Or rather, about men calling themselves feminists (yo, sorry for the click-baiting). Help me out here. Why am I (a bloke) hesitant about men applying the “f” word to themselves? Am I wrong/irrational? If so, why? If I am right, why? [UPDATE 9th March - please read the comments if you have time - there... Continue Reading →
How did we NOT act on climate change when warned about it in the late 1980s? How did we manage to ignore the science and increase our emissions by as much as they needed to be decreased? (Setting aside that this is what we always have done, that we are not the Enlightenment beings we... Continue Reading →
Went to something on “radical information literacy.” The questions are Who knows things, how to know things/find them out, how to critique sources and figure out when they are being manipulated by friend or foe? Et cetera. At least it flags up that a simple “information deficit” model is grotesquely inadequate for explaining why we... Continue Reading →
Professor Matthew Paterson gave a seminar on "the Cultural Politics" of Climate Change at the University of Manchester. See also this interview conducted via email before the event. This was part of the Sustainable Consumption Institute's external seminar series. Here is the video (which was static, while the speaker was not!) And here is the... Continue Reading →
Please see this excellent and important film. Covering a few vital months in the history of the US Black Civil Rights struggle in the mid-60s, it sweeps you along, forcing you to think, feel and hope. It received justifiably positive reviews in the States (with predictable carping about historical accuracy (1). Opening with Martin Luther... Continue Reading →
Will there be a long loud legal global (LLLG) signal coming out of Paris? No (two words – "US Senate"). Two linked questions; a) In the absence of a LLLG signal/deal, will there be the enormous investment in renewables, energy efficiency and 'leap frog' technology transfers that would be necessary to change humanity's energy systems?... Continue Reading →
A lively debate about the near and long-term future of western civilisation took place yesterday in central London, at the launch of the book “The Politics of Green Transformations”. The edited volume based on work of the STEPS centre, was the centrepiece of an event at the National Liberal Club, and provoked a conversation about... Continue Reading →
Was at an event only advertised on Twitter (how 21C is that?) I met some interesting people. One of them was the chief twitterer himself, Mark Carrigan (see post "coping with acceleration.") In a discussion about the ‘need’ for branding and the intensification of academic (if not intellectual) life, Carrigan approvingly cited the work of Will Davies,... Continue Reading →
"Some of you may have had occasion to run into mathematicians and to wonder therefore how they got that way, and here, in partial explanation perhaps, is the story of the great Russian mathematician Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky a blog post! You have to stretch yourself, swim out of your depth on occasion. The seminar I... Continue Reading →
What does the ‘waste’ go when you flush? The citizens of Baltimore found out the ‘hard way’ in 1989, and again in 2014. Johns Hopkins Assistant Professor Graham Mooney (separated at birth from his identical twin) gave a thoroughly enjoyable seminar about something we don’t like to think about – “biosolids” (or, to you and... Continue Reading →
