Prescription drugs in the US (a bit long, but you must read the conclusion)

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Congress is under pressure to reduce drug prices, but the obstacles are legion. Current federal regulations protect drug makers from competition and restrict the government’s ability to negotiate bulk prices for large purchases from manufacturers. The nation’s drug distribution system is complex, opaque, short on data, and little understood by consumers. And the huge money at stake gives the drug industry every incentive to invest billions into blocking change.

More competition for the name brand drug makers from generic drug manufacturers would help. Generic drugs saved American consumers $227 billion in 2017 alone, by one estimate, but both federal policies and drug industry abuses in the past 20 years have blocked their development. In the U.S., laws meant to promote innovation have given drug makers an unusually long window of market exclusivity that protects their monopolies. The makers of new biologic drugs, for example medicines made from living cells – enjoy exclusive market rights for a dozen years. That’s seven years longer than the exclusivity granted conventional, small-molecule. drugs. A plan to restrict biologics patents and bring them in line with small-molecule drugs would have saved the government just under $7 billion over a decade, but it was anandoned as a result of heavy lobbying.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have introduced more than 30 bills to curb drug prices in the past two years, All have died owing to intransigent opposition from Big Pharma. Ideas include bills to allow the importation of drugs from Canada, more pricing transparency,
tough price negotations, and making patent applicants demonstrate significant differences, originality, or additional benefit to qualify for secondary patents that extend the monopolies. Two sensible and rational ideas are, firstly, “single payer”, the single payer being government, which is the case in other advanced countries. Single payer is supported by more than half of all Americans. Secondly, value-based pricing, the idea being to tie drug prices directly to health care outcomes. The drug company would guarantee patients that its drugs would help them hit specific. markers, or they would get their money back.

But meanwhile pharmaceutical companies get up to all sorts of games, (aside from assisting Congressmen stay in their jobs!),such as:

– “pay-for-delay” agreements, where originators of a drug agree with generic manufacturers (for a price) not to develop a generic drug until a specified date, thus prolonging their exclusivity.
– refusing to sell their products to generic manufacturers for analysis, even when the patent has lapsed.
– refusing to participate with generic drug makers in safety protocols required by the FDA, citing a danger to consumers, but effectively choking off their generic rivals.

I have a chronic sleep problem. Through a sleep doctor I signed up with a company that sells drug called Xyrem, in the hope of finding something that works for more than a month at a time. In the course of organising this I asked the price. $4,750 a month!! Turns out Xyrem is a so-called “orphan” drug, originally designed for quite another condition, then sold on to Jazz Pharmaceuticals to treat (mainly) narcolepsy. In 2007 Xyrem sold for $2.04 per 100 milliliter dose, translating to a out $60 a month. This figureis now $4,750.In 2013 sales of Xyrem were $569 million. Need I say more?

The best democracy money can buy!

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Acting Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director Mick Mulvaney is working diligently these days to gut the agency he now heads. But Mulvaney isn’t seeing that same diligence from the financial industry movers and shakers he’s endeavoring so hard to shield. Last week, at a financial industry conference in Washington, D.C., Mulvaney told 1,300 bankers to step up and open their wallets. Noted the former lawmaker: “We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress. If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.” Bankers who buy access, Mulvaney essentially pronounced, are engaging in one of the “fundamental underpinnings of our representative democracy.” Or at least representative democracy as defined by Mulvaney, whose $7-million personal fortune sits him comfortably within America’s top 1 percent.
(Inequality.org)

Thus is democracy shamelesly subverted, with the support, apparently, of half the country. Where is the outrage? How can these corrupt people live with themseves? The only positive thing one can say about these crooks is that at least they are open about their corruption. Mulvaney would probably point out that one of the most disastrous and undemocratic Supreme Court decisions of all time – the so-called Citizens United decision – gave the stamp of approval to the purchase of Congressional favors and seats by people with the most money. “Conservatives” would no doubt take me to task for introducing party politics into an Epicurean blog – well, they would, wouldn’t they? They have clear consciences, it seems, and cannot understand that seeing cemocracy and the Constitution subverted so outrageously is deeply disturbing to the rest of us.

American evangelicals: why are there so many of them?

