Are beautiful people 'selfish by nature'?

People with symmetrical faces are more self-sufficient and less likely to co-operate, new research suggests

• Jamie Doward and Bradley Wilkinson
• The Observer, Sunday 14 August 2011
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A study suggests that people with symmetrical faces, such as Natalie Portman, are naturally more self-sufficient. Photograph: Steve Granitz/WireImage
Kate Moss, George Clooney, Natalie Portman or Cristiano Ronaldo may be many people's ideas of dream dates, but pioneering research that combines economics with biology suggests they may not be perfect life partners. According to a study to be discussed this month at a gathering of Nobel prizewinners, people blessed with more symmetrical facial features, which are considered more attractive, are less likely to co-operate and more likely to selfishly focus on their own interests. Santiago Sanchez-Pages, who works at the universities of Barcelona and Edinburgh, and Enrique Turiegano, of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, base their claims on the "prisoner's dilemma" model of behaviour, played out under laboratory conditions. Two players were each given the option of being a "dove" and co-operating for the greater good; or a "hawk", taking the selfish option, with a chance of gaining more if the other player chose "dove" and co-operated. The subjects' faces were then analysed. The study found that people with more symmetrical faces were less likely to co-operate and less likely to expect others to co-operate. The findings will be presented at the annual Nobel Laureate Meetings in Lindau, Germany, from 23 to 27 August. The explanation may be found in evolution. The two academics speculate that, on a subconscious level, people tend to view symmetrical physical attributes as a sign of good health and find people with them more attractive as a result. Earlier studies have suggested that individuals with symmetrical faces tend to suffer fewer congenital diseases and therefore make better potential mating partners. As a result, the studies suggest, they are more self-sufficient and have less need for seeking the help of others. The pair write: "As people with symmetrical faces tend to be healthier and more attractive, they are also more self-sufficient and have less of an incentive to co-operate and seek help from others. Through natural selection over thousands of years, these characteristics continue to the present day." The authors also examine the relationship between co-operation levels and exposure to testosterone during development. Testosterone is usually associated with aggressive behaviour, suggesting "alpha males" do not make great team players. But the authors suggest this is only a partial truth and that testosterone can promote co-operative behaviour. They write: "Subjects exposed to higher levels of testosterone during foetal development did not co-operate less than the rest and even co-operated more than subjects with average levels. It seems that leading co-operation and not necessarily obtaining a higher individual profit are seen by some as a source of status." The pair warn against jumping to the "simplistic conclusion" that facial asymmetry or testosterone can be used to predict a person's behaviour, but they suggest their research could help to design public policies and act as a corrective to purely economic-based decision making. They note: "If certain behaviours such as smoking, drinking or high-speed driving are perceived by those who engage in them as part of their quest for status, it is very unlikely that providing economic disincentives like higher taxes, prices or fines will have a strong deterrent effect."

• © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

The Rioters' Defence

By Peter Oborne Politics Last updated: August 11th, 2011 in The Telegraph


David Cameron, Ed Miliband and the entire British political class came together yesterday to denounce the rioters. They were of course right to say that the actions of these looters, arsonists and muggers were abhorrent and criminal, and that the police should be given more support.

But there was also something very phony and hypocritical about all the shock and outrage expressed in parliament. MPs spoke about the week’s dreadful events as if they were nothing to do with them.
I cannot accept that this is the case. Indeed, I believe that the criminality in our streets cannot be dissociated from the moral disintegration in the highest ranks of modern British society. The last two decades have seen a terrifying decline in standards among the British governing elite. It has become acceptable for our politicians to lie and to cheat. An almost universal culture of selfishness and greed has grown up.

It is not just the feral youth of Tottenham who have forgotten they have duties as well as rights. So have the feral rich of Chelsea and Kensington. A few years ago, my wife and I went to a dinner party in a large house in west London. A security guard prowled along the street outside, and there was much talk of the “north-south divide”, which I took literally for a while until I realised that my hosts were facetiously referring to the difference between those who lived north and south of Kensington High Street.

Most of the people in this very expensive street were every bit as deracinated and cut off from the rest of Britain as the young, unemployed men and women who have caused such terrible damage over the last few days. For them, the repellent Financial Times magazine How to Spend It is a bible. I’d guess that few of them bother to pay British tax if they can avoid it, and that fewer still feel the sense of obligation to society that only a few decades ago came naturally to the wealthy and better off.

