Tuesday, March 14, 2023

Fox News reports news fulsomely, says Lachlan Murdoch

 Languages, like markets, are human artifacts, although we don't always think of them that way.  And so language can also suffer from coordination failure, when words that mean one thing sound like they mean another, and so over time may be used to mean multiple things, leading to confusion about what is being said.

This is the case with the word "fulsome," which sounds like "full," so that reporting news "fulsomely" might sound to some like reporting it "fully."  (I'll have the dictionary definition at the bottom of this post.)

Here's a story in the Guardian which quotes one of the wealthy owner/managers of Fox Corporation on how Fox news covers the news:

Tucker Carlson firestorm over Trump texts threatens to engulf Fox News.   by Edward Helmore

"So far, Fox is standing by its stars. On Thursday, Lachlan Murdoch, Murdoch’s eldest son, heir apparent and executive chairman and chief executive of Fox Corporation, voiced support for management, its roster of stars and backed Fox New’s editorial standards.

A news organization has an obligation – and it is an obligation – to report news fulsomely, wholesomely and without fear or favor. That’s what Fox News has always done and that’s what Fox News will always do,” he said.

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And here's the Cambridge Dictionary:

fulsomely
adverb
   formal
US 
 
/ˈfʊl.səm.li/
 UK 
 
/ˈfʊl.səm.li/
in a way that expresses a lot of admiration or praise for someone, often too much, in a way that does not sound sincere:
He thanked her fulsomely for her help.
She praised the team's head coach fulsomely.


In Mirriam Webster, this meaning is now only conveyed in definitions 2-4:
aesthetically, morally, or generally offensive
fulsome lies and nauseous flatteryWilliam Congreve
the devil take thee for a … fulsome rogueGeorge Villiers
3
exceeding the bounds of good taste OVERDONE
the fulsome chromium glitter of the escalators dominating the central hallLewis Mumford
4
excessively complimentary or flattering EFFUSIVE
an admiration whose extent I did not express, lest I be thought fulsomeA. J. Liebling
Webster's first definitioin is perhaps what Mr. Murdoch had in mind:

fulsome

adjective

ful·​some ˈfu̇l-səm 
1
a
characterized by abundance COPIOUS
describes in fulsome detailG. N. Shuster
fulsome bird life. The feeder overcrowdedMaxine Kumin
b
generous in amount, extent, or spirit
the passengers were fulsome in praise of the plane's crewDon Oliver
fulsome victory for the far leftBruce Rothwell
the greetings have been fulsome, the farewells tenderSimon Gray
c
being full and well developed
she was in generally fulsome, limpid voiceThor Eckert, Jr.

Monday, March 13, 2023

Artificial breast milk may be on the cellular agriculture horizon

 Cellular agriculture isn't just aspiring to produce meat; now breast milk is queueing up as a (still distant) possibility.

The New Yorker has the story:

Biomilq and the New Science of Artificial Breast Milk. The biotech industry takes on infant nutrition. By Molly Fischer

"New ventures in the world’s oldest food reflect our era’s enthusiasm for tech-based solutions to perennial human problems."

...

"The process of making breast milk in a human body begins during pregnancy, when hormonal changes prompt mammary cells to multiply. After delivery, two of the pregnancy hormones—estrogen and progesterone—drop off, while prolactin remains. This spurs the mammary cells to draw carbohydrates, amino acids, and fatty acids from the mother’s bloodstream, and to convert these raw materials into the macronutrients required to feed a baby. In Biomilq’s case, the mammary cells come from milk and breast-tissue samples provided by donors, and the cells multiply in vitro under the care of a team of scientists tasked with keeping them “happy.” The cells are then moved to a hollow-fibre bioreactor—a large tube filled with hundreds of tiny porous tubes that are covered in a layer of the lab-grown cells. As nutrients flow through the small tubes, the cells secrete milk components into the large tube, where they collect.

