Author Archives: Robert Waldmann

The Eloquence of Trotsky and Macaulay

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The comparison of these two historians and historical actors is interesting because they appear to have nothing in common except for their extraordinary eloquence. Macaulay has been accused of writing history as ratification of the present. Trotsky has been accused of roughly everything else.

Consider these examples of eloquence. Both are quoted from memory (I am the only person too lazy to respect the journalistic standards of blogging). Each is the principal example in two essays which praise the eloquence of Trotskey and Macaulay respectively. I think the essay on Trotsky is the introduction to a collection of writings of Trotsky (I think this because I can?t find it in ?To the Finland Station?). The essay on Macauley is an article in The New Republic circa 1995.

?The assembly passed a resolution that there would be no negotiation with the enemy while their armies were on French soil. Danton asked ?have you made an alliance with victory? the assembly replied ?we have made an alliance with death??

A stiring line which also shows how Trotsky?s history mysticism had, by that point, driven him completely insane. Solidarity can fuse a group of individuals into a mighty historical force, but it can not make them think of the same snappy line at the same moment..

Macaulay was, of course, much more reasonable. He argued against anti semitism when arguing against legal discrimination against Jews writing ?we close all honerable professions to them then denounce them for becoming money lenders.?

Again eloquent, but it seems that the two cases of eloquence have nothing else in common. One displays the beauty of reason and good sence, the other the beauty of madness.

it seems that the two cases of eloquence have nothing else in common, but they do share one other trait. They are both word for word translations of Maximilien Robespierre.

Hepatitis Potato

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I just found out about the potato hepatitis B vaccine in a odd way. Solid info from the BBC “An edible vaccine against the deadly liver disease hepatitis B may have been developed by scientists in the US.

Chunks of genetically modified potato may be enough to give immunity without the need for an injection, they hope. ” However “‘
They have not cracked it yet, but it is very exciting’
Professor Graham Foster, consultant hepatologist at the Queen Mary University of London”

I found out about this at unfogged between a story about a very unfortunate cat and a photoshoped image of Donald Yodafeld. Ah the internet.

I happen to be a fanatical supporter of genetically modified foods and have been for decades (that is since they were an idea not a meal). I consider civil disobedience whenever I drive the two kilometers to Grottaferata (comune anti-transgenico).

The potato does seem a bit hyped (as gently noted by Foster) but vaccine producing plants are likely to be seriously useful.

I would also mention IgA a class of antibodies which is absorbed when eaten. Milk contains IgA which is absorbed by infants. This is one of the important reasons that breast feeding is better than pure bottle feeding even in developed countries with safe drinking water and where people can afford formula.

It seems to me that modifying plants to produce human IgA would have its advantages, since, as mentioned above, IgA is absorbed before it is digested.
Also a vaccine with a hybrid IgA-antigen hybrid protein might work better than simple antigen.

The result of Dr Yasmin Thanavala and colleagues does remind us that genetically modified foods can, in theory, be allergenic even if the unmodified plants are not. It is good to be allergic to hepatitis B, but the principal has been proven (again).

By the way, anyone know whatever happened to golden rice ? I don’t think anyone is actually eating any.

Correction: I was totally wrong when I wrote “I would also mention IgA a class of antibodies which is absorbed when eaten. Milk contains IgA which is absorbed by infants.” Milk does contain IgA but it is not absorbed. The clas of antibodies which is absorbed is IgG not IgA. My father explained this to me. Also, although baby rats definitely absorb IgG, even he is not sure baby people do (different mammels defnitely differ in which proteins they digest and which they absorb). Thus my idea might just be a good way to vaccinate rats.

Sorry

the amateur anthropologist

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20 years ago I had an Idea. Maybe someone who knows something about the field can tell me what is wrong with it in 20 seconds (including maybe someone else had the idea 40 years ago).

This thought was stimulated by reading Structural Anthropology a collection of essays by Claude Levi-Strauss. There are two questions. One is why are some cultures monogynous and others polygynous ? The other is why do the Bororo divide their tiny villages into 3 endogamous clans ?

