson Machado posted an Instagram snap of the president and his ministers having a humble outdoor dinner of pizza and Coke on their first night in NYC. The paper also noted that the unmasked Bolsonaro had to sneak into his hotel through the back door on Sunday due to protesters.
Couldn’t happen to a nastier guy.
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