Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.
Friday, 9 October 2026
Mood vs Plan
One of the most underrated skills
you can learn is
the ability to ignore your mood
and stick
with the plan
Statins
Statins have been sold for nearly forty years. In that time the proof they save lives has got thinner, and the number of people told to take them has kept climbing.
1987: the first statin goes on sale in America. It is meant for people whose cholesterol is dangerously high and will not come down with diet.
1994: statins post the best result they will ever post. In men who have already survived a heart attack, deaths over five years fall from about 12 in 100 to 8 in 100.
1996: Lipitor is approved, and the job becomes selling that result to people who have never had a heart attack.
2000: Pfizer buys the whole of Warner-Lambert, the company that made Lipitor, for about $90 billion, just to own the pill outright.
2001: the American cholesterol guideline nearly triples the number of people told to take a statin, from 13 million to 36 million.
2002: the drug is tested in 10,000 older Americans with high blood pressure, most of them without heart disease. It makes no difference to how many die.
2002: in a trial of people over 70, the statin group has no fewer deaths and 25% more new cancers.
2004: Britain decides the drug is safe enough to sell over the pharmacy counter, with no doctor involved.
2011: Lipitor's patent runs out. It has become the best-selling drug in history.
2012: the FDA adds memory loss and raised blood sugar to the warning label.
2013: a new American guideline adds another 12.8 million people to the list.
2014: Britain halves the risk score that qualifies you, and 4.5 million more people become eligible.
2016: the drug is tested in 12,000 people across 21 countries who have no heart disease. Again, it makes no difference to how many die.
2026: a new American guideline makes 87.5 million people eligible, including 93% of everyone in their seventies, and asks for a cholesterol test on every child aged nine to eleven.
The strongest evidence the drug ever produced came in 1994, from men who had already had a heart attack. Every expansion since has handed it to healthier people, in whom the trials keep finding no difference in deaths.
Thursday, 8 October 2026
University education has become meaningless – and now it doesn’t even promise a job
From Irish Times - 8/10/2026
This opinion article is behind a paywall.
So, here it is:
We have made education transactional and have forgotten that learning is a good in and of itself
Un parfum de guerre civile” – or “whiff of civil war” – is how the centre-right French newspaper Le Figaro described the atmosphere in Britain in August 2024. The streets of the north east of England and beyond had been consumed by angry and destructive rioters in the wake of the Southport killings.
Rich, I thought, coming from the French. Burning upturned bins and firing missiles at law enforcement is just as Gallic as burgundy, rillettes and smoking. A nation built on enlightenment values and the rationality of Montesquieu sometimes succumbs to a destructive and often bloodthirsty id.
I recommend The Rest is History’s recent series on the French Revolution for anyone in search of a refresher.
But even given France’s state of semi-perma rioting, the recent civil disobedience stands out. Partially because – not being a rural French working class business owner – I found it hard to relate to the gilets jaunes, to properly parse their politics. But mainly because the source complaint of the protesters now is something universally understood; something central not just to the social health of the French republic but to the values of the West. That is the state of education.
It started with teenagers angry about the conditions of their schools: buildings that are inadequately designed for the extremes of French weather; decrepit and decaying classrooms; classes that have too many pupils; bathrooms with no soap. Then university students joined in, teachers too.
As is always the case, the root problem has somewhat been lost and what was a narrow complaint has spiralled into an omnivore movement: police brutality, vague and directionless frustration with government.
But never mind that for now. The kids have a point. Even though France spends a comparatively higher amount of GDP on the education system – 0.3 percentage points higher than the European average, and 2.4 percentage points above Ireland (although the usual caveats to any data point as a percentage of Ireland’s GDP apply) – students complain about a lack of resources, shoddy buildings and a shortage of teachers. And so who is surprised? First, they are French: protesting is what they do. But second – everyone has to go to school, everyone has time to develop strong feelings about how it should work and what fairness looks like, how high the ceiling and the floor should be set. Given the decrepitude described, this episode seems inevitable. Or to make a long point short, if I were a French teenager I would be rioting too.
And maybe if I was still an Irish teenager, I would be as well. Because aside from the peculiarities of the French system, the riots speak to a bigger existential moment for education systems everywhere.
[ French prime minister to address nation as school protests escalate ]
I worry that somewhere in recent decades, maybe even years, we have forgotten what school – and university – is for. No matter the quality of the facilities: the small class sizes, the state of the art interactive whiteboards, the AstroTurf hockey pitches in the school colours, the sleek labs and Home Ec kitchens – or any other accoutrement of the Dublin private school in 2026. This is not France. But what is the point of any of that without properly articulating the philosophical goals of an education?
Friends who are teachers report on a cohort of students who can’t or won’t read anything beyond summaries of books. I speak to academics from my alma mater university who regularly tell me – head in hand – about whole classes who refuse to sit handwritten exams, who believe the function of an education is not to acquire knowledge but to learn how to effectively extract information from ChatGPT.
In England, when Rishi Sunak suggested making mathematics compulsory for all students until the age of 18, it was though he had announced conscription. The children can’t possibly handle something so challenging, the detractors responded, blinded by the bigotry of their low expectations.
And so, in place of literature and standards, we have opted for something far more transactional – an “education” in exchange for the promise of a job. We hand out meaningless degrees to students who don’t really want them because – in Ireland especially – we have functionally made third level qualifications a necessary condition for office employment. School and university are spiritually transforming into training grounds for the workplace – just at the same time that AI looks set to eradicate a huge number of entry level corporate jobs.
It is the worst of both worlds – to forget that learning is a good, in and of itself, while not even being able to follow through on the promise that it will at least lead to work. I think about the French classrooms falling apart, a tragedy in a nation that really is the historical epitome of Western civilisation. They are right to protest. And then I look beyond France and wonder, huh – why does no one else seem so angry?
Wednesday, 7 October 2026
Nobel Prize for Chemistry: Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai honoured for their work on asymmetric organic synthesis
= = =
In the lecture theater, we have discussed the chirality : Nature loves L-amino acids and D-sugars! Look also at the work of Pasteur on chirality
Pasteur and chirality: A story of how serendipity favors the prepared minds
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The 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Henri Karan and Kenso Soai for their discoveries of new ways to manipulate chemical reactions. For you chemists out there, the official recognition reads, “for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis.”
Some molecules, like amino acids, exist as two variants, like your hands, that are each other’s mirror image. These mirror images reflect the fundamental chemistry of life — a state that chemists call homochiral, from the Greek words for “same” and “hand.” However, in living organisms only one of these mirror images is usually found. How this type of chemical asymmetry can occur has been a mystery to chemists for a long time. Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2026 for discovering a solution to this puzzle.
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