I have a side project - a website on which I blog something that happened "that day" in "climate" (that's a loose term) history. Today there's two posts - here's the second... An extra "All Our Yesterdays" post today, in honour of two excellent scientists, Professor Veerabhadran Ramanathan and Professor Wally Broecker. It was Ramanathan's work... Continue Reading →
Social Movement learning from academic research (or “looting the ivory tower”)
Barriers There's the translation problem. Namely, academics write like, well, academics. There are a finite number of activists who are both willing and able to loot the Ivory Tower and then translate information into digestible bits for other activists. And those finite activists have very finite time, energy, attention, morale and bandwidth. This, of course,... Continue Reading →
“The window of opportunity for UK banking reform will close soon” or “Augars well, but doesn’t augur well.”
One hundred people, mostly pale male and stale, met tonight at Manchester Business School to take part in an 'attack' on capitalism that fell somewhere between Rooseveltian reform and a savaging by a dead sheep. The event, organised by “Manchester Capitalism” and co-sponsored by Manchester University Press and the Business School (full disclosure: imma student... Continue Reading →
Stepper: Augmented miners, Academic games, reputational repair and rehearsing the apocalypse
Mix of what I read on the train yesterday and what I read on the stepper this morning; Bassan, J, Srivnivasan, V. and Tang, A. (2013) The Augmented Mine Worker: Applications of Augmented Reality in Mining CSC Australia Lots of good stuff here. It's a bit more complicated than sticking googleglasses on folks and hooking... Continue Reading →
Stepper: “Energy Flow in #Australia” -1978 article, depressing prescience…
On stepper this morning I also read some Financial Times, natch. But here is the short version: in Australia there was a small, well-connected and highly intelligent “epistemic community” (h/t Peter Haas) around energy/climate from the mid-1970s onwards. People like Mark Diesendorf, Hugh Saddler, Roger Gifford, Graeme Pearman. Many of them are still alive... And... Continue Reading →
Barriers to Social Movement (reflective) Learning. Burblings
There are so many reasons we don't DO reflective learning. We live in our habits/routines/comfort zone (as as Charles Duhigg points out, habits can be Good things) Time (lack thereof) Energy (exhaustion) It's difficult to reflect. We get little or no training. It's not something we are encouraged to do in school. It's far more... Continue Reading →
Song lyrics and meaning: “Grey Seal” by Bernie Taupin (performed by Elton John)
Got me an ear worm. Heard this on the stepper at t'gym on Sun 18th January. Googled it, read about it, loved it. Lyrics in italics, my version in square brackets. Apparently Taupin says he doesn't know what the song means. I think his unconscious was hard at work... Why's it never light on my... Continue Reading →
Stepper reading: Delayism from IPA, Mann’s “Serengeti Strategy” and “policy dictators”…
So, started with “The Greenhouse Panic” by Dr Brian Tucker, who was a leading player in the CSIRO's climate efforts, and wrote a 1981 book on the “C02 connection”. From his obituary I knew that he'd gone to work for the (libertarian) Institute of Public Affairs. This article,written in mid-1995, (IPA Review, Vol. 48/1) is... Continue Reading →
How to scupper international negotiations #425; remove the “too competent” diplomat
How do you slow down international negotiations that you aren't keen on without being Too Obvious about it? One way is talent-control. Make sure that someone who just might succeed where you want the process to fail is removed... Here's a fascinating interview that I stumbled upon that speaks to just that. It's Professor Jason... Continue Reading →
Do digital natives learn electronically? Or “The Panspectron and the Ivory Tower”
Can information technology help us “in the real world”, as students and scholars? Marc Hudson attends a link-heavy lecture and comes away inspired and a bit overwhelmed. The startling factoids come thick and fast in Professor Derek France’s talk; Over 90 percent of students have a smart phone or mobile device, The average number of... Continue Reading →
