The ability of adults to drink milk….

as it relates to European history, story is here. The key concept is hedging against famine.

Consumption bias–US versus EU

Monica Prasad’s insightful op ed in yesterday’s NYT is here.

Money quote:

Where Europeans focused on restraining consumption, Americans saw consumption as the machine that drives growth — and we still do.

Hmmm…so what did the Europeans focus on? Apparently infrastructure and production capacity. Not sure how that worked out for them…

Meanwhile Olivier Guez has this take, here. Apparently Europeans need a culture that is more pan-European, just like in 1913….not sure how that worked out either….

The trouble with Italian science support….

The interview with Italy’s new science minister, Fracesco Profumo is at ScienceInsider, here.

The quote from his which best captures the essence of the problem (although not the way I suspect he intended) is here:

We contributed 15% to the cost of Framework Programme 7, the predecessor to Horizon 2020, but we received only 8.5% of the funding in return—in other words, we lost about €500 million per year. Those are worrisome data.

He then, to be sure, goes on to suggest that Italy needs to submit better proposals.