Female Pleasure 3

A controversial study claims that a woman finds lovemaking more fulfilling if her partner is wealthy. Wealthy men give women more orgasms (The Times, 18th January 2009) Why rich men are better in bed: Women have more orgasms with wealthy partners, study finds (Daily Mail, 20th January 2009). 

Another bit of pseudo-science from the evolutionary biology brigade.

The study is based on a survey of some 1500 Chinese women, and appears to show some statistical correlation between prosperity and pleasure. Here are some of the possible explanations discussed by the Daily Mail, a paper popular with women who have (or would like to have) wealthy partners.

• Women who have frequent orgasms tend to overestimate their partner's income
• Women with 'high powered' partners exaggerate how much they enjoy sex
• Women who are highly susceptible to orgasms select partners who are wealthy
• More desirable mates cause women to experience more orgasms

In evolutionary biology, the game is always to find an explanation that shows how some trait has evolved to yield some reproductive advantage. Thus Thomas Pollet, who has just completed a PhD at the Center for Evolution and Behaviour at Newcastle University, speculates that a woman's 'capacity for orgasm' could have evolved to help her discriminate between males on the basis of their quality. In an earlier paper, Sexual Selection as a Mechanism for Conspicuous Consumption (pdf), Pollet implied that women discriminated between mates on the basis of leisure activity and expensive gifts, so his views have obviously matured with experience. 

Note that the Daily Mail mostly prints explanations based on female choice, because this flatters its female readership, and overlooks explanations based on male choice - for example, rich men choose randy girlfriends and dump them if they stop being randy. I'm not saying that this explanation is any better than the ones the Daily Mail prints, I'm just saying that the Daily Mail is being selective about the rubbish they print.

In contrast, The Times gives wealthy men the credit for "giving" women more, and interprets Pollet's findings as "suggesting that women are inherently programmed to be gold-diggers". Obviously pandering for a male readership then. 

Finally, in the comments to the Daily Mail article we can find a more down-to-earth explanation. "There is nothing like money worries to dampen your sex drive." (I think there is something in one of George Orwell's early novels about this effect, but I can't seem to find it.)

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Update

Just found an excellent blog called Lust in Paradise, making similar points to mine. It concludes as follows.

"The point is that studies like this one are conducted in a socio-economic context that simply did not exist in prehistory, when all this evolving supposedly took place. Yet the central conceit of mainstream evolutionary psychology is that these findings reflect some eternal truths about men, women, and the allocation of resources. The fact that there's a gaping hole in the center of their narrative doesn't stop them telling us what female orgasms are saying though..."

 

See also post by Bjørn Østman on the Pleiotropy blog, with my comment. http://pleiotropy.fieldofscience.com/2009/01/wealthy-mens-women-have-more-orgasms.html

Further discussion between Bjørn and myself here. http://pleiotropy.fieldofscience.com/2009/07/ideology-in-science-is-not-option.html 

The Exception Proves the Rule - Gender

Last week, a story appeared in several papers about a woman who was described as a sex addict. Crystal Warren (42) claimed to have slept with over a thousand men.

Daily Mail 27 January 2012
Daily Mirror 27 January 2012

Earlier this week, the woman was interviewed on breakfast TV. The interviewer, veteran presenter Eamonn Homes (52) caused some outrage by asking her whether she had ever considered charging for sex.

Daily Mail 1 February 2012

Guardian 2 February 2012

In a further twist, the woman is now revealed to have been born a man, and to have had a sex-change operation in 2005.

Daily Mail 3 February 2012
Daily Telegraph 4 February 2012
Sun "Exclusive" 4 February 2012

Not only do many of the details of the earlier stories now turn out to be inaccurate or misleading, but some may question whether Ms Warren can serve as a legitimate exception to a presumed general pattern of female sexual desire and behaviour, which had presumably been the point of publishing the story in the first place. Nevertheless, Ms Warren is now a celebrity and This is Somerset proudly announces that Ms Warren grew up in Somerset. Obviously the only way isn't Essex then.


