The Conversation: Friday essay: the erotic art of Ancient Greece and Rome

Simply put, sex is everywhere in Greek and Roman art. Explicit sexual representations were common on Athenian black-figure and red-figure vases of the sixth and fifth centuries BC. They are often eye-openingly confronting in nature.

The Romans too were surrounded by sex. The phallus, sculpted in bronze as tintinnabula (wind chimes), were commonly found in the gardens of the houses of Pompeii, and sculpted in relief on wall panels, such as the famous one from a Roman bakery telling us hic habitat felicitas (“here dwells happiness”). [...]

The secret cabinet was founded in 1819, when Francis I, King of Naples, visited the museum with his wife and young daughter. Shocked by the explicit imagery, he ordered all items of a sexual nature be removed from view and locked in the cabinet. Access would be restricted to scholars, of “mature age and respected morals”. That was, male scholars only. [...]

The intention of the ithyphallic (erect) satyrs is clear in their appearance on vases (even if they rarely caught the maenads they were chasing); at the same time their massive erect penises are indicative of the “beastliness” and grotesque ugliness of a large penis as opposed to the classical ideal of male beauty represented by a smaller one.

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Social Europe: The Big Idea For Liberals

At first, liberals tried to forge a united front against the “populist threat.” In Greece, socialist PASOK went to bed with its long-standing foe from the New Democracy to prevent Syriza from coming to power. In Italy, Matteo Renzi from the left-wing (former communist) party worked hand in hand with the people from Silvio Berlusconi’s right-wing party to fend off pressure from the Five Stars Movement. This tactic was a mixed blessing for liberals, especially those on the left. PASOK is practically dead, and Partito Democratico, led by Renzi may follow the suit. (We will learn more on the latter in March, after the Italian elections.) A “grand coalition” has seriously weakened social democrats even in economically prosperous countries such as Germany and Holland.

More recently, liberals, especially those on the right, have tried a different tactic. They have embraced a “soft” version of populism to defeat their “fully fledged” populist opponents. Mark Rutte in Holland castigated migrants, Emmanuel Macron bashed traditional parties, and Theresa May embraced Brexit. Sebastian Kurz in Austria went even further: in his recent electoral campaign, he adopted populist anti-immigrant rhetoric and later formed a government coalition with the party of the late Jörg Haider. (Finland witnessed a similar coalition with populists.) This tactic too is likely to be a mixed blessing, especially for those on the right. The distinction between soft and hard populism is fuzzy, and soft populists will be pressed to harden their stance when faced with the next economic, migratory or security crisis. Can liberalism survive such a populist turn? [...]

My big liberal idea consists of three steps: reckoning with the past, engaging in experimentation, and creating a new liberal system fit for the digital world. The first step can be accomplished in a year or two, the second step in less than a decade, but the third step may take much longer and we ought to be honest about that. In short, the big idea does not amount to a big bang. Liberals should offer the public a new sense of direction in their march towards a better future. They should offer safe refuge to those unable to adjust to change. However, liberals should not fall into the populist trap of promising heaven on earth by issuing a few decrees and rebuking opponents.

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The New York Review of Books: A Modern Greek Tragedy

If one asks European officials, the consensus is harsh: Varoufakis was a self-aggrandizing time waster who helped ruin the Greek economy before Tsipras got rid of him. The hard-edged intellectuals of Popular Unity agree that Varoufakis was as much a part of the problem as he was a part of the solution. They also agree that it was a mistake for Syriza to have haggled with the eurozone creditors. Their preferred option was for Syriza to have broken with the creditors from the beginning.2 A “rupture,” an exit from the eurozone, in January or February 2015 might have sustained the momentum of Syriza’s election victory. [...]

To understand Varoufakis’s motivations, we have to understand how he defines what was at stake in the battle between Greece and its creditors. For many on the left, the struggle was between the “forces of capital” and democracy. That made a good rallying cry. But it is far from the situation that Syriza actually confronted in 2015. Due to the 2012 debt write-down, when Syriza took power three years later only 15 percent of Greece’s debts were owed to banks, insurance funds, or hedge funds. Eighty-five percent were debts to official agencies and other European governments. The struggle was not with the capital markets but with official creditors and the other national governments assembled in the Eurogroup. [...]

By buying sovereign and private bonds, the ECB propped up their prices, pushed interest rates down, and flushed hundreds of billions in euro liquidity into the financial system. The primary aim was to stimulate the eurozone economy, but quantitative easing also had political ramifications. As long as the ECB kept buying their bonds, Spain, Italy, and Portugal were immune to contagion from the uncertainty surrounding Greece. Quantitative easing thus deprived Syriza of one of its chief bargaining weapons. Ironically, it was the ECB’s action—made in defiance of the conservatives in the Eurogroup—that freed those conservatives to lay siege to the left-wing government in Athens. They could force Greece to the brink of a disorderly Grexit without fear of destabilizing the rest of the eurozone and fight Greece’s political contagion without having to worry about the financial kind.

At the height of the crisis—between 2010 and 2012—there was indeed a spectacular confusion in the eurozone that might have been resolved by means of a grand bargain. But even then, the idea that the solution could have come from Greece was fanciful. In 2012, it took the combined weight of France, Italy, Spain, the European Central Bank, the European Commission, and the Obama administration to convince Germany to accept the ECB’s commitment to do “whatever it takes” to save the eurozone. What emerged in the aftermath of that crisis was neither a muddle—as Varoufakis suggests—nor a conspiracy. Europe’s political economy came to be dominated by the “reform” project first launched by Germany’s main political parties in the early 2000s, which centered on labor market liberalization and fiscal consolidation.