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Paige Patterson is president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, a Fort Worth school whose website says it is one of the largest seminaries in the world. About 15 million people are part of Southern Baptist churches, the largest Protestant group in the United States. Patterson is slated to deliver the primary sermon — a high-profile honor — in June at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in Dallas.

Patterson issued a statement Sunday pushing back after a 2000 tape surfaced purporting to quote him saying that abused women should focus on praying and “be submissive in every way that you can” and not seek divorce. He is heard on an audiotape being interviewed in 2000 about what he recommends for women “who are undergoing genuine physical abuse from their husbands, and the husband says they should submit.”

“It depends on the level of abuse, to some degree,” Patterson says. “I have never in my ministry counseled anyone to seek a divorce and that’s always wrong counsel.” Only on an occasion or two in his career, he says, when the level of abuse “was serious enough, dangerous enough, immoral enough,” has he recommended a temporary separation and the seeking of help.

Patterson has huge stature in the Southern Baptist Convention because he was one of the leaders, starting in the late 1970s, of what his supporters would call “the conservative resurgence” (more liberal Protestants would call it the “fundamentalist takeover”). It was a planned political takeover of the Convention and its institutions by those who believe the Bible is totally free of error.

Patterson in the tape was being interviewed by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, an evangelical organization that promotes the idea that men and women have different traditional roles. Efforts to confirm that with the council late Sunday were not successful. Most conservatives were eager to condemn abuse but many also declined to directly name Patterson or address the issue of divorce.

Evangelical Christians have higher-than-average divorce rates in the United States, according to research by Baylor University, a prominent Baptist school. The Southern Baptist Convention has agonized in the past decade over how to respond to this. Entwined through that issue is gender equity, as women are not allowed to be pastors in SBC churches.

The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood tweeted a statement it adopted in March that said physical, sexual or emotional abuse is “not only a sin but is also a crime … that must not be tolerated in the Christian community. The church must offer tender concern and care for the abused and must help them to find hope and healing through the gospel. The church should do all it can to provide ongoing counseling and support for the abused.”

Patterson himself did not dispute the tape but said he was being “subjected to rigorous misrepresentation.” Patterson was president of the Southern Baptist Convention in the late 1990s. In his statement, he said that he has never been accused of abusing anyone, that he has counseled women “on more than one occasion” to leave abusive husbands, and that physical or sexual abuse of any kind should be reported “to the appropriate authorities.” He praised the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood statement and said it reflected his view.

“I have also said that I have never recommended or prescribed divorce. How could I as a minister of the Gospel? The Bible makes clear the way in which God views divorce,” he wrote.

So let us assume that most people believe abuse to be abhorrent. so why are there so many evangelicals, and how can they square their political views, not just with the bible and christian values, but with humanity, decency and loving kindness? How have we reached a point where they call the shots in the Republican world and support policies and attitudes that are anathema to Epicureans and, indeed, to all humane people? Apparently, enrollment at Southwest seminary has nose-dived in the past 20 years, which does offer hope that this evangelic “movement” has at least stopped growing. I have nothing but respect for true christians, but these people do not share that epithet.

The French government and Christianity

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The secularist drive to rid France of any hint of its Christian past is becoming “insane”, says Gilles-William Goldnadel. A court has just ruled that a cross atop a statue of Pope John Paul II in the town of Ploërmel in Brittany – sculpted by Russian artist Zurab Tsereteli – must be removed. Apparently it contravened the 1905 ban on religious symbols in public, even though it was plainly just “a symbolic ornament on a work of art”. Or consider the case of the Greek yoghurt pots that Lidl recently put on sale: they were decorated with pictures of Greek villages, but the Orthodox cross on the churches had been photoshopped out by the supermarket chain “to avoid offending anyone”. For the same reason, the Paris transport system refused to let a charity run posters inviting donations for Christians being persecuted in the Middle East. What sticks in the craw is that the authorities are so strict about Christianity, our native religion, yet they positively encourage public religious activity by foreigners – it’s considered fine for Paris’s mayor to stage an event at the taxpayers’ expense to mark the end of Ramadan. The ban on religious symbols should mean more than giving offence to Christians. (Le Figaro, Paris)

It is political correctness like this that help fuel the rise of Trump and the disaster of Brexit. As a follower of Epicurus I don’t belong to any religion (and try not to belong to any tribe). But France has been christian for nearly 2000 years and has an enviable culture. I have no problem with moslems making their homes in the West, especially if they integrate into local life, but suppressing the old ways while pandering to the new is simply crass. It feeds the resentment of the political Right. It was good that Macron won the last election, but waiting in the wings are some very nasty people.