See also Alexander Boot Sex Drugs and Eamonn Holmes, Daily Mail 3 February 2012

Wikipedia: Exception that proves the rule

Sarcasm causes Cancer

( for @bengoldacre )

Practically anything you can think of has been named either as a possible cause of cancer or as a possible preventative or cure.

January 2008 marked the launch of an ambitious project, the Daily Mail Oncological Ontology Project, which was going to follow the Daily Mail’s ongoing mission to divide all the inanimate objects in the world into those that cause or cure cancer. After only four days, the project was abandoned in despair. (Like a typical New Year Resolution, perhaps.)

But why pick on the Daily Mail? Even the BBC is constantly running stories like these.

• How spicy foods can kill cancers
• Lack of exercise linked to colon cancer
• A chemical used to manufacture rubber ...
• Shark blood offers cancer hope
• Limit mobile phone use, cancer expert tells staff
• Popping bubbles to treat cancer
• Aspirin prevents bowel cancer
• Doctors' call to regulate sunbeds

How to respond to this endless array of pseudo-oncology without sarcasm?

• Facebook causes cancer
• You are hereby sentenced eternally to wander the newspapers, fruitlessly mocking nutriwoo

But all is not lost. A New Daily Mail Oncological Ontology Project rises from the ashes. So that's all right then.

The Power of Prediction

@andrewbolt gently mocks the apocalyptic predictions of elderly professors, as well as the way popular journalists can get sensational headlines from an interview that is largely composed of casual chatter. Our own extinction is forecast, but he's going by dead reckoning (Herald Sun, 19th June 2010).

Why do we treat the end of the world as a kind of entertainment? Andrew Bolt suggests that "when these scientists say the end of the world is nigh, they don't mean it, not literally, but are just scaring us for our own good. Or that they do mean it, but are frankly batty."

Batty or merely hopelessly unqualified? Frank Fenner, who recently predicted that the human race will be extinct within the next 100 years, is an emeritus professor of microbiology. Meanwhile, Nicholas Boyle, who has predicted a dramatic event to take place in 2014 and determine the course of the 21st century, is a professor of German literature. What qualifies these specialists to become general-purpose futurologists?

For the popular press, of course, one professor is as good as another.

• Human race 'will be extinct within 100 years', claims leading scientist (Daily Mail)
• 2014 will determine course of century, says Cambridge professor (Daily Telegraph)
• Why the world will NOT end in 2012: Nasa scientist debunks conspiracy theories (Daily Mail)
• Dementia may have been caused by the Second World War, says scientist (Daily Mail)

Fundamental Programming

While browsing through some BBC News items for the previous post on the Purpose of Hormones, I came across the fascinating work of one Dr Nick Neave, of Northumbria University.

Dr Nick, who writes popular articles in the Daily Mail, and is regularly consulted by the science journalists on the BBC News website, believes that women are fundamentally programmed to depend on men. (Footnote for geeks: can anyone tell me the difference between fundamental programming and any other kind of programming? No, I thought not.)

• "Sorry, but women are dependent on men." [Daily Mail, 4th December 2006]

Dr Nick studies gender differences. His serious research indicates that women are better at finding things, but he is happy to say something quite different when a journalist prompts him for a stereotype about women drivers.

• Some evidence of a female advantage in object location memory using ecologically valid stimuli [Human Nature Vol 16 No 2, June 2005]

• Spatial skills such as map reading and parking may be difficult for some women because they had too little testosterone in the womb. [BBC News 24 January 2005 via BastardLogic]
  

Dr Nick has also studied sexual attraction

• "Females, like males, are always looking to enhance their reproductive success by trading upwards." [BBC News, 16 August 2005]

• "A male face with some attributes of both masculinity and femininity is attractive. ... Women kind of like your macho-but-sensitive type." [Times Online, 20 August 2003]
  

Dr Nick, who is an expert on testosterone, suffers from male pattern baldness. Wikipedia reveals that this form of hair loss is related to hormones called androgens, particularly an androgen called dihydrotestosterone (DHT).


