I don't know about you, but I make lists of things I don't know (from reading the FT or whatever) and when I have enough, I go on a google binge. Here is the latest... Adam Mickiewicz 1820 Ode to Youth Martin Amis' notion of “species shame” 1975 article by Steven Kerr folly of rewarding... Continue Reading →
What is innovative, and social, about Social Innovation?
I don't know. And I don't really address that in this blog post. Apologies if you feel click-baited or rick-rolled. I went to a seminar on Wednesday about “Social Innovation Futures: beyond policy panacea and conceptual ambiguity” It was good – clear presentation of relevant work, good questions (except perhaps the first one, which was... Continue Reading →
Geo-engineering – last throes of the dice/species
So there is a new National Academy of Sciences report on the idea of 'geo-engineering.' That's a soothing sounding term for "doing technical stuff at a global scale to escape/lessen the consequences of having ignored the climate scientists' generation of warnings to cut back on the carbs". For instance there's - mirrors in space to reduce... Continue Reading →
From smugosphere to inkosphere
The inkosphere is "that place where people dive into words, concepts, theories and splash about, the size and sound of the splashes becoming the measure of all things." It kinda overlaps with the smugosphere - I'll do a Venn diagram some day. The smugosphere? - "is not a place you’ll find on a map. It’s... Continue Reading →
Reading between the li(n)es: Policy Document Analysis
Fresh from a session on “Social innovation” (with a useful PhD writing interlude) I went to “What is… Policy Document Analysis?” These “what is…” events are put on by the methods@manchester folks.Sometimes ‘sage on the stage followed by q and a’ is okay. This was one of those occasions. Imma bullet point it, (#wearealldeadalongtime) Documents... Continue Reading →
Fun foreign words – Sehnsucht and Duende
Just the words, ma'am? Then skip the first two paragraphs. I have a glancing familiarity with some languages (French, Danish, Portuguese; minimal smatterings of others). One of the delights is learning words that have no direct translation (and then dropping them casually into conversations, in a puerile attempt at intellectual chest-beating. But I haven't done... Continue Reading →
On the Stepper: #ImStickingwithTony (not). Tech history, Field -Configuring Events, normative utopia
Was on the stepper on Thursday, reading about the global coal trade (Thank you IEA Coal Information 2014 and World Energy Council survey.) And yesterday, reading about the Australian Coal Export industry (more on that soon). Today was broader, and perhaps more fun (!?) I started with a speech by the soon-to-be-former Prime Minister Tony... Continue Reading →
Replica(n)ting empathy – or “What psychoanalysis can do for YOU”
Blooming heck. It’s not every day that you get to spend two hours in the presence of someone who, with zero flashiness, expands the floor of your mental cage every five minutes or so. (1) There was a CIDRAL (Centre for Interdiscplinary Research in Arts and Language) panel/symposium thingie at the Tin Can on Oxford... Continue Reading →
From “All Our Yesterdays” – Jan 28, 1987 – a warning from history
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 →