One might conclude that religion is a menace, dividing mankind and still causing wars and communal strife all over the planet. Of course, the truth is that religion is mainly the outward and visible evidence that men and women are tribal, enjoy tribes, dislike other tribes! and feel smug, superior and intolerant about others. I prefer Epucureanism, which is as far from being a tribe as possible, although not without its politics, since there are self-described right-wing Epicureans who are ……. oh, bother! I was just about to be tribal!

Music again

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To The Daily Telegraph

“The head of the Royal Philharmonic is making a serious error by believing that abolishing the term “classical music” will suddenly attract thousands of young people into our concert halls. The leadership of the RPO seem to be suffering from a crisis of confidence in their art form – brought on by our society’s obsession with making everything “accessible” or, rather, watered-down.

“Even during the years of Soviet communism, Russian musicians and orchestras – with the encouragement of the state – maintained the most elitist rituals, even when playing before industrial workers in factories, positively rejoicing in classical music and all of its white-tie-and-tails rituals.

“It is very sad that in modern Britain, serious art and culture of all kinds is being dissolved into a supposedly democratised mass of nothingness. That such ideas should come from the RPO – the orchestra of Sir Thomas Beecham – is beyond belief. (Stuart Millson, classical music editor, The Quarterly Review, East Malling, Kent)

Yes, watered down. Just as there is some truly dire popular music there out there, there is also dull and unimaginitive classical music. In my personal opinion serious orchestral music hit the buffers in the railway station when it went atonal and eschewed melody and the ability to tug at the heart. The audiences fled, understandably. But there is a huge amount of truly beautiful music, operatic, orchestral, chamber and solo instrumental music that carries you away to another place, stirs the imaginatination, calms you then excites you, spurs the imagination, leaves you happy that life isn’t forever ordinary and humdrum. Put aside the cellphones and Facebook and experience it! It will be an Epicurean moment.

P.S: I go to the gym and am assaulted on a Sunday by the spin cycling class next door. This class is accompanied by the most repetitive and unimaginitive music I have ever heard. The chord sequences are I-V-I- V-I-V for a solid hour. Talented writing it is not. I feel like handing out to the cycling exercisers free tickets to a Chopin recital or a Beethoven symphony – if only they could cycle to them.

On music

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Owing to the release of dopamine, listening to music makes you feel good. This much is known. Studies suggest that the brain’s natural opioids also play a part. This might help explain why music can act as an analgesic, and explains its use by some hospitals to help relieve pain after surgery.

Some types of music may have greater healing potential than others. A key factor appears to be rhythm. One reason is that neurons in the brainstem seem to fire synchronously with the tempo of sounds we hear. Other research shows that slow-tempo music can reduce heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature and other responses controlled by the brainstem. Such rhythm effects might help music combat stress and anxiety.

Research by Peter Sleight at Oxford indicates that slow music with a 10-second repetitive cycle calms listeners. He believes this is because it matches the length of a cycle of signals sent from the brain to the heart to regulate blood pressure. Music by Verdi, as well as the slow movements of Beethoven’s ninth symphony and the arias in Puccini’s opera Turandot are rich in such 10-second cycles. (based on an article in New Scientist, Sept 2015).

So why is it that orchestras and pianists in particular, now play pieces far too loudly and very much faster than a generation ago? I personally get exasperated by this, but it does one surefire thing – it gets the audience on its feet in frenzied enthusiam. Yes, the standing ovation, a very American habit! Some music is intended to stimulate and excite, but it is usually accompanied by other, slower, quieter passages that calm and soothe the mind. The audience is thus treated to a wide range of moods. But the current trend is away from the gentle, melodic treatment of music towards crude sensational “sturm und drang”- to its great loss.