Dr Nick Neave, Northumbria University

Religious Exchange

A complaint has been lodged against Cherie Booth QC by the National Secular Society for giving someone a suspended sentence "because he was a religious person" [BBC News 4 Feb 2010, Independent 4 Feb 2010]

According to most news reports, Shamso Miah (25) was in court for breaking another man's jaw in a fight about queue-jumping in an Essex bank. Is there something particularly British or God-fearing about this crime?

Not to be confused with Shamsu Miah (52) who killed and ate a swan while fasting during Ramadan [The Times, 23 Nov 2006, Sky News, 27 Feb 2008]. The Telegraph has the best headline: Muslim does bird for eating swan. He was jailed for two months because, according to District Judge Andrew Shaw, killing a swan at night with a knife "is a taboo act". The concept of "taboo" comes from Polynesian religion, and in Māori society the concept was often used to protect resources from over-exploitation [Wikipedia: Tapu], but I didn't know it had been incorporated into English law.

(Was it the night-time or the knife that made it taboo? What if he had killed the swan with a coil of rope at midday, say in the billiard room?)

If Cherie Booth allows her judgements to be influenced by a generic category of "religious person", this appears to be consistent with a wishy-washy view of religion that some people have associated with The  Tony Blair Faith Foundation. The Catholic Church has been particularly unenthusiastic about the Faith Foundation, and Professor Michel Schooyans of the Catholic University of Louvain has accused Blair and his wife of wishing to reduce all religions "to the same common denominator, which means stripping them of their identity" [Guardian, 13 May 2009].

I wonder where Polynesian religions belong in the Blairs' worldview. Would a noble savage with an ancestor cult be let off lightly in the Booth court? How about a devout cannibal? Or do only certain religions count?



Meanwhile, Booth's decision has prompted some more general questions about religion. On BBC Radio Four, Eddie Mair asks Are religious people more likely to be honest? Is it a coincidence that the Chilcot enquiry has just put Tony Blair's own honesty under the spotlight, while sparing others? [The media's tall tales over Iraq]


Finally, Andrew Brown of the Guardian complains that "everything we know about the case of Shamso Miah seems to come from one agency report of the court case" [Cherie Booth unfair to atheists]. As if this is unusual.

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Update: How about the case of Lorraine Mbulawa? 'Possessed' teenager who stabbed her own mother five times is allowed to walk free after judge accepts she 'has strong spiritual beliefs'. (Daily Mail, 24 May 2011)

Update: Here's another curious one. A teenage mugger has been spared a possible seven-year-jail term after telling a crown court judge he found God in prison (Daily Mail 20 Feb 2012). Surely if he had really found God in prison, he would want to return to prison to be closer to God? I wonder what sentence he would have received had he found the Devil in prison?

Twists of Fate 3

Journalists sometimes use the phrase "cruel twist of fate" when a person or family suffers more than one occurrence of the same loss or injury. Charmaine Kennedy whose boyfriend and ex-husband are both shot by gunman Derrick Bird. Frances Culling, who has watched her husband and four children die of the same genetic disorder, and now fears losing her remaining daughter and grandchildren. These people are unlucky, but there is no twist involved - unless you count the irony of Mrs Culling's surname.

I think the phrase properly applies to those cases where it seems natural to personalize fate, and attribute him with a cruel sense of humour. Two of the following examples have a good-news-bad-news structure, the third follows the frying-pan-into-fire pattern, and the fourth is an example of being "hoist" (blown up) by one's own "petard" (bomb). There may be other patterns.

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A miner who lived through the worst pit disaster in a county because of a twist of fate died in a similar accident nearly 30 years later on the other side of the world.

