Woman in England sold by her husband

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“On Saturday the 7th instant, the inhabitants of this city (Carlisle, Cumberland, England, United Kingdom) witnessed the sale of a wife by her husband, Joseph Thompson, a local farmer who was married in the year 1829, to his present wife.

“She is a spruce, lively, buxom damsel, apparently not exceeding 22 years of age, and appeared to feel a pleasure at the exchange she was about to make. They had no children, and that, together with some family disputes, caused them by mutual agreement, to come to the resolution of finally parting.

“Accordingly, the bellman was sent round to give public notice of the sale, which was to take place at 12 o’clock. This announcement attracted the notice of thousands. She appeared above the crowd, standing on a large oak chair, with a rope or halter made of straw round her neck. She was dressed in rather a fashionable country style, and appeared to some advantage. The husband proceeded to put her up for sale, and spoke as follows:–

“Gentlemen, – I have to offer you notice my wife, Mary Ann Thompson, whom I mean to sell to the highest and fairest bidder. Gentlemen, it is her wish as well as mine to part for ever.

“She has been to me only a bosom serpent. I took her for my comfort, and the good of my house, but she has become my tormentor, a domestic curse, a night invasion, and a daily devil. (Great laughter.)

“Gentlemen, I speak truth from my heart, when I say, may God deliver us from troublesome wives and frolicsome widows. (Laughter.) Avoid them the same as you would a mad dog, a roaring lion, a loaded pistol, cholera morbus, Mount Etna, or any other pestilential phenomena in nature.

“Now I have shown you the dark side of my wife, and told you her faults and her failings, I will now introduce the bright and sunny side of her, and explain her qualifications and goodness.

“She can read novels and milk cows; she can laugh and weep with the same ease that you could take a glass of ale when thirsty: indeed, gentlemen, she reminds me of what the Poet says of women in general –

‘Heaven gave to women the peculiar grace,

To laugh, to weep, and cheat the human race.’

“She can make butter and scold the maid, she can sing Moore’s melodies, and plait her frills and caps: she cannot make rum, gin, or whisky, but she is a good judge of the quality from long experience in tasting them. I therefore offer her, with all her perfections and imperfection, for the sum of 50 shillings.”

“After an hour or two, she was purchased by Henry Mears, a pensioner, for the sum of 20 shillings and his Newfoundland dog. The happy couple immediately left town together, amidst the shouts and huzzas of the multitude, in which they were joined by Thompson, who, with the greatest good humour imaginable, proceeded to put the halter, which his wife had taken off, round the neck of his newly acquired Newfoundland dog, and then proceeded to the first public-house, where he spent the remainder of the day”. (From the Lancaster Herald, Date: April 7th, 1832)

Comment:   Sounds as if she was lucky to get away from him.  Mind you, to be cynical, it could be a quick and easy way of sorting the spike of divorces expected as a result of Covid19, as long as the women are allowed to seek their grumpy husbands.

Salt weakens the immune system

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A high-salt diet doesn’t just raise blood pressure: new research suggests that it also weakens the body’s ability to fight bacterial infections. For a German study, ten healthy volunteers aged between 20 and 50 were given an extra six grams of salt a day, on top of their normal diet. After a week, their immune cells were found to be less effective at engulfing and killing bacteria than they had been.

Co-author Prof Christian Kurts, from the University of Bonn, said the results were concerning because it’s not that difficult to consume an extra 6g of salt a day. “This is roughly the amount contained in two fast food meals, i.e. two burgers and two portions of French fries,” he said.   (The Week, 4 April 2020)

My reaction: only an extra six grams?  And it does that to you?   New resolution: henceforward:  no salt callar on the dining room table!  Especially at the present moment when immune systems need to be in A1 shape.  It’s all part of the achievement of ataraxia.  

Big tech, big tax dodger

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Google made £1.6 billion in revenue in the UK during the past year, but paid only £44 million in corporation tax, while the average Google employee earned £234,000 last year as the company’s share price climbed.  

