More holiday spirit.

Dear Ethan,

Every year I give the gift of a goat to Africa, on the basis that a goat provides poor Africans with milk, cheese, grass-grazing skills, and company during those long, TV-less nights in the jungle – and it also helps them to continue living sustainable, machine-free lives. Yet now Animal Aid tells us it is wrong to give animals to Africans at Christmas time, because these beasts ‘add to rather than diminish poverty’, and what’s more ‘where impoverished people cannot afford to feed and care for their animals, those animals endure extreme suffering and die’. Aaah! I don’t want my paid-for goat to suffer at the hands of some witless African! Ethan, what should I do? Keep giving the goats – or rein them in?

Peaches Ciccone West London

Dear Peaches, . . .

it is too risky to entrust animals to a continent where the RSPCA has very little clout and where PETA has tried but failed to bring about a cultural shift in attitudes to wildlife and pet-life. So instead of giving a goat to Africa, I suggest you sign up with Oxfam and ‘give the gift of dung’ to Africa, as that wonderful charity describes it. Yes, for the price of a Starbucks coffee (if you are inclined to drink from that evil capitalist establishment), you can send a bucket of manure to a poor African family, which allows them to fertilise enough crops to keep them alive for exactly one year. And if you’ve already bought a goat, fear not – just collect together its shit, put it in a well-sealed box, and post it to Sierra Leone for the attention of ‘Poor Farmers In Need of Assistance’. Africans will certainly ‘know it’s Christmas’ when they receive a box of juicy, life-giving animal faeces.

Update: Better than dung

Iodine deficiency affects up to 2 billion people, impairing at least 18 million children mentally each year and most likely costing mankind several billion IQ points. Iodized salt is cheap, safe and even OK to fairly strong libertarian anti-forced medication views.

The scary part was that I, a researcher in cognition enhancement, had not thought about it before. I have been looking at lead and other heavy metals, even folate and other nutrients, but I had completely overlooked this key micronutrient. A good reminder to read the literature more carefully, and a demonstration that sometimes massive improvements can be achieved surprisingly simply.