Northern Echo 13 February 2009

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A woman who survived a ferocious "death roll" crocodile attack in the wild has been killed after being bitten by a snake in her garden.

Daily Mail 4 March 2008

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A schoolboy was killed when he walked on to a busy motorway after arguing with his father at a wedding.

Crawley News 18 July 2010, Daily Mail 18 July 2010

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Jimi Heselden, the British philanthropist and owner of Segway Inc., tragically passed away on Sunday after an accident involving an off-road model of his own company's famous two-wheeled vehicle.

AOL News, 27 September 2010

Celebrity Opinions

My son watched @RustyRockets appearance before the Parliament Home Affairs Committee on 24 April 2012 with some delight. Mr Brand is not the first celebrity to be invited to present his opinions to a select committee - we have recently seen several celebrities pontificate on privacy and press freedom, including the actor Hugh Grant.

Brand's opinions on drug addiction are based largely on his own experience as a former addict, and he presented these opinions eloquently and with considerable wit, sometimes at the politicians' expense. He argued that taking drugs should not be seen as a criminal or judicial matter, and users should be shown more compassion.

Not surprisingly, his appearance is widely reported in the media, but from different angles.

The Telegraph columnist Damian Thomson was guardedly positive.

Like lots of supposedly cutting-edge comedians, Russell Brand is actually as pleased with himself as any of those bow-tied light entertainment legends who spent their sunset years on Celebrity Squares. Also, he’s a recovering addict, so that’s another layer of smuggery. But this week he appeared before a Commons select committee and – incredibly – talked a certain amount of sense about drugs.

But Daily Mail columnist Amanda Platell was scornful.

When Russell Brand appeared before Keith Vaz’s Home Affairs Select Committee, which is reviewing drugs policy, it was hard to determine which of the  pair of them was the more  stupid, self-regarding or  publicity-seeking — the comedian or the MP. Brand turned up late, looking as though he hadn’t washed for a month, in torn jeans and a tatty singlet, draped with more crucifixes than you’d find in the Vatican. His contempt for the workings of Westminster could not have been expressed more eloquently.

By taking evidence from celebrities, Parliament is perhaps creating the unfortunate impression that it regards the opinions of the rich and famous as more important than those of the rest of us. Having thoroughly dismissed Brand's argument, Platell then criticizes the committee (especially its Labour chairman Keith Vaz) for inviting Brand to give evidence in the first place, calling this "a silly, self-aggrandising gesture" and suggesting that Vaz is a man "who craves the limelight almost more than his star guest".

The Guardian columnist Marina Hyde had already made the same point, calling this "an exercise in publicity-seeking".

Chaired by the odious Keith Vaz, whose advance towards the red benches appears to be as ineluctable as it is sensationally ill-deserved, the committee this week followed up its decision to call Amy Winehouse's father to discourse on the cocaine trade with an invitation to Russell Brand to address them on drug addiction. To substitute one genuine expert with a tabloid celebrity may be regarded as unfortunate; to do it twice begins to look like a clear strategy.

The Government has a long history of ignoring expert scientific advice on drug policy. So what is the purpose of inviting celebrities instead? Hyde and Platell share the view that publicity is the sole purpose - the medium (as someone once said) is the message. My son had never watched Select Committee proceedings before, so I guess it's an achievement of a kind to make something accessible that is usually excruciatingly boring.

But let us think more broadly than this. Brand's opinions are unlikely to change many minds. Those who are already sympathetic to Brand's position may be entertained; those who are hostile to his position will be disgusted by Brand's manner as well as by his opinions, and this will reinforce their opposition to them. Thus the political effect of hearing Brand's evidence may be to make it harder for the governent to adopt the kind of policies advocated by Brand (as well as by large numbers of experts whose evidence receives far less publicity). Brand's advocacy is therefore probably counterproductive, in the sense that it weakens the political will to change.