"Describing the results as “milk components,” not “milk,” is a crucial distinction. Biomilq has demonstrated that its technology can produce many of the macronutrients found in milk, including proteins, complex carbohydrates, and bioactive lipids, but it cannot yet create them in the same ratios and quantities necessary to approximate breast milk. Other elements of breast milk are beyond the scope of the company’s ambition. A mother’s antibodies, for example, are present in her milk, but they aren’t produced by the mammary cells, and, because Biomilq’s product will come from a sterile lab environment, it won’t offer any kind of beneficial gut bacteria.

...

"“It’s as fraught as abortion,” Jacqueline Wolf, an emeritus historian of medicine at Ohio University and the author of a history of breast-feeding and formula in the U.S., aptly titled “Don’t Kill Your Baby,” told me. “There’s almost nothing that raises more social issues than infant feeding.” Wolf dates the emergence of what became known as “the feeding question” to the eighteen-seventies, when mothers across the country began raising concerns about their milk supply. “The big change that was sparked by urbanization and industrialization was suddenly having to pay attention to a mechanical clock,” she said. Earlier infant-care manuals had advised feeding a baby when he showed signs of hunger. Now medical advice put infants on feeding schedules as rigid as railway timetables. But, as Wolf pointed out, “to build up a milk supply, you need to put the baby to the breast often, especially in the first few months.” The women complaining that they lacked sufficient milk were not, as one theory had it, suffering from the ill effects of too much education during puberty. Rather, they were following advice unwittingly engineered to fail.  

...

"By the nineteen-forties, most mothers were giving birth in hospitals, where orderly routine—babies in nurseries, bottles on schedules—often took priority over the personal attention required to initiate breast-feeding. 

...

"Commercial infant formula from brands such as Similac and Enfamil took off in the fifties—a modern amenity that sat comfortably alongside Betty Crocker cake mix and Cheez Whiz. (Formula had also made it easier for women to work outside the home.) At the same time, the decade saw the rise of some of breast-feeding’s most influential evangelists. The La Leche League was founded in 1956 by seven Catholic housewives in the Chicago suburbs who wanted to create a forum for breast-feeding mothers to share questions and advice. La Leche occupied a tricky cultural position, at once radical and conservative: on the one hand, it encouraged women to claim control of their bodies and to defy voices of institutional authority; on the other, the intended result of this rebellion was a world in which a mother’s place was unequivocally at home.

...

"Meanwhile, the alternative to breast-feeding—formula—began to take on a sinister light. An industry that had presented itself as a best friend to mid-century mothers showed a different face in its dealings abroad. New reports linked Nestlé’s aggressive marketing of formula to infant deaths in the Global South, making the case that the company’s product had been pushed on families who lacked the resources (such as clean water) to bottle-feed safely. Instead of a scientifically perfected modern convenience, formula became “The Baby Killer,” in the words of one influential pamphlet. A years-long global boycott of Nestlé ensued. In 1981, the World Health Organization adopted a resolution that aimed to ban the promotion of substitutes for breast milk. The U.S. was the only country in opposition. (Today, Nestlé stresses its compliance with W.H.O. code.)

...

"products intended to provide complete infant nutrition (that is, formulas) must clear more hurdles than other foods. A new product must, among other things, undergo what are essentially clinical trials, which can involve recruiting hundreds of babies to participate.

...

"The distribution of human breast milk has traditionally taken place at nonprofit milk banks, and recent attempts to introduce commerce into this transaction have stirred controversy. In 2014, a company called Medolac, selling shelf-stable human milk, announced that it would expand its milk-bank program in Black communities in Detroit. The plan was scrapped after backlash from community groups and activists, who called out the company for its low pay in comparison with its pricing and for reinforcing historical injustice. (At the time, the company denied allegations of exploitation.) Biomilq seems keen to avoid any impression of similar obliviousness. Egger told me that the company has encouraged employees to read Andrea Freeman’s “Skimmed,” an account of racial inequities perpetrated by the formula industry. And even as Biomilq describes itself as “women-owned” and “mother-centered,” it also notes that “lactation is not only for cisgender biological mothers.” 

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Related posts on breast milk.

