Between the Buddhist doctrine of ‘emptiness,’ the Jewish idea of Ayin, and the invention of numerical zero, it turns out there’s quite a lot to be said about Nothing.
11 July 2018
Aeon: Think everyone died young in ancient societies? Think again
This cartoon reflects a very common view of ancient lifespans, but it is based on a myth. People in the past were not all dead by 30. Ancient documents confirm this. In the 24th century BCE, the Egyptian Vizier Ptahhotep wrote verses about the disintegrations of old age. The ancient Greeks classed old age among the divine curses, and their tombstones attest to survival well past 80 years. Ancient artworks and figurines also depict elderly people: stooped, flabby, wrinkled. [...]
So it seems that humans evolved with a characteristic lifespan. Mortality rates in traditional populations are high during infancy, before decreasing sharply to remain constant till about 40 years, then mortality rises to peak at about 70. Most individuals remain healthy and vigorous right through their 60s or beyond, until senescence sets in, which is the physical decline where if one cause fails to kill, another will soon strike the mortal blow. [...]
Seeing the invisible elderly has led to other discoveries. It has often been suggested that more men than women lived to older age in the past because of the dangers of pregnancy and childbirth, but our study suggests otherwise. We applied our method to two other Anglo-Saxon cemeteries as well – Great Chesterford in Essex and the one on Mill Hill, in Deal, Kent – and found that, of the three oldest individuals from each cemetery, seven were women and only two were men. Although not conclusive proof, this suggests that older age spans for women might be part of the human condition. [...]
The maximum human lifespan (approximately 125 years) has barely changed since we arrived. It is estimated that if the three main causes of death in old age today – cardiovascular disease, stroke, and cancer – were eliminated, the developed world would see only a 15-year increase in life expectancy. While an individual living to 125 in the distant past would have been extremely rare, it was possible. And some things about the past, such as men being valued for their power and women for their beauty, have changed little.
Al Jazeera: What lies beneath the hostile rhetoric in Turkish-EU relations?
In the end, no EU leader apart from Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Bulgarian President Rumen Radev honoured Erdogan's inauguration on July 9. [...]
First, both Ankara and Brussels are keeping the pretence of membership negotiations, though each party knows that it is a dead-end street. EU foreign ministers concluded on June 26, two days after the elections, that talks have come "to a standstill". Predictably, Ankara slammed their stance. However, neither Erdogan nor his counterparts in the EU are prepared to pull the plug, figuratively speaking, and take the responsibility.
Second, business ties are booming despite the political tensions that poison diplomatic exchanges. In 2017, the EU accounted for 36.4 percent of Turkey's imports and 47.1 percent of exports. That means the union is still Ankara's top trading partner.
Third, although membership is not in the cards, Turkey has not given up on EU integration. It hopes it could upgrade the Customs Union, in place since 1996, and get a better deal in sectors such as agriculture, trade in services, and public procurement. [...]
The recent summit in Varna, Bulgaria, attended by Erdogan and the heads of the EU Council and the European Commission Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker, failed to make headway. However, at the European Council meeting on June 29, which was focused heavily on containing migration, the 28 member states agreed to go forward with the transfer of another $3.3bn for the EU Facility for Refugees in Turkey. Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos attended Erdogan's swear-in ceremony - a clear signal as to where the EU's priorities lie.
Haaretz: Netanyahu to Make It Official: Fascism Is What We Are
First among Netanyahu's current priorities this is the Nation-State Bill. As its name suggests, the proposed law has everything to do with extreme nationalism, and with the exercise of raw, explicitly unequal power. It has nothing to do with what we used to know as Judaism.
So ill-advised is the Nation-State Bill, so giant a step it is toward the implementation of fascism – and, in fact, so anti-Jewish is its essence - that President Reuven Rivlin, a lifelong advocate both of enhanced democracy in Israel and of Netanyahu's right-wing Likud Party, wrote in an open letter Tuesday that a central clause of the bill "could harm the Jewish people and Jews around the world and in Israel, and could even be used by our enemies as a weapon." [...]
- Science Minister Ofir Akunis - interfering with and ruining the work of a German-Israeli committee which could have brought millions in funding for neuro-science research in Israel - this week barred one of the country's foremost brain researchers, Prof. Yael Amitai, from the panel. Akunis' explanation? In 2005, along with hundreds of other Israeli academics, she signed a petition supporting soldiers who, while continuing to serve in the military, refused to serve in the territories. [...]
The measure would allow her ministry to cut off funding to institutions and films which, in her view, "participate in incitement against the state," "delegitimize Israel," or violate the Nakba Law, which is meant to defund any institution which views Israel Independence Day as a day of mourning for the Palestinians who fled or were forced to flee in 1948. [...]
Rivlin singled out for particular condemnation a clause which Knesset Legal Advisor Eyal Yinon declared Tuesday apparently has no "equivalence in any constitution in the world." It would explicitly legalize what the Attorney General's office has called blatant housing discrimination in towns and communities, which would mean that "the residents 'selection committee' can hang up a sign saying ‘no entry to non-Jews.’”