One of the most sensitive pianists I have heard was at one time Louis Lorti, a Canadian. His Chopin recordings are superb examples of what true music is supposed to sound like. But, bowing to the (dare I say it) vulgarisation of the musical canon, the last time my wife and I heard him in person was a shock – he was thumping the piane as if he wanted to rip out the keys. The audience shot up the moment the concert ended in ecstaic applause. We thought the whole thing un-musical, but this is what the modern audience apparently seems to want. No taming of the savage breast encouraged. Epicureans want, and need, peace.

Prisons again: British prisons are a disgrace, too.

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Two recent shocking reports into jails in Nottingham and Liverpool show that conditions remain Dickensian – inmates crammed into filthy, freezing cells; cockroaches; rats; extensive violence. Whether you measure it by the high levels of re-offending or the number of suicides, it’s clear the system is failing; yet we keep locking more and more people up – England and Wales have the highest rate of imprisonment in western Europe.

Something has to change, and if ministers are wise, they should seek inspiration from Scotland. There, the SNP government rightly concluded that short jail terms disrupt family and work ties, and thus usually do more harm than good. So eight years ago it ruled that whenever judges imposed a sentence of less than 12 weeks, they’d have to justify in court why they hadn’t imposed community service or another penalty. Since then, both prison numbers and reconviction rates have fallen: there are now plans to extend the anti-jail presumption to sentences of up to 12 months. Westminster should follow suit. (Ian Birrell, published in i newspaper and The Week, 3 February 2018)

When you come to think of it jails are the universities of crime. If you are an amateur criminal when you go in, given your fellow inmates you will be a professional when you come out. Jail is where people uninterested in a normal respectable life hone their skills: the best areas to sell drugs and the best suppliers of them; how to break into modern cars and disable alarms prior to burglary; how to run a ponzi scheme, rob a cash machine and other activities the reader will be able to think of. Why is it that small countries like Finland, Sweden, Scotland etc have reduced both crime and incarceration while countries like the US and Britain are still mentally back in the 19th Century on this subject? One reason is inertia; another is that politicians stoke up fear of crime, even when, as in the US, it is actually going down. I am sure a dose of jail probably persuades an un-hardened few to change their lifestyle, but how many?

Too many Americans in prison

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According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2,220,300 adults were incarcerated in US federal and state prisons, and county jails in 2013 – about 1 in 110 of the U.S. resident population. Additionally, 4,751,400 adults in 2013 (1 in 51) were on probation or on parole. For-profit companies were responsible for approximately 7 percent of state prisoners and 18 percent of federal prisoners in 2015 (the most recent numbers currently available).

A 2016 report by the U.S. Department of Justice asserts that privately operated federal facilities are less safe, less secure and more punitive than other federal prisons.  Shortly thereafter, the DoJ announced it will stop using private prisons. Nevertheless, a month later the Department of Homeland Security renewed a controversial contract with the CCA to continue operating the South Texas Family Residential Center, an immigrant detention facility in Dilley, Texas.

Stock prices for CCA and GEO Group surged following Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 elections. On February 23, the DOJ under Attorney General Jeff Sessions overturned the ban on using private prisons. According to Sessions, “the (Obama administration) memorandum changed long-standing policy and practice, and impaired the bureau’s ability to meet the future needs of the federal correctional system. Therefore, I direct the bureau to return to its previous approach.” (NPR report)

2,220,300 people locked up! Extraordinary. While the more enlightened countries, such as the Nordic countries, are incarcerating fewer people and trying to rehabilitate offenders in more civilised ways, the United States jails people for possesion of marijuana or driving through red lights, especially if the happen to be black. Then, when the offenders leave jail they are on their own – no help, no money and no help to find jobs. At least in England there are advisors available to help released offenders adjust to freedom, sending them to companies prepared to accept offenders, arranging temporary accommodation, clothing etc.

Someone commented to me years ago that the so-called War on Drugs in the US was simply a way of getting young blacks off the streets. Because with a criminal record you don’t have the vote i. most states; thus the black vote is suppressed. Meanwhile, the incentive for private jail owners is obviously profit. They are well known for cutting corners in staffing, space allocated to offenders, food and prisoner welfare. This is a human rights issue. It is also an indication of the level of fear among the proponents of the “lock ‘em up” crowd.

