openDemocracy: Buffoons are taking over the court: the danger of modern politics as spectacle

Now, it is important to acknowledge that politics and the exercise of political power have always had a theatrical dimension: rites and ceremonials in earlier societies, parades, commemorations, election campaigns and debates or meetings of leaders at international summits in modern times, have all involved elements of a theatrical performance. But these elements (just as was the case with court jesters) played an auxiliary – albeit important – role which consisted in providing the existing order with solemnity and gravity, and, ultimately, with additional legitimacy.

Today, by contrast, these elements are becoming more and more central to the political: it is now all about the image of leaders, their communication skills, the way they dress, speak or shake each other’s hands, they way they manage their Twitter and Instagram accounts. In a way, similar to Bertolt Brecht’s epic theatre, politics increasingly immerses itself in everyday life and thereby, necessarily, increasingly desacralizes itself. [...]

It is a symptom of a profound social malaise, greatly intensified in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and, in particular, the way it was dealt with: taxpayers first paid for the rescue of those who caused it, and then suffered austerity measures that were presented to them as the only option by those in power and which aggravated the problems of millions of households

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Aeon: Medieval parasites

At the same time, the filthiness of medieval people should not be exaggerated. Much evidence shows that personal hygiene mattered to medieval people, that they made an effort to keep clean. Popular advice books recommended washing the hands, face and teeth on rising, plus further handwashing throughout the day. Other body parts were washed less frequently: daily washing of the genitals, for example, was believed to be a Jewish custom, and thus viewed with suspicion by the non-Jewish population. Nevertheless, many households owned freestanding wooden tubs for bathing, and late-medieval cities usually had public bathhouses. Medical compendia gave recipes for washing hair, whitening teeth and improving skin. Medieval clergymen complained about the vanity of people who spent too much time fussing over their appearance. [...]

These variations in terminology reflect a shift in the understanding of microbiology, including parasites. Today, we know that parasites are something you catch – from another person, from food or in other ways. Until the 17th century, people thought that they were produced by spontaneous generation – that is, not by hatching from eggs, but by forming from existing (usually unpleasant) matter. The 13th-century physician Gilbert the Englishman described how ‘worms of various shapes are engendered in a man’s guts, both because of the diversity of guts [ie, whether they originate in the small or large intestines], and because of the diversity of matter [various types of phlegm] that they are made from.’ His near-contemporary Albertus Magnus described the louse as ‘a vermin which is generated from the putrescence at the edge of a person’s pores or which is amassed from it as it is warmed by the person’s heat in the folds of his clothing’. [...]

Medieval people also faced a wider range of parasites than we do: because they were apparently generated by the body, it was believed that they could occur in virtually any part of it. Despite being nonexistent, ‘earworms’ and ‘toothworms’ were particularly common, and no one was immune. Arnau of Villanova treated Pope Clement V when ‘one of his teeth had a cavity and there a worm tossed to and fro. When the worm stirred within the tooth … [the Pope] suffered greatly, so that he could not drink or sleep.’ Worms and lice around the eyes also seem to have been a frequent problem. These were probably linked to the contemporary belief in the importance of removing nocturnal residues and excretions from around the eyes on waking. [...]

According to The Good Wife’s Guide, it was the woman’s duty to make sure that there were no fleas in the marital bedroom, and especially in the bed itself. The author (purportedly a 14th-century husband instructing his much younger wife) includes tips on how to deal with fleas, including scattering alder leaves around the room, using white bedding on which pests are easily visible, and placing a slice of bread covered in glue with a candle in the middle as a trap. By the end of the middle ages, parasites (especially lice) were increasingly seen as evidence of poor hygiene, and associated with ‘wild people’. The link between poverty and parasites was reflected in the early 16th-century regulations for the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence, which stated that: ‘Because many of the poor arrive teeming with lice, we separate out their clothes and store them … in a different place.’

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UnHerd: Meet the poster boy for Dutch populism

Wilders and Baudet do share some central positions. Both, for example, have called for a radical stop to immigration from non-Western cultures. Both believe that Islam is incompatible with Dutch values and traditions. Both decry the domination of Dutch institutions by Leftist elites. And both seek to tap into a widespread anxiety among some sectors of the Dutch population that their culture is under serious threat. [...]

The problem, in Baudet’s eyes, is not that there is an elite. The problem is that the current elite is ignorant, incompetent, immoral, and weak. It needs to be replaced. Baudet’s view of the world is decidedly Darwinian: we should trust our instincts. Life is a struggle. Strength is what counts. Those who are not ready to fight are bound to be conquered. It’s the West against the rest. [...]