Yet we celebrate people who live empty lives like this. A few weeks ago, I noticed an item in a newspaper saying that the business tycoon Sir Richard Branson was thinking of moving his headquarters to Switzerland. This move was represented as a potential blow to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, because it meant less tax revenue.

I couldn’t help thinking that in a sane and decent world such a move would be a blow to Sir Richard, not the Chancellor. People would note that a prominent and wealthy businessman was avoiding British tax and think less of him. Instead, he has a knighthood and is widely feted. The same is true of the brilliant retailer Sir Philip Green. Sir Philip’s businesses could never survive but for Britain’s famous social and political stability, our transport system to shift his goods and our schools to educate his workers.

Yet Sir Philip, who a few years ago sent an extraordinary £1 billion dividend offshore, seems to have little intention of paying for much of this. Why does nobody get angry or hold him culpable? I know that he employs expensive tax lawyers and that everything he does is legal, but he surely faces ethical and moral questions just as much as does a young thug who breaks into one of Sir Philip’s shops and steals from it?

Our politicians – standing sanctimoniously on their hind legs in the Commons yesterday – are just as bad. They have shown themselves prepared to ignore common decency and, in some cases, to break the law. David Cameron is happy to have some of the worst offenders in his Cabinet. Take the example of Francis Maude, who is charged with tackling public sector waste – which trade unions say is a euphemism for waging war on low‑paid workers. Yet Mr Maude made tens of thousands of pounds by breaching the spirit, though not the law, surrounding MPs’ allowances.

A great deal has been made over the past few days of the greed of the rioters for consumer goods, not least by Rotherham MP Denis MacShane who accurately remarked, “What the looters wanted was for a few minutes to enter the world of Sloane Street consumption.” This from a man who notoriously claimed £5,900 for eight laptops. Of course, as an MP he obtained these laptops legally through his expenses.

Yesterday, the veteran Labour MP Gerald Kaufman asked the Prime Minister to consider how these rioters can be “reclaimed” by society. Yes, this is indeed the same Gerald Kaufman who submitted a claim for three months’ expenses totalling £14,301.60, which included £8,865 for a Bang & Olufsen television.

Or take the Salford MP Hazel Blears, who has been loudly calling for draconian action against the looters. I find it very hard to make any kind of ethical distinction between Blears’s expense cheating and tax avoidance, and the straight robbery carried out by the looters.

The Prime Minister showed no sign that he understood that something stank about yesterday’s Commons debate. He spoke of morality, but only as something which applies to the very poor: “We will restore a stronger sense of morality and responsibility – in every town, in every street and in every estate.” He appeared not to grasp that this should apply to the rich and powerful as well.

The tragic truth is that Mr Cameron is himself guilty of failing this test. It is scarcely six weeks since he jauntily turned up at the News International summer party, even though the media group was at the time subject to not one but two police investigations. Even more notoriously, he awarded a senior Downing Street job to the former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, even though he knew at the time that Coulson had resigned after criminal acts were committed under his editorship. The Prime Minister excused his wretched judgment by proclaiming that “everybody deserves a second chance”. It was very telling yesterday that he did not talk of second chances as he pledged exemplary punishment for the rioters and looters.

These double standards from Downing Street are symptomatic of widespread double standards at the very top of our society. It should be stressed that most people (including, I know, Telegraph readers) continue to believe in honesty, decency, hard work, and putting back into society at least as much as they take out.
But there are those who do not. Certainly, the so-called feral youth seem oblivious to decency and morality. But so are the venal rich and powerful – too many of our bankers, footballers, wealthy businessmen and politicians.

Of course, most of them are smart and wealthy enough to make sure that they obey the law. That cannot be said of the sad young men and women, without hope or aspiration, who have caused such mayhem and chaos over the past few days. But the rioters have this defence: they are just following the example set by senior and respected figures in society. Let’s bear in mind that many of the youths in our inner cities have never been trained in decent values. All they have ever known is barbarism. Our politicians and bankers, in sharp contrast, tend to have been to good schools and universities and to have been given every opportunity in life.