OK first question. Why in some cultures men can marry more than one woman and in others only one ? One possbile explanation is polygyny occurs when the gender ratio is many women for each man. This can happen if lots of men get killed by other men. So women share husbands or go single wasting their uteruses (the Moll Flanders problem described by Daniel Defoe some time ago).

Could be the explanation, but I would like to talk about another. Levi Strauss was very interested in a very simple mathematical model which pointed out that hunter gatherers typically live in tiny groups (have too to avoid killing off all the game within walking distance). Someone else (really some two else) calculated that these groups were about as small as could be sustained given risk that a generation would be all male or all female and thus the last (he didn’t explain this model very clearly and I didn’t look it up). OK see how much worse this problem is if monogynous. If people live in small groups and are mostly endogamous (must have some flow with other villages/bands to avoide inbreeding but I assume this is pretty low). If each man is allowed to get only one woman pregnant, the number of woman who reproduce each generation is the lesser of the number of woman and the number of men. If each man is allowed to get as many women pregnant as are available then the number of women who reproduce each generation is the number of women. Polygyny might be required in people who live in small mostly endogamous villages to deal with random fluctuations in the sex ratio.
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Who is Roberto Frimigoni ?

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Google thinks that means Roberto Formigoni and so do I. One year ago FreeRepublic.com
posted an effort to translate the list of people who got free (but not valueless) rights to buy oil from Iraq under the oil for food program. The list was published by an Ahmed Chalabi affiliated newspaper in Iraq. Chalabi to freerepublic is not exactly the most reliable sourcing. However I was interested that the
list included one Roberto Frimigoni, who does not, as far as anyone can tell actually exist.

8 months ago I guessed that Roberto Frimigoni was Roberto Formigoni president of Lombardy. A week ago confirmation was all over the papers.

So who is Roberto Formigoni ? He is the founder and leader of “communione e liberazione” a very devoutly catholic organisation which has a history of dubious financing. As such he became a rather prominent Christian Democratic politician. When the party collapsed he went with a splinter that was un-alligned then a sub-splinter allied with Silvio Berlusconi and finally a sub-sub-splinter allied with Silvio Berlusconi. In this capacity he was elected and re-elected president of Lombardy.

For some reason which I can’t understand, Formigoni uses every available opportunity to attack Rosy Bindi formerly health minister in the Prodi government. The obsession is particularly irritating, since he begins his attacks by saying that she divides the world into good people like her and bad people like her opponents. Aside from that, my most vivid memory of his service as president of Lombardy was when he said that Bindy was profiting from tragedy when she noted (correctly) that responsibility for inspecting a high preassur oxygen chamber which burned killing patients belonged the region. Formigoni insisted that the chamber had been inspected thoroughly. He had to revise his assertion when it was noted that the facility included two pressure chambers of which only one was licensed and that the thorough inspectior had failed to notice the second chamber (which is roughly the size of a beached wale).

In his capacity as a very devout catholic he followed the Pope in denouncing desert storm and then sanctions on Iraq. He was, in 1991, perhaps the most prominent and eloquent Italian opponent of Desert Storm over shadowing the Italian left which was divided and confusing Needless to say, like 80% of Italians he was opposed to Bush Jr’s invasion.

The sudden explosion of evidence and allegations against Formigoni is, for him, unfortunately timed since he is up for re-election in two months. My original post in Italian below the fold.
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Hello I’m Robert Waldmann

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I am Robert Waldmann and I am honored to be a fistfullofeuros guest blogger.
I have a blog “Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts” already on the blogroll and another one (which 200 people total have visited at http://fantapolitica.blogspot.com.

The high points of my blogging career are this, the time Atrios linked to me and the time that someone hinted that he was thinking of suing me.

I’m 44 years old born in Washington DC but live in Frascati which is South of Rome and next to Monte Porzio home town of Cato the censor.