I have just abandoned For Your Eyes Only by Ian Fleming, and I want to tell you why. Most nights, before we go to sleep, I read a little fiction to my wife. We tried it both ways, but it causes my wife to yawn uncontrollably to read out loud, especially at night. We have recently been reading For Your Eyes Only which is a series of short stories about Bond. It’s disappointing for a number of reasons. I had…
I am an advocate of hope. For me, the future is not scary, and nor is change. 137,000 escaped poverty yesterday (source). And another 137,000 will today, too. I believe that, in the long-run, everything will be better than it is now. Dystopia, if it happens, is temporary and is always a small step back on the road towards utopia. In our lifetimes, the internet is arguably the biggest change. My grandmother might disagree, living as she has, through the…
This post is a little bit of prediction – pretending we can see the future clearly, and describing what it will be like. Specifically, I will make some predictions for the global economy in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, climate change, and the supply chain issues arising from COVID-19. How the economy will change: EU and Brexit Let’s get the elephant in the room packed up in his trunk and moved into another room which better suits its…
Let’s face it, the UK is confusing, and so is its flag. The video embedded below is my first made-for-watching YouTube video and explains how the UK became more than one country combined, and how its flag became what it is today. The video sets out to explain why the UK and its flag are confusing. I have included the whole script below the video but the video includes subtitles: Script If you’re watching this video, you are curious about…
I recognize that most of the impacts from climate change can only be mitigated by governments making regulation changes. Without those regulations, landfill might continue to be cheaper than recycling, single-use plastics will remain cheaper than more sustainable alternatives, and gasoline (UK: petroleum) vehicles and machinery will continue to be easier to use than alternatives. A few companies are responsible for most of the world’s carbon emissions, and Americans are by far the largest polluters per head. This article is…
Today, Russia invaded Ukraine. We have known for a while now that Russia was pondering invading. Ukraine, though not a perfect democracy, has expressed an interest in aligning more with the free countries of Europe and has been getting more democratic recently. As a result, Russia’s dictator, Putin, has decided that it needs to ‘protect’ not only those in the east who consider themselves Russian, but also those in the rest of the country who consider themselves Ukrainian. This sounds…
The US used a vaccine mandate to survive the war of independence. This from today’s New York Times (the full article, though behind a paywall, is worth a read): The rationale for workplace mandates revolves around those large benefits: Even in a country that prioritizes individual freedom as much as the U.S. does, citizens do not have the right to harm their colleagues or their colleagues’ families, friends and communities. One person’s right to a healthy life is greater than…
I don’t know much. Nor do you. Every minute more knowledge is gained by humanity than any one person could learn in that minute. And the rate at which knowledge is being gained is accelerating. It has been argued that the last person who knew all that Western science knows died in 1829 (Source). By 1950, human knowledge was doubling every 25 years, and by 2000 human knowledge was doubling every year. By 2018, it was believed that human knowledge…
If you’re like most people, you will have seen the image in this post and thought something like “Why is the world upside down?” If you’re particularly keen, you may have noticed that the countries in the extreme north are also smaller than usual. So: What am I up to?
Yesterday, I posted a proposed flag of New Hampshire that meets some more of the good design principles of flag design. See that post for more information. Brian Cham made some comments about the design of my New Hampshire flag, which I think were quite right. My wife also suggested that it was not “flag-like”. Given a few hours of rumination, I have now modified that design slightly. I have added two more mountains, to make the “White Mountains”, plural,…