Something has gone horribly wrong in Britain. If we are ever to confront the problems which have been exposed in the past week, it is essential to bear in mind that they do not only exist in inner-city housing estates.
The culture of greed and impunity we are witnessing on our TV screens stretches right up into corporate boardrooms and the Cabinet. It embraces the police and large parts of our media. It is not just its damaged youth, but Britain itself that needs a moral reformation.

German tax dodgers with money hidden in Swiss banks can sleep easy tonight.

Germany has set back the fight against tax evasion

Those who squirrel away undeclared wealth in Switzerland will be pleased by this deal. What's worse, the UK may follow suit

• 
• • David McNair
  • guardian.co.uk, Friday 12 August 2011 08.00 BST
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'Germany is setting back years of work towards the global prize of ending banking secrecy in the world's most pervasive tax haven.' Photograph: Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters/Corbis
 
 
 German tax dodgers with money hidden in Swiss banks can sleep easy tonight. For the German government this week initialled a beggar-thy-neighbour deal that undermines years of diplomatic work to penetrate Switzerland's globally corrosive banking secrecy. The agreement, which is due to be signed by both governments over the next few weeks, sees Germany accepting a paltry $2.8bn upfront from the Swiss banks said to hold some $276bn of Germans' undeclared wealth . In addition, the deal says that Germans will in future be taxed at 26% on the income from their Alpine accounts – money the Swiss authorities will then hand over to Germany. But the Germans with secret accounts will not be forced to tell the taxman that they are hiding their wealth abroad. Their identities will remain secret, allowing Swiss bankers to keep their boasts about "privacy" and "confidentiality".  Both governments are spinning their agreement as a huge success for international co-operation and the fight against tax evasion. In fact, Germany is setting back years of work towards the global prize of ending banking secrecy in the world's most pervasive tax haven. It has dealt a serious blow to prospects for automatic, multilateral exchange of tax-related information between governments, which is the gold standard for deterring tax dodging. German Tax Justice Campaigners are hoping the deal with Switzerland can be repealed. But what about the scores of countries without the economic and political clout to negotiate such agreements with Switzerland? How are they to capture some of the billions they are haemorrhaging as a result of tax dodging and corruption? They are reliant on the kind on international co-operation that NGOs including Christian Aid are fighting for, in order to End Tax Haven Secrecy. There may be worse to come. Here in the UK, HM Treasury is negotiating a similar agreement with Switzerland. It has simply been biding its time to see what kind of deal Germany gets. With the UK government pursuing such a self-interested and myopic policy, it is no surprise that senior UK diplomats appear distinctly disinterested in playing ball at the G20, where a truly global deal to end tax haven secrecy could be brokered. A former senior US Treasury official, who used to negotiate tax treaties for the US, recently told me of his fury about how these dirty deals are undoing a whole career's worth of work against financial secrecy. Such is the scourge of tax havens that the Tax Justice Network estimate assets held offshore total $11.5tn – which if taxed could yield revenues in excess of $225bn. This is money that could be paying for schools, hospitals, university fees and so on – not only in the developed world but also in developing countries. It is $11.5tn that could be used productively in the global economy rather than stashed away in an Alpine tax haven for private gain. Meanwhile, the real Swiss economy doesn't seem to be benefiting too much from the influx of dodgy capital. Its government this week met for a third unscheduled session to grapple with curbing the surging value of the Swiss franc, which is damaging Swiss exports and sending the economy down a precarious path. Yet again, it is vested interests who are winning out over the real economy and the everyday citizens who are being deprived of essential services, whether in Basel, Berlin or Bamako.

• © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

David Cameron has to maintain that the unrest has no cause except criminality – or he and his friends might be held responsible

These riots reflect a society run on greed and looting

• 
• • Seumas Milne
  • guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 10 August 2011 22.39 BST
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David Cameron talks to acting borough commander superintendent Jo Oakley during a visit to Croydon to view the destruction from the riots. Photograph: Wpa Pool/Getty Images
It is essential for those in power in Britain that the riots now sweeping the country can have no cause beyond feral wickedness. This is nothing but "criminality, pure and simple", David Cameron declared after cutting short his holiday in Tuscany. The London mayor and fellow former Bullingdon Club member Boris Johnson, heckled by hostile Londoners in Clapham Junction, warned that rioters must stop hearing "economic and sociological justifications" (though who was offering them he never explained) for what they were doing. When his predecessor Ken Livingstone linked the riots to the impact of public spending cuts, it was almost as if he'd torched a building himself. The Daily Mail thundered that blaming cuts was "immoral and cynical", echoed by a string of armchair riot control enthusiasts. There was nothing to explain, they've insisted, and the only response should be plastic bullets, water cannon and troops on the streets. We'll hear a lot more of that when parliament meets – and it's not hard to see why. If these riots have no social or political causes, then clearly no one in authority can be held responsible. What's more, with many people terrified by the mayhem and angry at the failure of the police to halt its spread, it offers the government a chance to get back on the front foot and regain its seriously damaged credibility as a force for social order. But it's also a nonsensical position. If this week's eruption is an expression of pure criminality and has nothing to do with police harassment or youth unemployment or rampant inequality or deepening economic crisis, why is it happening now and not a decade ago? The criminal classes, as the Victorians branded those at the margins of society, are always with us, after all. And if it has no connection with Britain's savage social divide and ghettoes of deprivation, why did it kick off in Haringey and not Henley? To accuse those who make those obvious links of being apologists or "making excuses" for attacks on firefighters or robbing small shopkeepers is equally fatuous. To refuse to recognise the causes of the unrest is to make it more likely to recur – and ministers themselves certainly won't be making that mistake behind closed doors if they care about their own political futures. It was the same when riots erupted in London and Liverpool 30 years ago, also triggered by confrontation between the police and black community, when another Conservative government was driving through cuts during a recession. The people of Brixton and Toxteth were denounced as criminals and thugs, but within weeks Michael Heseltine was writing a private memo to the cabinet, beginning with "it took a riot", and setting out the urgent necessity to take action over urban deprivation. This time, the multi-ethnic unrest has spread far further and faster. It's been less politicised and there's been far more looting, to the point where in many areas grabbing "free stuff" has been the main action. But there's no mystery as to where the upheaval came from. It was triggered by the police killing a young black man in a country where black people are 26 times more likely to be stopped and searched by police than their white counterparts. The riot that exploded in Tottenham in response at the weekend took place in an area with the highest unemployment in London, whose youth clubs have been closed to meet a 75% cut in its youth services budget. It then erupted across what is now by some measures the most unequal city in the developed world, where the wealth of the richest 10% has risen to 273 times that of the poorest, drawing in young people who have had their educational maintenance allowance axed just as official youth unemployment has reached a record high and university places are being cut back under the weight of a tripling of tuition fees. Now the unrest has gone nationwide. But it's not as if rioting was unexpected when the government embarked on its reckless programme to shrink the state. Last autumn the Police Superintendents' Association warned of the dangers of slashing police numbers at a time when they were likely to be needed to deal with "social tensions" or "widespread disorder". Less than a fortnight ago, Tottenham youths told the Guardian they expected a riot. Politicians and media talking heads counter that none of that has anything to do with sociopathic teenagers smashing shop windows to walk off with plasma TVs and trainers. But where exactly did the rioters get the idea that there is no higher value than acquiring individual wealth, or that branded goods are the route to identity and self-respect? While bankers have publicly looted the country's wealth and got away with it, it's not hard to see why those who are locked out of the gravy train might think they were entitled to help themselves to a mobile phone. Some of the rioters make the connection explicitly. "The politicians say that we loot and rob, they are the original gangsters," one told a reporter. Another explained to the BBC: "We're showing the rich people we can do what we want." Most have no stake in a society which has shut them out or an economic model which has now run into the sand. It's already become clear that divided Britain is in no state to absorb the austerity now being administered because three decades of neoliberal capitalism have already shattered so many social bonds of work and community. What we're now seeing across the cities of England is the reflection of a society run on greed – and a poisonous failure of politics and social solidarity. There is now a danger that rioting might feed into ethnic conflict. Meanwhile, the latest phase of the economic crisis lurching back and forth between the United States and Europe risks tipping austerity Britain into slump or prolonged stagnation. We're starting to see the devastating costs of refusing to change course.

• © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Is Hummus a near-sacred foodstuff, or a bland, beige paste with good PR?

How to make perfect hummus

Felicity's perfect hummus. Photograph: Felicity Cloake for the Guardian

Whatever happened to the dip? Once the apogee of sophisticated entertaining in their dinky quartered tubs, these gloopy mixtures – thousand island, cheese and chive, the graveyard of a million splintered Pringles – were quietly dethroned, sometime in the late 1990s, by an invasion from the eastern Mediterranean: salmon pink taramasalata, garlicky tzatziki and, most successful of all, hummus, the colour and texture of wet mortar. Suddenly, the world went beige.
Of course, it wasn't long before we made hummus our own, adding sweet chilli sauce, pesto, sun-dried tomatoes – in fact, the chickpea has good-naturedly absorbed well-nigh every food fad that's gripped the nation over the last decade – but despite its popularity, very few of us actually make our own. Which is a shame, because fresh hummus is a world away from the sour slurry, seasoned with preservatives, and solid enough to retile the bathroom with, sold under the name in many supermarkets – and half the price too.

Chickpeas in our time: tinned v dried v posh

The beauty of hummus, as far as I'm concerned, is how easy it is to sling together at the last minute from the cupboard – a tin of chickpeas, a spoonful of tahini, some lemon juice and garlic, and you've got the makings of lunch … as well as plenty of time to reflect upon your sins in using such inferior produce, because no true hummus head can abide tins. They're all wrong texturally, apparently, and the flavour … well, according to blogger Helen Graves, they "pong" to boot. Well, that's me told.
Claudia Roden's hummus recipe with (clockwise from top left), tinned, dried, jarred and skinned tinned chickpeas. Photograph: Felicity Cloake for the Guardian However, in the interests of lazy cooks everywhere, I'm making two identical hummuses from Claudia Roden's recipe in Arabesque – one using dried chickpeas, as she directs, and one with a tin from the cupboard. The dried chickpeas definitely have a nuttier flavour (although, having helped myself to a few, I reject the idea that the others are actively unpleasant), but they also give the hummus a grainier texture. I've obviously been lucky with my tin; according to complaints online, many brands are crunchy and undercooked, whereas the Italian ones sold by my local (Turkish) grocer are fast approaching mushy.
Flavourwise though, I need to trade up, which is where Lebanese food writer Anissa Helou comes in. Although she decries such conveniences in her 2003 book, Lebanese Cuisine ("I do not like the taste or texture of tinned food"), by 2007's Modern Mezze, her attitude has relented: "I used to make hommus the old-fashioned slow way … However, you can now buy jars of excellent ready-cooked chickpeas, preserved in water and salt, without added artificial preservatives".
I find some in my local overpriced organic supermarket, modestly priced at just £2.99 for 425g – but I can at least see the difference. They're double the size of the tinned sort, and the hummus I make with them is buttery and smooth, with what my flatmate describes in a forced blind tasting as a "lovely flavour". If you're going to cheat, do it properly.

Secret (softening) agents

The problem with Roden's chickpeas may well be that, despite lengthy pre-soaking (28 hours, in fact), and four hours of cooking to render them edible, they're just not soft enough. I suspect my local shop, which bills itself as a Mediterranean Supermarket, has quite a high turnover in the dried chickpea department, but the fact remains that, without a pressure cooker, melting softness can be quite difficult to achieve – and it's absolutely vital for good hummus.
Ottolenghi recipe hummus. Photograph: Felicity Cloake for the Guardian Everyone else, from Anissa Helou to Yotam Ottolenghi, recommends adding a little bicarbonate of soda to the soaking water: this time-honoured trick, according to kitchen chemistry whizz Hervé This, prevents the calcium in my London tapwater from cementing together the pectin molecules in the pea's cell walls – in fact, the alkaline water that it produces actively encourages these pectins to separate, producing a softening effect (I recommend a perusal of This's Kitchen Mysteries for a more coherent scientific explanation).
Ottolenghi uses 1½ tbsp bicarb per 500g dried chickpeas: 1 tbsp in the soaking water, and the rest in the pan. After the same soaking period as Roden's, his chickpeas take a quarter of the time to cook – and achieve that lovely fluffy texture which makes such great hummus. Nigella, meanwhile, who makes a very sensible point about the global conspiracy to pretend chickpeas cook far quicker than they do (see also, risotto), uses a slightly different method, credited to her mentor, Anna del Conte.
She soaks the dried chickpeas in cold water and a mixture of bicarb, flour and salt – the last, according to Harold McGee, speeds the eventual cooking time, but reduces the swelling of starch granules within the beans, giving a "mealy internal texture, rather than a smooth one", but the rationale behind the flour I'm unable to fathom. In any case, Nigella's chickpeas take very slightly longer than Ottolenghi's, and have a slightly grittier texture, so I'll trust the latter on this one.
(Two points to note – too much bicarb can give the chickpeas an unpleasant soapy quality, so always err on the side of caution. It's also been suggested that it robs them of much of their nutritional value, but I couldn't find any data on this, or what effect the alternative, a much lengthier cooking time, has: all information most welcome.)

