“The religions we call false were once true”. (Emerson, “Character”, Essays, Second Series, 1844)
Ants are cleaning up New York. Not before time.
Armies of ants are doing an important job in New York, by keeping the city’s streets clean. Researchers have calculated that on just one stretch of Broadway they could be removing the equivalent of 60,000 hot dogs, or 600,000 potato crisps, a year. A team from North Carolina State University put three commonly dropped foods – crisps, biscuits and hot dogs – in cages that only ants and other arthropods could get into, and left them at leafy locations around Manhattan, ranging from parks to traffic islands. They found that the creatures had removed as much as 59% within a day. “This isn’t just a silly fact,” said lead researcher Dr Elsa Youngsteadt. “This highlights a very real service that these arthropods provide. They effectively dispose of our trash for us.” (New Scientist)
Watch this blog for news of ants with girths of two inches or more, as armies of them, having consumed left-over hamburgers and potato crisps, waddle and wobble down Broadway, massive, and out of breath. Terrified schoolgirls will be fleeing Manhattan; Hollywood will have found yet another idea for a horror story, as the ant obesity epidemic spreads.
Epicureans quietly note that ants are nutricious, and, instead of panicking about armies of the super-sized creatures, welcome them as a free source of protein. As the seas empty of edible fish, and climate change increases the cost of food, the giant ant could be saviour of mankind (anyway, for as long as mankind insists on the tacky habit of eating hamburgers and crisps on the street).
Happiness
Research by Matt Killingsworth of Harvard indicates that we are happiest when we are not actively seeking happiness but are wrapt in the moment. Happiness is a mode of being, not a mode of seeking. The moment we say we are happy we are distancing and isolating ourselves from the experience by the very act of observing, and if we were wrapt in musical ecstasy before now the experience is no longer ecstatic. The bubble is burst.
Sounds like Schrodingers Cat: the act of observing changes the situation.
Who were my real parents?
It is characteristic of human beings that if they grow up feeling in some way different from their peers, don’t feel loved, or look entirely different from their parents, they construct sometimes fantastical scenarios about their birth. Who are my real parents? Was I swapped at birth by a careless nurse? Or am I the lovechild of a famous person?
The story that has come down about my own family is that a forebear was the illegitimate child of the Holy Roman Emperor (supposedly Frederick III, a Hapsburg, who died in 1493). Aside from what looks like a Hapsburg chin, there isn’t a shred of evidence to support this, although it didn’t stop a long-dead ancestor from purloining what looks like a Hapsburg family crest. But it makes a good story, not to be taken seriously. When I have blood drawn for a test, I (tongue in cheek) draw the attention of the nurse to the blueness of the blood and explain my Holy, Roman, Emperor-like status, and, please nurse, be gentle with me. All good fun. They always laugh. For other people it is not a joke. It is a fantasy that reassures and may offer them a more pleasant life. Nothing wrong with that. If it makes living more pleasant it is Epicurean.
Exaggerating anti- semitism in Europe
There seems to be an idea gaining ground that racism and xenophobia have become a German nationwide problem, and that endless mistakes have been made by politicians dealing with social policy towards asylum seekers.
This is nonsense. The problem isn’t Germany’s social policy, it’s right-wing extremists, who can’t be reasoned with because they’re not rational. The municipality around Tröglitz, a community of 185,000 where neo-nazi thugs a while ago caused problems, contains just 47 foreigners, while what the local authority spends on housing refugees is a fraction of the €273m spent on social welfare for existing residents. So much for the “foreign infiltration” the extremists bemoan, and its “intolerable” burden on social security. The vast majority of Germans aren’t “filled with hate” against refugees. We don’t need expensive social and educational programs: we just need to deal firmly with the hooligans”. (The Week)
Regrettably, similar isolated incidents aimed at the Jewish community are being used to alarm liberal Jews in America. I had a long and pleasant conversation with a Jewish lady, who seemed convinced that European Jews would soon have to leave Europe and go to Israel. This is just the result AIPAC and some extreme Zionists want and exploit. There are thugs everywhere, but they have to be sat on – hard. I can only speak from what I know, but anti-semitism these days is insignificant (anti-moslemism is a different matter). Who knew that leader of the UK Labour Party, who has just resigned, was Jewish? I didn’t, nor do I care or think it relevant to his job. Most people would agree. There is a problem with people who refuse to integrate, and somehow we need to change their minds. But they are not Jewish and we should not tolerate thuggery against them or anyone else.