Brand is a comedian, not a politician, so it may be unreasonable to expect him to understand the political effects of his actions. But what about the politicans on the Select Committee? Are they really so vain and stupid that they cannot appreciate the political effects of their actions, or have they calculated these effects as a cunning plan to preserve the status quo?

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Even the BBC is not immune to the cult of celebrity, as @mjrobbins argues. Everything that's wrong with BBC Question Time in one graph (Guardian 14 June 2013)

"Scientists on Question Time? Boring!" says @RatParl, arguing that "The QT circus isn’t the right place for scientists." (Rational Parliament November 2013). Instead, he advocates a separate forum where experts of all disciplines could point out the folly of the celebrities and populist politicians on the Question Time panel. (Although one can often achieve much the same effect by following intelligent and well-informed people on Twitter.)

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Russell Brand calls for more compassion for drug users (BBC News 24 April 2012)

Russell Brand says drug addiction should be treated as a health matter
(Guardian, 24 April 2012)

Marina Hyde, Why bring Russell Brand to testify to a select committee instead of an expert witness? (Guardian, 26 April 2012)

Amanda Platell, Brand and a pathetic Commons cabaret (Daily Mail, 27 April 2012)

John Sutherland, Studying Russell Brand at A-Level? Boring! (The Telegraph,, 7 May 2014)

Damian Thomson, Even Russell Brand understands that you can't sell cocaine like tobacco (The Telegraph 27 April 2012)

Lord Reith appears as @BBCExtraGhost (Storify November 2012)


Updated 10 June 2014

Purpose of Miracles

Several writers have expressed scepticism about a miraculous cure from back pain following routine surgery. The patient himself, who happens to be a deacon of the Catholic Church, has attributed his cure to a picture of Cardinal Newman [BBC News 13 September 2010].

@mjrobbins asked Is God scraping the barrel for miracles? (Guardian 13 Sept 2010) and suggested that Vatican's latest miracle is evidence of a worrying decline in God's powers.

But clearly the purpose of this particular miracle was to allow Vatican to beatify a Cardinal whose own view of such professed miracles is expressed in the following passage from his first essay on Miracles:

"Much more inconclusive are those which are actually attended by a physical cause known or suspected to be adequate to their production. Some of those who were cured at the tomb of the Abbé Paris were at the time making use of the usual remedies; the person whose inflamed eye was relieved was, during his attendance at the sepulchre, under the care of an eminent oculist; another was cured of a lameness in the knee by the mere effort to kneel at the tomb. Arnobius challenges the Heathens to produce one of the pretended miracles of their gods performed without the application of some prescription." [Essays on Miracles]

Similar controversy surrounds the miracle attributed to Mother Teresa for the purposes of her beatification.

In 2002, the Vatican recognized as a miracle the healing of a tumor in the abdomen of an Indian woman, Monica Besra, after the application of a locket containing Mother Teresa's picture. Besra said that a beam of light emanated from the picture, curing the cancerous tumor. Critics — including some of Besra's medical staff and, initially, Besra's husband — insisted that conventional medical treatment had eradicated the tumor [Wikipedia: Mother Teresa].

In March 2010, the miracle cure attributed to the late Pope John Paul II, for the purposes of his beatification, ran into some difficulties.

The inexplicable cure of a young French nun from Parkinson's disease ... seemed difficult for the Vatican to certify as a miracle. According to the Vatican's own rules, the medically inexplicable cure must be instantaneous, complete, and lasting. Some are arguing that the world will have to wait her entire lifetime to determine whether it was lasting, in case the symptoms return. In addition, doubts have been cast about whether she had Parkinson's to begin with [Miracle under scrutiny in John Paul beatification Independent, 29 March 2010].

Within a year, Pope Benedict XVI formally approved this miracle [BBC News 14 January 2011]. Obviously he had no choice. "Nuns can be very useful." [Jesus and Mo, 16 April 2007]

During 2013, a second miracle emerged to enable Pope John Paul II to be canonized. This took the form of a mere memory of the late pope, which was able to emerge from somewhere (a diary perhaps) and cure somebody. (This sounds suspiciously like a horcrux. Clearly the Jesuits have been twisting the Harry Potter books for their own purposes.)