Two top tips

Paula Wolfert hummus. Photograph: Felicity Cloake for the Guardian While trawling through reams of hummus lore online, I come across Paula Wolfert's claim that, during an assignment on "the best hummus in Israel", she discovered that peeling chickpeas gave a "superior colour and flavour" to the end product. The fact that chickpeas even had skins was news for me, but they're actually very easy to slip off, once the chickpeas are cooked; although given the size of the things, it's a mindless, rhythmic activity for a night in front of the telly. I don't like the texture it gives Roden's recipe though – hummus varies from chunky to silken smooth, and this is too far down the latter road to for my taste; more like a mousse than a dip.
Wolfert also passes on a tip she picked up on her trip: mixing the tahini with lemon juice and garlic until it "tightens up", and then loosening it with cold water before stirring it into the hummus – a move intended to create a lighter, creamier texture. She's right on this one – it makes a subtle, but discernible difference, preventing the clagginess that sometimes dogs this dip.

Flavourings

Although I'm not averse to abusing the chickpea's easy-going nature on occasion (I can particularly recommend the carrot and cardamom hummus from Alice Hart's new book, Vegetarian), here I'm sticking to the time-honoured quartet of chickpeas, tahini, lemon juice and garlic – no peanut butter, Nigella, and no dried mint thank you Elizabeth David.
Nigella recipe hummus. Photograph: Felicity Cloake for the Guardian Nigella's basic recipe, however, is interesting in that it's lightened with Greek yoghurt – "as far as authenticity goes, I don't make any claims," she admits, but "homemade hummus can be stodgy and claggy, and I love the tender whippedness that you get in restaurant versions". I agree – it adds richness without weight, but after experimenting, I discover a similar texture can be achieved through judicious application of chickpea cooking water.
I don't think you need the olive oil Nigella adds either; I prefer to keep mine as a topping, to be soaked up by the pitta – but one innovation I will be keeping is her pinch of cumin. It's not a standard ingredient, although by no means unknown in the Middle East, but it makes a real difference to the end result.
The balance of garlic and lemon juice is very personal, but I'd stick with the ratio of tahini to chickpea given here: too much of the sesame seed paste gives a sticky, sweet result – I think even Ottolenghi overplays it. As my tester observes, hummus ought to taste of chickpeas.

How to top it

Hummus is, of course, ideal dipping material, but it can also be dressed up into a proper meal – Ottolenghi's recipe in Plenty has it with broad bean paste, hard-boiled eggs and raw onion (not "the lightest affair, but … completely delicious"), while the recipe in the Moro cookbook includes a sweetly spiced topping of minced lamb, caramelised onions and pine nuts, which I urge you to try. Even if you're serving it as a dip, a sprinkling of paprika, or (my own personal favourite), lemony za'tar, sets it well apart from the common supermarket herd.