Politico: Theresa May, Britain’s zombie prime minister
Labour aides now openly talk of a new “coalition of chaos” to bring down the government when the final agreement is brought back to the Commons, by voting with hard-line Conservative rebels like Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the pro-Brexit caucus in the Commons, and the Scottish National Party against any proposed deal the government strikes with Brussels along the lines of May’s plan. [...]
“Go back to basics,” said one leading U.K. aide who has been intimately involved in the Brexit talks. “She has handled these negotiations in about as catastrophic a way as is imaginable. She failed to prepare for no deal and she allowed the entire thing to be pushed through the prism of Northern Ireland. What are you left with? We’re going to offer vassal state with a note attached saying ‘would you like your £39 billion by check or direct debit?’ It is catastrophic and she is to blame.” [...]
As MPs piled into parliament’s bars and restaurants at the end of the day, there was one silver lining for May’s team — the last vestiges of ambiguity that have hung over the Brexit process finally appear to have burned away, leaving the stark reality of the situation clear for all to see.
Quartz: Brits feel better about immigration after Brexit, according to the country’s most rigorous survey of public opinion
That’s the conclusion of a recent survey on British social attitudes by the National Centre for Social Research, a respected pollster. When this question was first asked in 2011, respondents were more doubtful about the merits of immigration than they are now. The pollster’s survey of attitudes has been running since the early 1980s, making it the longest-running poll of public opinion in the country. [...]
“There is little sign here that the EU referendum campaign served to make Britain less tolerant towards migrants; rather they have apparently come to be valued to a degree that was not in evidence before the referendum campaign,” the pollsters note in a report on the findings (pdf).
The study confirms what other surveys have suggested for a while. Although the UK is leaving the EU, with many proponents of Brexit citing greater control of borders as a motivating factor, Brits have become distinctly more positive about immigration.
The Guardian: EU negotiator Michel Barnier says 80% of Brexit deal is agreed
Speaking in New York on Tuesday, Michel Barnier said: “After 12 months of negotiations we have agreed on 80% of the negotiations.” He added that he was determined to negotiate a deal on the remaining 20%.
The declaration that four-fifths of the deal is done is a significant change of tone from the EU after months of protests that it could not negotiate because the UK had not put its own proposals on the table. [...]
Barnier said he had never been shown how Brexit provided added value when the world faced challenges from terrorism and climate change to migration, poverty and financial instability. [...]
He said the detailed UK proposals would be assessed in the light of the EU’s clear position on the indivisible four freedoms of movement of people, goods, services and capital. The EU is ready to start negotiating on free trade and customs agreements with the UK, he said.
Bloomberg: May’s Brexit Gamble Might Actually Work
Theresa May's plan for Britain's post-Brexit relationship with the European Union comes at least 18 months too late. With only a few months of real negotiating time before the U.K. leaves, it has triggered the worst political turmoil yet faced by May, calling into question her future as prime minister. On top of all that, it's a plan that the EU is quite likely to reject. [...]
The resignations of David Davis, the minister who'd nominally been in charge of the Brexit talks, and Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, aren't a bad thing. Both favor a cleaner separation from Europe — Johnson was a leader of the Leave campaign — and neither was willing to support a hybrid of the kind May is finally advocating. Davis had already been largely cut out of the process, and Johnson, perpetually plotting his bid for the leadership, had nothing constructive to offer. It's much better for May to be rid of them. [...]
If Europe rejects it out of hand, then May's position might indeed be hopeless. Europe's leaders ought to reflect on the consequences. In the U.K., May is now seen as having staked everything on an unpopular compromise. If the EU throws this back in her face and demands, in effect, that the U.K. accept whatever terms it dictates, it might secure a short-term victory. But in the longer term this is the prospect that would most assist Johnson and the other anti-EU coup-plotters. Maybe the EU should think twice before it binds itself more closely to a seething resentful enemy, and see whether a hybrid deal might be done after all.
Quartz: Liu Xia, widow of Nobel winner Liu Xiaobo, might be free at last—thanks to Germany
If the reports that she’s been released to Germany are true, it would mark an end to nearly a decade of unofficial detention for Liu Xia—who has been kept under strict state surveillance since Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2010. The award came a year into Liu Xiaobo’s 11-year prison sentence for “subversion of state power” for co-authoring a manifesto in 2008 that called for fundamental changes in China’s governance. Few are allowed to visit her and plainclothes police patrol around her Beijing apartment. Those close to her say she suffers from heart ailments and depression, and has many times asked to leave China.
It’s also a big win for Germany, one of the few countries allowed to send a doctor to China last year to examine Liu Xiaobo. The country has been raising human rights issues and the situation of Liu Xia on multiple occasions with China, a major trade partner and investor. While in Beijing in May, German chancellor Angela Merkel met with the wife of a detained human rights lawyer. On the same visit, at a joint press conference with Merkel, Chinese premier Li Keqiang said China was prepared to discuss “relevant individual cases” with Germany. [...]
On Chinese social media, some are expressing their happiness for her—obliquely, of course, so as to avoid censorship. On the microblog Weibo, one user based in Germany wrote (link in Chinese), “Willkommen in Deutschland! Willkommen in die freie Welt!! Welcome to Germany, to the free world!”
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