The Holy See has yet to reveal what the miracle was or where and when it took place but Vatican sources said it would “amaze the world”.

Nick Squires, Vatican to announce John Paul II 'miracle' (Telegraph, 19 Jun 2013). See also Barbie Latza Nadeau, After Second Approved Miracle, Pope John Paul II Likely to Become a Saint (Daily Beast July 2013). Pope John Paul II and the trouble with miracles (LA Times, July 2013).

Lacking the sophisticated theological thinking with which the Vatican is blessed, or the devious logic often associated with the Jesuits, popular journalism tends to describe all cases of unexplained recovery as miraculous. For example, an elderly widower appears to have regained his sight after kissing a photograph of his late wife.

It's a miracle! Daily Mail 17 Feb 2011. Obituary notice November 2009.

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Meanwhile Lourdes. In 2007, Pope Benedict offered special indulgencies for anyone visiting the site of the Virgin Mary's miraculous appearance in the 150th anniversary year. The BBC offered the following explanation for the spiritually unenlightened.

Indulgences became infamous in the 16th century for being sold rather than earned, helping, historians say, trigger the Protestant reformation. While some might consider indulgences an outdated concept, great spiritual importance have been assigned to them by Benedict XVI and his predecessor, Pope John Paul II. BBC News 6 December 2007

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If a dramatic and unexpected cure can be regarded as a miracle, what about a dramatic and unexpected death?

For example, an 80-year-old Spanish cardinal Agustin Garcia Gasco Vicente, in Rome for the beatification of late pope John Paul II in May 2011, died of a heart attack shortly before the start of the ceremony. [News24 1 May 2011].

For another example, an Italian man was killed when a giant crucifix toppled on top of him. The crucifix had been erected to celebrate the canonization of the late Pope John Paul II in April 2014. In a bizarre twist, the dead man is said to have been living in his home town of Lovere on a street named after Pope John XXIII, who was to be canonized on the same day. (BBC News 24 April 2014, Christian Today 25 April 2014, Huffington Post 25 April 2014).


Don't these deaths cancel out the miracles?

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Update 2019

A second miracle has been attributed to Cardinal Newman, which will allow Pope Francis to declare him a saint. "I was healed by Cardinal Newman" (Catholic Herald, 5 July 2019). This one seems less amenable to a conventional medical explanation, but how does it satisfty the cardinal's own notion of what might count as a miracle? After all, Newman thought it was "often very difficult to distinguish between a providence and a miracle". The key question seems to be about agency - to what extent can the cure be credited to Newman himself (because the woman cured had been praying to him) rather than to God alone (which Newman referred to as providential mercy).

Commentators have also observed that both the miracles attributed to Newman occurred in the United States. Newman's view was that miracles were more likely to occur "in a country in which faith and prayer abound".


See also

Adam Buick, Newman on Miracles (The Sceptic, 22 September 2010)

Christopher Howse, Cardinal Newman's miraculous bones (Telegraph, 23 Aug 2008)

Colbert I. King, This country is in need of a miracle (Washington Post, 19 April 2019)

Peter Le, David Hume and Henry Newman on Miracle (undated)

Garry Wills, Stealing Newman, (NYR Blog September 2010), Does the Pope Matter? (NYR Blog March 2013), Popes Making Popes Saints (NYR Blog July 2013).

Papal Canonizations a Lesson in Subtle Art of Catholic Politics (Newsmax 25 April 2014)

Wikipedia: Canonisation of John Henry Newman, Mother Theresa


Updated 7 July 2019

Footballers Wives and Evolutionary Psychology

#badscience @brooklynjosh After Bjørn Østman tried to convince me of the scientific credibility of evolutionary biology in his Pleiotropy blog, I made a real effort to take it more seriously, I really did, but the latest effort from Satoshi Kanazawa PhD has put me firmly back into the sceptical camp.