Sunday, March 12, 2023

Black market orchids

 Black markets for flowers aren't as dangerous as those for drugs and guns, but they impinge on endangered species.  The Guardian has this story:

Beauty breeds obsession: the fight to save orchids from a lethal black market. Behind the scenes of its 20th orchid show, the New York Botanical Garden toils to rescue endangered plants. by Francesca Carington

"The import and export of endangered plants is regulated by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (Cites). Orchids account for more than 70% of Cites-registered plants; most can be traded internationally with a permit, but for the rarest and most endangered orchids, the commercial trade in wild species is illegal.

...

"Plant trafficking takes place in a few ways. In some cases, an illegal plant is smuggled in with a batch of legal ones with appropriate Cites paperwork; in others, people pluck endangered plants from the wild and rustle them across borders in their suitcases, or, in one memorable case, by tying stockings containing 947 succulents to their body. Most of the time, however, illegal plants are simply sent in the post.

"Jared Margulies, an expert on the illegal wildlife trade and assistant professor at the University of Alabama, explains that it’s up to individual countries to enforce Cites, and plant trafficking is not always a priority. Orchids are less of a concern than narcotics, arms or even other wildlife. This is in part due to a phenomenon known as “plant blindness”, a tendency, as Margulies puts it, to “see plants as sort of the wallpaper or the backdrop to a kind of livelier animal world”.

...

"“This is not trade that’s happening in the dark web,” says Margulies. “It is happening right online in your face on Facebook, or eBay or Etsy or Instagram.” Hinsley describes vendors in Vietnam listing wild-harvested orchids for sale on Facebook Live, and YouTube videos of people unboxing shipments of unmistakably wild orchids. Her 2015 study of social media posts found that up to 46% of trade occurring in orchid groups was in wild-collected plants.

Saturday, March 11, 2023

Continuous distribution of deceased donor organs for transplant: proposal and public comment

 Ned Brooks of the National Kidney Donor Organization (NKDO) writes that the comment period is soon ending for proposed changes in the way deceased donor organs are offered.

short videos here https://optn.transplant.hrsa.gov/policies-bylaws/a-closer-look/continuous-distribution/ and 

some additional background and opportunity to submit comments here:    https://optn.transplant.hrsa.gov/policies-bylaws/public-comment/continuous-distribution-of-kidneys-and-pancreata-committee-update/

His concern, and that of other comments visible at the site is whether the priority given to former living kidney donors is being diluted.  (The proposal isn't described in sufficient detail for me to form an opinion on this, or on a number of other matters.)

Friday, March 10, 2023

Jon Bendor's Ph.D. seminar on behavioral political economy, Stanford GSB, Spring quarter (PE660)

 Professor Jonathan Bendor is teaching PE660 (Spring 2023), his phd seminar on behavioral political economy in the Spring quarter.  He writes that it is "basically an introduction to the cognitive sciences for social science phd students."  And he's not planning to teach it next year, so if you're planning to take it, now is the time.

The introduction to his syllabus is worth quoting:

"This course studies the cognitive scientific foundations of political economy. It builds on the explosion of research in cognitive psychology, evolutionary anthropology, and allied fields over the last few decades to provide perspectives on political beliefs and behavior that are not tweaks on theories of complete rationality; they are distinct ideas with their own premises of how humans think, plan, and decide.  These premises do not posit that we are irrational.  Such claims are wildly off the mark; they cannot explain how we have become the dominant species on this planet.  Instead, they describe a clever but computationally constrained primate whose evolution, cultural as well as biological, has produced a characteristic configuration of mental software and external symbol systems (writing, numbers). The representational and computational capacities of this software and these symbol systems, combined with our unusual ability to cooperate with unrelated strangers, has in a remarkably short time produced massive knowledge-intensive political institutions that can deploy nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and can use epidemiology and molecular genetics to combat epidemics.  Such achievements warrant explanations.

"In short, we are boundedly rational, but that’s only half the story; we’re also really really clever problem-solvers. This course explores theories that explain both halves in a relatively unified way.  