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Vox: The surprisingly weak scientific case for emotional support animals

How is it legal to bring your duck on the plane? Under the federal Air Carrier Access Act, passengers are allowed to bring animals aboard by showing a letter from a mental health clinician or doctor asserting that the pet is part of their therapy. But the law is surprisingly vague about which species can come on board and gives airlines significant discretion. “You are never required to accommodate certain unusual service animals (e.g., snakes, other reptiles, ferrets, rodents, and spiders) as service animals in the cabin,” it reads.

Yet as a quick Google search will show, it’s possible to obtain these letters online for a small fee. Some passengers may very well be exploiting the law to bring pets on planes. And stories about peacocks and ducks in booties on planes are increasingly leading ESAs (and their handlers) to be treated as a punchline. In the New York Times, columnist David Leonhardt called the animals a “scam” and “one of the downsides of a modern culture that too often fetishizes individual preference and expression over communal well-being.” [...]

Molly Crossman is a psychology researcher at Yale who published a 2016 review in The Journal of Clinical Psychology of the evidence on using animals to counter psychological distress. Here’s what she found: “The clearest conclusion in the field is that we cannot yet draw clear conclusions.” [...]

Basically, in treatments for anxiety that work, we ask people to face their fears. We work with them to gradually approach the things they’ve avoided. These treatments work really well. They’re some of sort of the best mental health treatments that we have. A concern we have in those kinds of treatments is that people will feel like, “I can only approach this terrifying situation if they have my mom with me, or my blankie,” or whatever.

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Vox: Why (almost) no one wants to host the Olympics anymore

Rising costs, horror stories of unexpected debt, and the increasing burden of “white elephants” — facilities that are expensive but useless after the games — have made cities more and more wary of hosting the Olympics in recent years. [...]

In fact, for the 2024 Games, the International Olympic Committee decided to do something unprecedented: Instead of choosing between the only two bidders, Paris and Los Angeles, it decided to award Paris the 2024 Summer Olympics and give Los Angeles the 2028 Summer Olympics. Experts say the IOC decided to give them out at the same time for a simple reason — it was afraid no city would want to host the tournament by the time the 2028 bidding started. [...]

And when cities attempt to retrofit Olympics facilities to make them useful for other sports, it can become very expensive very quickly. According to Matheson, London’s attempt to convert its Olympic stadium for a local soccer team after it hosted the games in 2012 ended up costing as much as the stadium itself. [...]

Andrew Zimbalist, a sports economist at Smith College, has pointed out that there’s little evidence that cities see a substantial tourism bump beyond the games themselves. Barcelona saw a lasting tourism legacy after hosting in 1992, but most analysts say its experience was exceptional because the Spanish city was a “hidden gem” with vast cultural offerings that weren’t as well-known around the world prior to the games. The reality is that most cities can’t simply become great tourism hubs just by virtue of hosting the Olympics.

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Quartz: The world is getting better at English—but some countries are learning faster than others

This relationship doesn’t show causation—improving people’s English might not lead those other indicators to increase. But the correlations are strong enough that improvements in English ability are a good proxy for positive changes in other areas. Good knowledge of English means people have access to a huge set of global ideas and services that would otherwise be unavailable. [...]

There are a couple things to note here. For one, the overall trend is up. Among these 59 countries—the ones the EF has measured every year since 2014—the average score has gone from 51.9 to 53.5. Second, countries with previously very low levels of proficiency—many of them places in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Iran—are starting to catch up. In part this just shows regression to the mean: countries starting from a low base have more room to improve. It also shows, though, that the minimum level of English is rising, even in places where it is not widely spoken. [...]

The EF’s data comes with a couple caveats. The proficiency scores are based on free online tests, so the people taking them are self-selected. They are not a representative sample of the country’s citizens, and may instead represent a group that is particularly interested in English and has access to the internet. And the EF only has data on a partial list of the world’s nations.

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IFLScience: GM Crops Found To Increase Yields And Reduce Harmful Toxins In 21 Years Of Data

Published in Scientific Reports, the team was led by Elisa Pellegrino from the Institute of Life Sciences in Italy. They conducted a meta-analysis of 6,006 peer-reviewed studies from 1996 to 2016 on maize that had been genetically engineered. Only 76 publications, however, met the researchers' high standards for inclusion.  

The results showed that genetically engineered (GE) maize produced a greater yield of 5.6 to 24.5 percent compared to non-GE maize. It resulted in lower concentrations of mycotoxins (−28.8 percent), fumonisin (−30.6 percent), and thricotecens (−36.5 percent). The former is toxic and carcinogenic in humans and animals. There were also no significant differences in grain quality, such as proteins, lipids, and fiber. [...]

“This analysis provides an effective synthesis on a specific problem that is widely discussed publicly,” study co-author Laura Ercoli told the Italian newspaper La Republica. The researchers also noted that some studies showed the use of GMO corn has reduced the active ingredient of herbicides and insecticides by 10.1 percent and 45.2 percent respectively.

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The Conversation: New evidence suggests we may need to rethink policies aimed at poverty

But less than 15% of the most disadvantaged people in Australia exit poverty from one year to the next, according to data from the Journeys Home survey, run by the Melbourne Institute. [...]

However, our research suggests that income poverty is persistent for a small group of Australians and is combined with other forms of disadvantage. Supporting these people in finding a pathway out of poverty requires deeper interventions, including targeted health, education and social policies.

Most of the evidence we have on the persistence of poverty is based on long-term surveys designed to be representative of the entire population. Although these surveys offer broad coverage of the population, such surveys are typically limited in their ability to capture the most disadvantaged groups because they constitute only a small part of the general population. [...]

The HILDA results show that most Australians who fall below the poverty line do so for a relatively short time, which is good news. However, it is also clear that among chronically disadvantaged people the chances of poverty becoming an enduring feature of life are much higher than previously thought.

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