Perfect hummus

Felicity's perfect hummus. Photograph: Felicity Cloake for the Guardian Hummus may be simple, but that doesn't mean it's easy – there's an awful lot of disappointing dips out there. Take time to cook the chickpeas properly, and season ever-so-gradually, until the heat of the garlic, and the zing of the lemon suits your particular idea of perfection, and you'll remember just why this unassuming Middle Eastern staple stole our hearts in the first place.
Serves 4
200g dried chickpeas
1½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
6 tbsp tahini
Juice of 1 lemon, or more to taste
3 cloves garlic, crushed, or according to taste
Pinch of cumin
Salt, to taste
Olive oil, to top
Paprika or za'tar, to top (optional)
1. Put the chickpeas in a bowl and cover with twice the volume of cold water. Stir in 1 tsp of bicarbonate of soda and leave to soak for 24 hours.
2. Drain the chickpeas, rinse well and put in a large pan. Cover with cold water and add the rest of the bicarb. Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and simmer gently until they're tender – they need to be easy to mush, and almost falling apart, which will take between 1 and 4 hours depending on your chickpeas. Add more hot water if they seem to be boiling dry.
3. Leave them to cool in the water, and then drain well, reserving the cooking liquid, and setting aside a spoonful of chickpeas as a garnish. Mix the tahini with half the lemon juice and half the crushed garlic – it should tighten up – then stir in enough cooled cooking liquid to make a loose paste. Add this, and the chickpeas, to a food processor and whizz to make a purée.
4. Add the cumin and a generous pinch of salt, then gradually tip in enough cooking water to give a soft paste – it should just hold its shape, but not be claggy. Taste, and add more lemon juice, garlic or salt according to taste.
5. Tip into a bowl, and when ready to serve, drizzle with olive oil, garnish with the reserved chickpeas and sprinkle with paprika or za'tar if using.
Is hummus a near-sacred foodstuff, or a bland, beige paste with good PR? Will anyone come out in favour of tinned chickpeas – or exotic flavourings? – and please, what on earth should I do with 8 bowls of the stuff?

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• © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

A low-carb diet may help clear your complexion

Relaxnews
Wednesday, 10 August 2011

 

While a low-carb diet is credited with providing a slim waistline, it may also improve acne.

On August 8, WebMD News reported that low-carb eating can help clear up acne by controlling glucose levels, which can promote a healthier complexion.

People with acne may have what is called hyperinsulinemia, which is characterized by excess levels of insulin in the blood. "Foods that are low in the glycemic index (GI) may contribute to the hormonal control of acne," said Alan R. Shalita, MD, chairman of the department of dermatology at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in New York in an interview with WebMD.

"I would encourage patients with acne to moderate the amount of carbs that they eat and not to overdo dairy," which can also cause acne, he added.

Selecting foods lower on the glycemic index means avoiding blood sugar spikes with white rice, sweets, and white flour breads and opting for fresh foods, such as vegetables, meat, and fruits.

Shalita also debunked the myth that chocolate triggers blemishes, noting that for people who do react to chocolate, it is more a result of the sugar and fat in the candy.

If you have mild to moderate acne, Shalita recommends applying an over-the-counter salicylic acid cleanser followed by a benzoyl peroxide leave-on product to help dry the skin.

"If you don't respond, see a dermatologist," he said.

Other treatments for more severe acne include some oral contraceptives and oral or topical antibiotics.

For the public, the primary domestic concern is unemployment. For financial institutions the primary concern is the deficit. Therefore, only the deficit is under discussion.

America In Decline

Noam Chomsky

“It is a common theme” that the United States, which “only a few years ago was hailed to stride the world as a colossus with unparalleled power and unmatched appeal is in decline, ominously facing the prospect of its final decay,” Giacomo Chiozza writes in the current Political Science Quarterly.

The theme is indeed widely believed. And with some reason, though a number of qualifications are in order. To start with, the decline has proceeded since the high point of U.S. power after World War II, and the remarkable triumphalism of the post-Gulf War '90s was mostly self-delusion.

Another common theme, at least among those who are not willfully blind, is that American decline is in no small measure self-inflicted. The comic opera in Washington this summer, which disgusts the country and bewilders the world, may have no analogue in the annals of parliamentary democracy.

The spectacle is even coming to frighten the sponsors of the charade. Corporate power is now concerned that the extremists they helped put in office may in fact bring down the edifice on which their own wealth and privilege relies, the powerful nanny state that caters to their interests.

Corporate power’s ascendancy over politics and society – by now mostly financial – has reached the point that both political organizations, which at this stage barely resemble traditional parties, are far to the right of the population on the major issues under debate.

