Whoop!! My tenth letter published in the FT (mostly they are on climate, but also Tom Lehrer etc, and with a roughly 50% success rate of submit-appear). https://www.ft.com/content/bdf57e59-aba0-4f81-ae5c-872bbcd3c9ec In his letter (April 30) responding to Anjana Ahuja’s column about the now fixed Voyager 1 (“Rejoice! Voyager 1 is back from the dead”, Opinion, April 26),... Continue Reading →
Letter in the FT: Of Terminators and Time Lords (and corporate technodomination)
Whoop! Another letter in the Financial Times. Your editorial "The Science of Successful Succession" (FT 4 November) ponders the possibility of digital overlords running companies. In 1984 James Cameron's film "The Terminator" gave us "Skynet", a sentient computer that started World War 3 rather than be switched off. Eleven years earlier the BBC's Time Lord Doctor Who... Continue Reading →
FT Magazine letter: orbs, Woody Allen, Buster Keaton
Published in the FT Magazine, 19 August 2023
WHOOP! A letter in the FT, abt Tom Lehrer
My wife has made the outrageous accusation that I buy the Financial Times merely to come up with letters to submit to it. Oh, by the way. Alison Jamieson ("Memories of Little Britaly, FT Weekend, April 8) writes of an Italian ice-cream vendor offering potential customers a taster. It put me in mind of one... Continue Reading →
Unpublished FT letter, on Just Stop Oil, Thatcher and social movements… @JustStop_Oil
Another failed letter (my one success this year was in May. See here). The excellent letter from Patricia Finney ('It's simple physics and chemistry - climate change will kill us all', FT 17 December) will hopefully give readers o the FT in high places pause for thought. There are two points I wish to clarify.... Continue Reading →
Letter in the FT on prolonged institutional resistance to #ClimateAction
One last November and now another... Here's what I sent - they edited it lightly. Pilita Clark writes with her customary verve and clarity on the dangers ahead from climate inaction and special pleading by the corporate sector ("Magical thinking on fossil fuels endangers safety, FT Weekend, April 30). Four pages earlier, you reported resolutions demanding... Continue Reading →