"Course Requirements

"The main requirement is a commitment to a mindset. You will get much more out of the course if you explicitly commit yourself to taking the ideas on their own terms.  If you consciously or unconsciously try to assimilate them as minor modifications of expected utility theory or noncooperative game theory you’ll be depriving yourself of valuable cognitive diversity. 

"What I’m asking you to do isn’t easy. It is natural in this context to try to assimilate new ideas by reinterpreting them as minor modifications of the familiar.  I want you to exert conscious effort to fight this tendency. The brain/mind of homo sapiens is arguably the most complex object on Earth and our behavior is sometimes correspondingly complex. Like all social scientists, political economists need all the help we can get in trying to understand this extraordinary species. So do yourself a favor and expand your mental repertoire.  When you read Kahneman’s Thinking: Fast and Slow or Henrich’s The Secret of Our Success, try to think like a cognitive/social psychologist or an evolutionary anthropologist, respectively.  During class discussions try to help others do the same. "

Here's the reading list:

Daniel Kahneman.  THINKING, FAST AND SLOW (2011).

Joseph Henrich.  THE SECRET OF OUR SUCCESS: HOW CULTURE IS DRIVING HUMAN EVOLUTION, DOMESTICATING OUR SPECIES, AND MAKING US SMART (2016).

Sloman, S. & P. Fernbach.  THE KNOWLEDGE ILLUSION: WHY WE NEVER THINK ALONE (2018).

Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter.  AN EVOLUTIONARY THEORY OF ECONOMIC CHANGE (1982).

Joshua Greene.  MORAL TRIBES: EMOTION, REASON, AND THE GAP BETWEEN US AND THEM (2013).

J. Bendor, D. Diermeier, D. Siegel, and M. Ting.  A BEHAVIORAL THEORY OF ELECTIONS (2011).

Robert McCauley. WHY RELIGION IS NATURAL AND SCIENCE IS NOT (2011).



Thursday, March 9, 2023

Blood money: plasma and ambivalence

 The Guardian has a long review of the book Blood Money, by Kathleen McLaughlin, who is dependent on blood plasma, but suggests reasons to be ambivalent about the American market for paid plasma.

‘It’s gamified’: inside America’s blood plasma donation industry. In her new book Blood Money, Kathleen McLaughlin uses a personal lens to examine an industry that rewards mass plasma donation  by David Smith

"So who is the typical blood seller and why do they do it? McLaughlin had expected to find the poorest of the poor but, it transpires, most of them are screened out because a plasma donor must have a permanent address.

“What I found instead was a lot of people who, say, 25 years ago would have been middle class, and they just don’t make enough money for that lifestyle any more. I get the sense that one of the biggest demographics is college students. We’re talking about like big public universities where there are a lot of students who don’t come from wealthy backgrounds; I’ve talked to people who use this money to buy books, to pay to go out for a night, for ‘beer money’.

“You will also find people in communities like Flint, Michigan, where I spent a lot of time, who used to be able to expect to have this very normal American middle-class lifestyle and wages and benefits no longer keep pace with that. There are people doing it to buy groceries and to pay for housing. There are also people who are selling plasma to take a vacation."

...

"And whereas donating blood for free is lauded, donating it for money is stigmatised. “If you think about blood donation, it’s something that we consider quite heroic. If you go to the Red Cross and donate blood, you’re saving a life, you’re not getting paid for it.

“But somehow this practice of donating plasma for pay comes with a pretty heavy stigma. A lot of the people I interviewed who do sell plasma had not told their families that they do it because they were afraid of what their families would think: there would be some kind of judgment or their families would be worried about their health or concerned that they don’t have enough money.

‘The stigma is entirely linked to the fact that we stigmatise poverty in the United States. We look down on it. We don’t respect people who aren’t wealthy in the same way that we respect wealthy people. It’s been interesting for me to see the way that people view selling plasma as being somehow problematic and that’s definitely contributed to the fact that this industry is kind of hidden.”