Google’s tax fell from the £66 million paid in 2018, after Google UK reported a fall in profits due to the hiring of 800 extra workers. The company still made £1.6 billion in revenue last year, up from £1.2 billion in 2018, leading to the generous payouts for its 4,439 employees.  

Google’s European operation has its headquarters in Dublin, where taxes are lower. About 137 governments are trying to come up with an agreement on how to get tech  giants to pay more tax on the products and services they sell, rather than on their profits, which companies can register in low-tax jurisdictions.

Britain is planning a digital services tax, introducing a 2 per cent sales duty that may raise £1.5 billion over four years. But Google’s advertising revenue is thought to be four times the £5.5 billion that has been booked. The 2 per cent Digital Services Tax will barely scratch the surface.

A Google spokeswoman said: “We pay more than 80 per cent of our corporate income tax in the US, which is our home country. We also pay all of the tax that is due in the UK. We strongly support the OECD’s work to develop a new international framework for how multinational companies are taxed.”  ( Duh! Ed.) 

Dame Margaret Hodge, a former chairwoman of the public accounts committee, described the situation as a joke told Mail.   Paul Monaghan, chief executive of Fair Tax Mark, said: “Once again, it seems like Google are writing their own rules in the UK. Income is up but corporation tax charges are down. That’s before we get to the puzzle of how they continue to get away with booking so little of their UK advertising revenue through their UK subsidiary.” (Tom Knowles and AlexRalph, April 08 2020,  The Times).

What has this to do with Epicureanism?  Equity and fairness. Period!

Bolsonaro and the Brazilian evangelicals

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Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, called for a national day of fasting and prayer last Sunday, to “free Brazil from this evil” of coronavirus.

Bolsonaro’s popularity has plunged recently, owing to his refusal to take seriously the threat of Covid-19. However, he retains strong support among Brazil’s large community of evangelical Christians, and he has exempted religious services from coronavirus lockdowns.

Although brought up as a Catholic, Bolsonaro was re-baptised as an evangelical Christian in the Jordan River in 2016. “Brazil is in a serious crisis. The forces of evil are rising against a God-fearing Christian president,” tweeted Congressman Marco Feliciano, who is also an evangelical pastor.

Yes, Brazil is in thrall to the same sort of religious extremists we are familiar with in the US.   Fortunately, not all evangelicals are macho science deniers.

Nonetheless, makes you despair.

Anti- aging strategy:  The immune diet

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One of the most successful anti-ageing strategies ever discovered is caloric restriction. It requires a permanent cut in energy intake of up to 60 per cent. In every experimental animal that has been put through this, from fruit flies to primates, it extends lifespan and healthspan (the number of disease-free years at the end of life).

The strategy works because it switches on an evolutionary adaptation to starvation, which prioritises repair and survival pathways over growth and reproduction. Calorie-restricted animals tend to be leaner, fitter, metabolically healthier and mentally sharper than those that eat at will. They also have a stronger immune response.

Unfortunately, caloric restriction is extremely hard to maintain voluntarily. But there are ways to mimic it without going on a permanent starvation diet. The key is to deactivate a nutrient-sensing pathway inside cells called mTOR. When calories are scarce, it switches off, initiating the metabolic cascade that transitions your system into famine mode. The pathway can also be toggled off with drugs called mTOR inhibitors, the best-known being rapamycin.

Some people self-medicate with rapamycin even though it isn’t officially recognised as an anti-ageing or immune-boosting drug. There are other ways to achieve mTOR inhibition though. One is intermittent fasting, a temporary state of caloric restriction that is enough to switch off mTOR for a short while and still obtain its benefits. There are various regimes including the 16:8 diet, which involves completely eschewing calories for 16 hours and only eating in an 8-hour window. Even done once a week, this is an effective way of slowing aging, strengthening the immune system.

Exercise and keeping your weight down are also a proven mTOR inhibitors.  Aging is associated with a decline in the function of the immune system’s B-cells and low production of antibodies in response to vaccines.  So is being obese, which is associated with poor vaccine response, even in people who are young.( New Scientist, March 29, 2020)