Dr Kanazawa's latest "finding" associates certain behaviours and beliefs with male IQ. The UK press concentrates on the claimed linkage between IQ and male fidelity.

• Intelligent men 'less likely to cheat' (Daily Telegraph, 28 Feb 2010)
• Men who cheat on their wives are 'less intelligent than faithful husbands' (Daily Mail, 28 Feb 2010) - illustrated with a photograph of Mr and Mrs Ashley Cole in happier days.

Dr Kanazawa suggests that this finding indicates that intelligent men place greater value on monogamy and sexual exclusivity. As with most findings of evolutionary psychology, there are several other possible explanations - perhaps intelligent men with unintelligent wives are less likely to get caught cheating, while intelligent men with intelligent wives are more fearful of cheating in the first place. (Recent examples of sports personalities cheating on their wives all seem to involve rather infantile use of mobile phone technology, followed by a mad panic when the text messages are discovered by the wife and/or the gutter press.)
In America, on the other hand, the aspect of Dr Kanazawa's research that has attracted more attention is his association between male IQ and belief - both religious and political.

• Are Liberals Smarter Than Conservatives? (Time, 26 February 2010)
• Liberalism, atheism linked to IQ (Baltimore Sun, 28 February 2010)

Or as @brooklynjosh puts it in the Huffington Post, Educated Liberals, Atheists More likely to Label Themselves Smart.

But the strongest demolition of Dr Kanazawa's evolutionary explanation why intelligent men don't cheat on their wives comes from Dr Kanazawa's own blog, where he writes

"Highly successful men have sexual affairs, not because they want to (if what men want mattered, all men would have a maximum number of affairs), but because women choose them." [Why are we surprised, December 2009]

Dr Kanazawa argues that Bill Clinton became president so he could get laid, and predicts that at least one (male) politician will be exposed in a sex scandal during 2010. I don't think you need evolutionary psychology to make that kind of prediction, you just need a basic grasp of statistical probability. If there is a 0.01% chance of any given politician getting caught with his pants down, and there are tens of thousands of politicians across the country, then the probability of nobody getting caught is extremely small. But that doesn't mean that the behaviour is a common one. Dr Kanazawa's rhetoric relies on his readers not understanding basic probability theory.


Some male academics may believe that there is a disconnect between intelligence and worldly success. So although academics may be incredibly intelligent, they don't get laid as much as politicians and sportsmen. However, this is not because they are unattractive to women, oh no, but because intelligent men place greater value on monogamy and sexual exclusivity. And all of this is completely consistent and fully explicable thanks to evolutionary psychology.

Bah, humbug.

Lifetime Achievement Award

I went into my local bookshop yesterday to check out the guy who just won the Nobel Prize for literature. Not in print. Apparently this is a normal pattern. Some people who won the Nobel Prize a few years ago have been out of print ever since.

Last year's winner, Doris Lessing, said it was a disaster for her writing career [BBC News May 2008] . I asked the bookshop owner whether he'd sold any more of her books after she won the prize. He didn't think so.

John Lloyd, friend and associate of Douglas Hitchhiker Adams and successful producer of TV comedy (Not the Nine O'Clock News, Spitting Image, Blackadder), won a lifetime achievement award at the age of 40. Almost immediate after the award ceremony, he fell into a deep depression. It was as if the award was telling him that he had now achieved everything and there was no remaining purpose to his life. [Day the Laughter Stopped, Daily Mail October 2008]

So what exactly is the purpose of a lifetime achievement award? Sometimes it indicates guilt or hindsight on the part of the awarding organization - thus an individual who missed out on awards when his greatest work was produced gets a consolation prize when his creative career is thought to be over. Oh yeah, great, thanks very much guys, just what I always wanted. I'd like to thank my children's children's children.