"Still, should we make a moral judgment about the blood industry? It is not, after all, pushing an addictive substance like opioids, but rather is helping the health of people in America and around the world, McLaughlin included. She replies: “We need to ask ourselves that. From my perspective as someone who depends on this substance, what people are doing is incredibly altruistic.

“I also think a lot of people are being financially coerced to do it and, the way the system is set up, you get paid more per donation for each donation you make. It’s gamified in such a way that people are encouraged to donate quite often and because it is a hidden industry, most Americans haven’t really considered if this is who we want to be.

“If you know that there are potentially millions of Americans who have sold their plasma to pay for things like groceries and vacations, are you OK with that? For me, it’s more a matter of getting people to think about it, that our economic situation is such that this is part of our fabric now and are we comfortable with being that way or do we want to think more deeply about how we can make this more feel more of a choice for people?”

"She adds: “The industry itself isn’t necessarily the problem. The problem is that we have let this industry become a part of people’s incomes. I don’t know that that’s the kind of society we want to be.”

“It’s these places where people are economically fragile, not necessarily desperately poor. The kind of fragility that we didn’t have 25 or 30 years ago when there were more social-safety protections.”

Wednesday, March 8, 2023

Donkey meat for sale on Amazon: is a donkey a horse in California?

 Is a donkey a horse in California, where state law prohibits the sale of horse meat for human consumption. In particular, the 1998 law states:

"This measure prohibits both the slaughter of horses for human consumption and the sale of horsemeat for human consumption in California. In addition, horses could not be sent out of California for slaughter in other states or countries for human consumption. Under the measure horses include any horse, pony, burro, or mule."

I'm neither a lawyer nor a linguist, but, for what it's worth, "burro" is the Spanish word for donkey.

Wired has the story:

Amazon Has a Donkey Meat Problem. "The online retailer sells products meant for human consumption that contain donkey meat. A new lawsuit claims that’s illegal in California."

"A legal complaint filed in California last week by the law firm Evans & Page on behalf of the Center for Contemporary Equine Studies, a nonprofit, claims Amazon’s continued sale of these donkey-based products is more than distasteful—it may be illegal.  

"The Center alleges that Amazon’s distribution and sale of ejiao violates an obscure California animal welfare law called the Prohibition of Horse Slaughter and Sale of Horsemeat for Human Consumption Act. The 1998 ballot initiative, known at the time of its passage as Proposition Six, makes the sale of horsemeat for human consumption a crime on the grounds that horses, like dogs and cats, are not food animals and deserve similar protections. The Center is arguing that, under the statute, horsemeat is defined to mean any part of any equine, including donkeys. 

"For Frank Rothschild, director of the Center for Contemporary Equine Studies, the law is clear: Donkeys are equines, and the sale of ejiao for human consumption in California is illegal. “We are a scientific organization and not in the business of national advocacy. We want the defendants to stop selling ejiao because it’s illegal,” he says. “That’s the law.”

"Bruce Wagman, an attorney unaffiliated with the complaint who has practiced animal law in California for 30 years, says that while the center presents a reasonable argument, it’s unclear whether a judge would agree because the law’s wording leaves room for interpretation. “Horsemeat is not really defined in the text of the relevant statute,” he says. “But the spirit of Proposition Six is absolutely to prevent equines, including donkeys, from being slaughtered for people to consume. Period.”

"The complaint demands that Amazon stop selling ejiao immediately. If a judge ultimately finds Amazon in violation of the law, the state of California could fine Amazon for each sale. This type of regulatory pressure is not unprecedented. In 2018, prosecutors in three California counties accused Amazon of violating a 2004 state law banning sales of foie gras. In a settlement, Amazon agreed not to sell the fatty goose liver in California and paid $100,000 in civil penalties. "


HT: Jacob Leshno

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My other posts on consumption of horse meat, and foie gras.

Tuesday, March 7, 2023

Provocative lecture on repugnant transactions at San Jose State University tomorrow

 My ambition is always to give a provocative lecture, and tomorrow evening I'll be officially doing so, when I deliver the David S. Saurman Provocative Lecture, on repugnant markets at SJSU.