For the public, the primary domestic concern is unemployment. Under current circumstances, that crisis can be overcome only by a significant government stimulus, well beyond the recent one, which barely matched decline in state and local spending – though even that limited initiative probably saved millions of jobs.

For financial institutions the primary concern is the deficit. Therefore, only the deficit is under discussion. A large majority of the population favor addressing the deficit by taxing the very rich (72 percent, 27 percent opposed), reports a Washington Post-ABC News poll. Cutting health programs is opposed by overwhelming majorities (69 percent Medicaid, 78 percent Medicare). The likely outcome is therefore the opposite.

The Program on International Policy Attitudes surveyed how the public would eliminate the deficit. PIPA director Steven Kull writes, “Clearly both the administration and the Republican-led House (of Representatives) are out of step with the public’s values and priorities in regard to the budget.”

The survey illustrates the deep divide: “The biggest difference in spending is that the public favored deep cuts in defense spending, while the administration and the House propose modest increases. The public also favored more spending on job training, education and pollution control than did either the administration or the House.”

The final “compromise” – more accurately, capitulation to the far right – is the opposite throughout, and is almost certain to lead to slower growth and long-term harm to all but the rich and the corporations, which are enjoying record profits.

Not even discussed is that the deficit would be eliminated if, as economist Dean Baker has shown, the dysfunctional privatized health care system in the U.S. were replaced by one similar to other industrial societies’, which have half the per capita costs and health outcomes that are comparable or better.

The financial institutions and Big Pharma are far too powerful for such options even to be considered, though the thought seems hardly Utopian. Off the agenda for similar reasons are other economically sensible options, such as a small financial transactions tax.

Meanwhile new gifts are regularly lavished on Wall Street. The House Appropriations Committee cut the budget request for the Securities and Exchange Commission, the prime barrier against financial fraud. The Consumer Protection Agency is unlikely to survive intact.

Congress wields other weapons in its battle against future generations. Faced with Republican opposition to environmental protection, American Electric Power, a major utility, shelved “the nation’s most prominent effort to capture carbon dioxide from an existing coal-burning power plant, dealing a severe blow to efforts to rein in emissions responsible for global warming,” The New York Times reported.

The self-inflicted blows, while increasingly powerful, are not a recent innovation. They trace back to the 1970s, when the national political economy underwent major transformations, ending what is commonly called “the Golden Age” of (state) capitalism.

Two major elements were financialization (the shift of investor preference from industrial production to so-called FIRE: finance, insurance, real estate) and the offshoring of production. The ideological triumph of “free market doctrines,” highly selective as always, administered further blows, as they were translated into deregulation, rules of corporate governance linking huge CEO rewards to short-term profit, and other such policy decisions.

The resulting concentration of wealth yielded greater political power, accelerating a vicious cycle that has led to extraordinary wealth for a fraction of 1 percent of the population, mainly CEOs of major corporations, hedge fund managers and the like, while for the large majority real incomes have virtually stagnated.

In parallel, the cost of elections skyrocketed, driving both parties even deeper into corporate pockets. What remains of political democracy has been undermined further as both parties have turned to auctioning congressional leadership positions, as political economist Thomas Ferguson outlines in the Financial Times.

“The major political parties borrowed a practice from big box retailers like Walmart, Best Buy or Target,” Ferguson writes. “Uniquely among legislatures in the developed world, U.S. congressional parties now post prices for key slots in the lawmaking process.” The legislators who contribute the most funds to the party get the posts.

The result, according to Ferguson, is that debates “rely heavily on the endless repetition of a handful of slogans that have been battle-tested for their appeal to national investor blocs and interest groups that the leadership relies on for resources.” The country be damned.

Before the 2007 crash for which they were largely responsible, the new post-Golden Age financial institutions had gained startling economic power, more than tripling their share of corporate profits. After the crash, a number of economists began to inquire into their function in purely economic terms. Nobel laureate Robert Solow concludes that their general impact may be negative: “The successes probably add little or nothing to the efficiency of the real economy, while the disasters transfer wealth from taxpayers to financiers.”

By shredding the remnants of political democracy, the financial institutions lay the basis for carrying the lethal process forward – as long as their victims are willing to suffer in silence.

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Noam Chomsky is emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. His most recent book is '9-11:Tenth Anniversary