Should 16 year olds be given the vote?

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Should the British voting age be reduced to 16? Labour, the Lib Dems, the Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru all believe so, and recently sought unsuccessfully to vote through a private members’ bill in Parliament to that effect.

The arguments made for this idea are specious. Letting 16-year-olds vote, it is claimed, would invigorate our democracy and show that the young, too, are responsible, engaged members of society. Really? So are they also calling for 16-year-olds to be allowed to smoke, drink, buy fireworks, gamble, get a tattoo, buy a house, drive a car or get married without parental permission? Are they clamouring for 16, not 18, to be the age limit for being sent to an adult prison? Of course not. The only reason the proponents are so keen to enfranchise 16-year-olds is that it would add 1.5 million people to the electorate, most of whom would be “blissfully naive about politics” and temperamentally inclined to vote for the Left – “easy prey”, in other words. Forget the high-minded talk about inclusivity. Their crusade “isn’t empowering; it’s child exploitation”. (The Week)

On this I absolutely agree. Sixteen is an age of rebellion, flux, embracing one idea today and abandoning it tomorrow, experimentation, irritating your elders etc. etc. The last time I had a political discussion with a member of my family of around that age I came away thinking he sounded like a mix of Napoleon, Franco, Enoch Powell and any one of a dozen right wing dictators. But judging him for this would be inappropriate – he was just experimenting, trying out various recipes life, and carefully watching my face as he spoke! I have no doubt he will end up wise – but not quite yet.

Uncovering your hidden biases

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Are your hidden biases soon to be revealed? A computer program claims to be able to unmask them by scrutinising people’s body language for signs of prejudice.

Algorithms can already accurately read people’s emotions from their facial expressions or speech patterns. So a team of researchers in Italy wondered if they could be used to uncover people’s hidden racial biases. First, they asked 32 white college students to fill out two questionnaires. One was designed to suss out their explicit biases, while the second, an Implicit Association iTest, aimed to uncover their subconscious racial biases.

Then, each participated in two filmed conversations: one with a white person, and one with a black person. The pair spent three minutes discussing a neutral subject, then another three on a more sensitive topic, such as immigration. Their movements, heart rates and skin responses were monitored.  An algorithm then searched for correlations between the participants’ questionnaire responses and their non-verbal behaviour during the filmed conversations. For example, it found that those who showed strong hidden racial biases kept a bigger distance between themselves and their black conversational partners. Conversely, those who were comfortable in the conversation seemed to pause more and to use their hands more when they spoke.

Then, the computer looked back at the same data and trying to predict who would have scored high or low on the hidden biases test. It was correct 82 per cent of the time. The team has already started working on follow-up experiments. One focuses on hidden biases towards people who are HIV-positive, while another examines the behaviour of children.

It is hoped that these techniques may lead to improvements in the way interactions between people are studied,  providing objective information on a moment by moment, second by second basis. They could reveal  hidden prejudices and maybe  gently nudge the subject,to act differently. (Adapted from a New Scientist article by Aviva Rutkin)

The problem with this is that people are biased against others for all sorts of reasons, skin colour being only one.  We unconsciously change the way we talk to people according to appearance, age, way of speaking, perceived education, political beliefs, appearance, manners, context of a conversation and a raft of other things.  To have prejudices is part of being human. “We are always biased, and bias is not based just on the colour of the skin,” says Hatice Gunes at the University of Cambridge.  Quite.

Why Westchester County should vote Democrat.

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Today (Tuesday),  the New York state senate has two by-elections. Should the Democrats win, New York state will be under unified Democrat control; the governor’s mansion and lower house are already blue, but the senate is still mostly Republican. One of the senate races is a safe-Democrat Bronx seat. So the only election that matters is the other race, taking place in Westchester County.