His sophisticated, provocative image as a dangerous dandy who is not afraid to say what he thinks is also broadening his appeal to more educated voters. In particular, the FvD is gathering an enthusiastic following among university students, especially men, who are tickled by the idea that they would make far better national leaders than the current political class. [...]

He is outspoken, too, on environmental policy. Baudet is opposed to any efforts to counteract climate change, which he sees as a “masochistic heresy fed by guilt”, “a secularised belief in the Deluge” that will “not only mean the total collapse of our economy but is also meant to further hurt our spirit and self-confidence”.[...]

Baudet, however, has said he understands that entering a coalition will require concessions. Perhaps in anticipation of this next phase, he appears to have modified his position on the Netherlands’ relationship with the EU. For many years, he openly advocated for the country to leave. (“After #Brexit we should have #Nexit,” he tweeted in May 2016.) Yet when, on 2 April, Wilders’ party proposed a parliamentary motion for Nexit, the FvD’s two deputies voted it down. The FvD continues to be sceptical about Europe but says that the voters, not the parliament, should make decision to stay or leave, through a referendum.

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FiveThirtyEight: How Early Primary Polls Foreshadowed Surprises Like Obama’s Rise And Trump’s Win

Because pollsters ask questions in different ways and ask about different lists of candidates, our methods of estimating name recognition had to be treated as rough estimates, so the candidates in each primary cycle have been sorted onto a somewhat subjective five-tier scale to sum up their level of fame.3 These name-recognition scores are represented as five square boxes in the table below, where more black boxes means higher levels of name recognition. (Because these scores can adjust a candidate’s average upward but not downward, the adjusted polling average will add up to more than 100 percent).[...]

But the bigger story in the 2016 cycle was arguably the rise of now-President Donald Trump in the GOP primary field. Prior to his campaign announcement in June 2015, Trump was polling in the low single digits. But the 2016 Republican field was arguably the most crowded one ever, and there was no clear frontrunner. In the first half of the year, seven (!) candidates were polling at more than 10 percent in the adjusted polling average, with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush leading the way. But in the second half of 2015, Trump shot up to take the lead while candidates such as Bush and Walker fell sharply. Trump’s increase from an average of 3 percent in the first half of 2015 to about 29 percent in the second half — using either the regular or adjusted polling average — represents the largest increase from the first half of the year to the second half for any candidate in the 1972 to 2016 period. And once the primary voting started in 2016, Trump consistently won pluralities in most of the early contests, which positioned him to withstand efforts among some in the GOP to stop him from winning the party’s nomination. He then, of course, went on to defeat Clinton in the general election. [...]

So now we’ve gone through every cycle from 1972 to 2016 and found that the early polling leader often went on to win a party’s nomination, and the early polls, once they were adjusted for name recognition, often foreshadowed the rise of notable candidates. In the final part of our series, we’ll move beyond the descriptive and dive deep into the trends that emerge from the entire 1972 to 2016 period, drawing some statistical conclusions about how meaningful early primary polls really are.

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ScienceDaily: Study shows dogs can accurately sniff out cancer in blood

Dogs have smell receptors 10,000 times more accurate than humans', making them highly sensitive to odors we can't perceive. A new study has shown that dogs can use their highly evolved sense of smell to pick out blood samples from people with cancer with almost 97 percent accuracy. The results could lead to new cancer-screening approaches that are inexpensive and accurate without being invasive. [...]

For the new study, Junqueira and her colleagues used a form of clicker training to teach four beagles to distinguish between normal blood serum and samples from patients with malignant lung cancer. Although one beagle -- aptly named Snuggles -- was unmotivated to perform, the other three dogs correctly identified lung cancer samples 96.7 percent of the time and normal samples 97.5 percent of the time. [...]

BioScentDx plans to use canine scent detection to develop a non-invasive way of screening for cancer and other life-threatening diseases. As a next step, the company launched a breast cancer study in November in which participants donate samples of their breath for screening by trained cancer-sniffing dogs. The researchers also plan to separate the samples into their chemical components and present these to the dogs to isolate the substances causing the odor that the dogs detect.

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statista: Record Level of Russians Want to Leave the Country

According to the most recent Gallup survey, the level of Russians saying that If they had the opportunity, they would you like to move permanently to another country, is at a record high. 20 percent of respondents to the 2018 research said they would do so, with the most popular destinations Germany at 15 percent, followed by the United States at 12 percent. These figures add to the recent news that Russia's population is currently declining for the first time in a decade.

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