The Illusion of Independence

In October 1964, the British Labour party won a close victory in the General Election. Within weeks, there was a currency crisis, which Labour politicians blamed on the so-called Gnomes of Zürich - in other words, external and unelected powers that controlled the international economic climate. After a decade of economic crises, Britain joined the European Economic Community (known as the Common Market) in 1973, and this was endorsed by a referendum in 1975. The EEC has now evolved into the European Union, with the active participation and (sometimes grudging) consent of successive British Governments.

In 1975, one of the key arguments against EEC membership was that it was supposed to undermine British sovereignty. The argument was put forcibly at both ends of the political spectrum, by Enoch Powell and Michael Foot, and a new version of the argument has been put forward by Alan Sked, the founder of UKIP. (By the way, Professor Sked is no longer involved in UKIP, which in his opinion has been taken over by racists and the far-right.)

However, Sked's argument is rather puzzling. He puts forward a formal notion of sovereignty that is possessed in equal measure by the dictator of a bankrupt and internationally powerless country (Zimbabwe), by the elected president of a rich country with a robust separation of powers (United States), and by the UK parliament acting in the name of the sovereign. The UK parliament retains the power to repeal the European Communities Act of 1972; therefore although some elements of sovereignty may have been delegated to Europe, they have not been lost. And yet the protection of this formal sovereignty provides sufficient reason for Sked to advocate Brexit.

These notions of sovereignty were already being dismissed as Victorian in 1975, and seem no more relevant today than they were then.

There are many small and powerless countries around the world, and the idea that we should envy them their "independence" is laughable. As is the idea that our bargaining position as an "independent" country would be anything like as favourable as our bargaining position as a member of a substantial trading bloc.

It was initially thought that big business was unanimously in favour of Britain remaining in the EU. Even Swiss financiers (ironically) have warned that Brexit could lead to market turbulence and currency crisis.

However, other financiers now appear to be endorsing Brexit, claiming that they want control to pass back into "our" hands. 

So whose hands would that be? Financiers? Or gnomes? No thank you.

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Alex Brummer, The sovereign that never ruled (Guardian, 6 January 1999)

Alex Brummer, 'Gnomes of Zurich' strike again with an epoch-making move in the currency markets (Daily Mail, 15 January 2015)

 

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Swiss wealth managers warn of 'sudden stop' in capital after Brexit (Telegraph, 15 April 2016)

Greg Rosen, Labour’s Brexit brigade should not rewrite history (Progress, 10 Feb 2016)

Alan Sked, L’état c’est nous: sovereignty is no illusion, and we should retain it (LSE blogs, March 2016)

Harold Wilson and the 1964 Labour Government:The devaluation of socialism (Fifth International, Feb 1997)

European Communities Debate (Hansard, 27 October 1971)

Wikipedia: Bruges Group, Gnomes of Zürich, Separation of powers, UK Independence Party

Twists of Fate 2

"A mother drowned in a freak car crash as she drove home to tell her husband she had beaten breast cancer. Jean Allen, 66, had been forced to take a detour after arsonists set fire to a church and caused massive traffic disruption." [Cambs Times 15 July 2010, Daily Mail 15 July 2010]

The tabloid newspapers make far too much use of the word "tragedy", but maybe this is one of those examples where the cruel humour of fate does justify the word.

The bereaved husband is calling for the arsonists to be tried for manslaughter. “I don’t want vengeance, I just want justice." But this seems an odd idea of justice: I think the arsonists (if caught) should be tried for arson; and I doubt that threatening them with a more serious offence is helpful in getting someone to turn them in.

The arsonists may have been partially responsible for her driving along that particular stretch of road at that particular time, but in that case the oncologists are also partially responsible. Meanwhile, the local authority failed to drain the ditch in which she drowned.

 

Surely the point about twists of fate is that they are beyond human agency? We can imagine some cruel purpose behind any series of events, especially when we are able to construct some kind of meaningful narrative, but that doesn't mean that such a purpose really exists.