For British residents, the idea that Westchester County could be a tossup may seem baffling. The county is immensely rich. And unlike some wealthy inner-city neighbourhoods, it has very little poverty. It would be a bit like Surrey or Buckinghamshire being on the verge of voting Labour- simply unthinkable. And yet it will probably happen. Here’s why it should:

  1. Trump. The president loves to boast of his popularity. Voting Democrat in an area Republicans ought to be competitive in sends a very strong signal of how unpopular Trump really is, particularly in his home state.
  2. Avoiding gridlock. Having a unified state government allows more to get done. With a gridlocked government, urgent reforms tend not to get through. Since there’s no chance of the House or governorship going Republican, the only way to avoid gridlock is to make the Senate Democratic as well.
  3. Education. New York state spends more on education than any other state. While that doesn’t guarantee better results, it can certainly help. Voting Democrat keeps it that way.
  4. The environment. Pollution in the New York urban area is appalling. Although the Westchester Republican candidate, Julie Killian, has a decent record on environmental matters, she still represents a party largely in denial of climate change and unconcerned at the effects of pollution.
  5. Infrastructure. New York’s infrastructure is in desperate need of an upgrade. Not only are the roads falling apart, the subway is under immense pressure as well. Voting Democrat is more likely to result in infrastructure spending. Nationally, Trump talks of infrastructure spending, but has yet to commit any money. It’s unlikely a Republican administration in New York would do much to fix the problem.
  6. A commitment to the community. Westchester shouldn’t feel ashamed to be successful. But that success doesn’t exist only because its residents are harder working and more talented than anyone else. The county depends on the state to run a lot of its services. It also depends on working class and mostly black and Hispanic people to do the less attractive but necessary jobs- cleaning, waitering, plumbing etc. Voting Democrat shows a commitment to New York as a whole, including the less fortunate.
  7. Attracting the right sort of rich people. Let’s face it, America has two sorts of rich people. There are the liberal rich, who tend to work in the tech sector or in the media. With their excessive weed smoking and obsession with organic food, they can be highly infuriating from the perspective of the average American. But they are far better than the other sort of rich people, the conservative rich. These are the sort of people who spend too much time playing golf, own needlessly big cars (which they don’t drive well), and talk about how much God has blessed them (never mind the billions of people God has chosen not to bless for some reason.) They believe poverty isn’t much of a problem in America, but that their taxes are way too high (their taxes are amongst the developed world’s lowest.) Voting Democrat is a good way to get rid of them.
  8. De-radicalising the Democratic Party. There is a small minority of ultra-socialist Democrats who would like the party to become an exclusively working class outfit. They admire Cuba and Venezuela more than Denmark or Germany. For these people, having wealthy supporters is a sign of weakness and excessive moderation. If Westchester County votes Democrat, the American far-left becomes less powerful. Which is a good thing, both in terms of future electability and the quality of public policy.
  9. Reforming the Republican Party. If places like Westchester County vote Democrat, the party will have an impenetrable coalition of wealthy, college educated whites and ethnic minorities. Long-term, the Republicans can’t rely on working class whites alone- their proportion of the population is in serious decline. Voting Democrat now forces the Republicans to think about the future. This will hopefully mean a GOP that comes up with a serious policy platform to appeal to a broader range of people, instead of indulging the base with people like Trump.

 

Parking pests

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A new phenomenon is disturbing my usual peace of mind. I refer to the habit that has recently caught on whereby visitors to our neighborhood, either from Maryland or Virginia, park on our block and sit there in the car, engrossed in their cellphones or computers, sometimes for an hour or more at a time. Two hours has been observed. Early for an appointment? A quiet period away from the wife and kids? I don’t know but the point is that they keep the car engine running throughout, ticking over for an hour or more. I don’t know whether this is bad for the car, but it is for me. Our block is already busy with traffic, and these parkers are fouling the air, sitting there with the engines running. The air quality in this large city is already famously bad, and here we are having to endure even more smelly fumes. I suppose it is an indication of the single-minded concentration of modern man on himself, and a total indifference to the health and well-being of the residents, fellow human beings, living close to his parking spot.

Am I getting over-fussy or is this plain thoughtless and selfish? Whatever your reaction, mine is a disturbance of what should be ataraxic retirement.

Is NewYork doomed?

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New York should prepare for 15-metre storm surges by 2300. Much worse is yet to come. Climate change will bring good news and really bad news for New York City. The good news is that hurricanes might be more likely to miss the city over the next three centuries. This means the future risk of big storm surges, relative to local sea level, could be lower than today. However, the really bad news is that if we don’t slash greenhouse gas emissions, local sea level will rise by a huge 13 metres or more. With this factored in, New York could be facing storm surges at least 15 metres above the current sea level by 2300 (PNAS, doi.org/cfgw).

“Sea level rise itself is a very big hazard, before you start to look at tropical cyclones,” says Andra Garner of Rutgers University in New Jersey. Garner’s team used climate models to simulate the paths of future hurricanes and the storm surges they will produce. These were combined with estimates of sea level rise. They conclude that 2.3-metre floods, which happened in New York on average once in 500 years before 1800, struck roughly every 25 years from 1970 to 2005, will probably hit every five years by 2030 to 2045. If we don’t cut emissions, local sea level could permanently rise by 2.3 metres before the century ends. What’s more, meteorologist Jeff Masters of Weather Underground says the good news part could be wrong: at least one study shows climate change will make hurricanes more likely to hit the north-east US. (New Scientist)

London long ago built a flood barrage downstream from the city. It was contraversial at the time, but the flood gates have already been used, and will be used more often as sea levels rise. If Europe can protect against flooding why hasn’t something similar been done in New York, where seaside houses, damaged by hurricane Sandy have been renovated, when these same residential neighborhoods should have been relocated inland? These people who now enjoy nice sea views will only have further flooding disasters to look forward to. Conclusion: don’t threaten your ataraxia by moving to the seaside a house on a hill is the smart thing to look for.

Standing up to the bullies

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“If you want a classic formulation from our new Gilded Age, here it is, as described recently in the Guardian: “A head-on assault on teachers for their long summer vacations would ‘sound tone-deaf when there are dozens of videos and social media posts going viral from teachers about their second jobs [and] having to rely on food pantries.’” That’s advice for what not to criticize in a “messaging guide” produced by the State Policy Network (SPN), an “alliance” of 66 right-wing “ideas factories,” funded by the Koch Brothers, the Walton Family Foundation (Walmart), and the DeVos family (that is, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s billionaire relatives and Amway heirs). It’s part of a right-wing stealth strategy for finding just the right approach to discrediting America’s restive red-state teachers, chafing under seemingly never-ending tax-cut regimes in states like Oklahoma, programs sponsored by those same plutocratics. As an approach to governing, such tax-cutting, now decades old, has been a giveaway to the rich (just as Donald Trump’s recent tax “reform” bill will be). When it comes to what formerly were known as public schools (what the right now calls “government schools,”) the results have been catastrophic. Oklahoma, for instance, has cut per-student funding by 28% in the last decade.

“In the past, SPN went after the unions, who are fought an inequality gap that has recently come close to reaching the record heights of the previous Gilded Age in 1913. Now, however, it’s those ungrateful striking teachers that are SPN’s target and for good reason. In red states like Arizona, Kentucky, and West Virginia, their recent protests, walkouts, and strikes in favor of saving schools that have been put on a financial starvation diet (like teachers’ salaries) and increasingly lack everything, even in a few cases the time to teach. They are beginning to shake up state politics, and not in ways that either those billionaires or the Republican Party much likes. After all, those teachers teach… well, students (from whom we’ve heard quite a bit recently)… and those students, unbelievably enough, have… parents, and when you add up those teachers, parents, and students (future voters all), they turn out to be a group with the kind of numerical heft that billionaires, despite the way they’ve been multiplying year by year in this country, lack.” (Tomgram 4/19/2018, reporting on a Guardian article).

And yet… ordinary citizens in states like Arizona, Kentucky and West Virginia continue to vote for a political party that is in hock to the grabitocracy and gives every appearance of despising “schooling” (education being another thing altogether – you have to learn how to learn before you begin a true education). Were Epicurus alive today I am convinced that he would want us to give priority to having the best schools, the best teachers, an informed populace and an ability to think for oneself. One can’t help concluding, however, that some people with extreme right-wing views don’t believe in school at all, but want a compliant and ignorant electorate that watches Fox News and does what it’s told. This could end very badly, but then if you are taught no history you have no idea what could be in store for you.