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…
ArsTechnica has a thoroughly researched and very well-written article about how well the COVID-19 vaccines protect and whether they are worth getting if you have already been infected by any of the virus’s five variants: Read about the COVID-19 vaccine as at March 28th, 2022.
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 spent the last weekend with some evangelical Christians who I like on a personal level. They all believe that they are called to “spread the word”. Despite a genuine intellectual interest from me for most of my life, they have all singularly failed to communicate a positive image of Jesus and, especially, his followers. This article explains how fundamentalist Christians could get it right, but instead get it wrong when it comes to sharing their world view. First, everyone…
I have long been concerned about following web standards (and any others that apply to me) to ensure maximum accessibility for readers of my website (and others I maintain). I recently attended a brief training that covered the definition of accessibility. It’s wider than I realized. Accessibility can be defined in terms of people’s disabilities – something like “the product or service can be used regardless of a user’s disabilities” – but it’s better to define it more broadly as…
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…
If you’re in the market for a new car, and if you have a place where you can charge it, then you should be looking to buy an electric car. Unless you can’t afford it, anything else – if you don’t mind me being direct – is immoral given that climate change is already happening and is killing five million people per year – a number that will only increase in the future. Shopping for an electric car is hard…
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…
I am an American Citizen, but aside from the legal documentation, I am culturally a foreigner. Because of this I have some experiences that I suspect others never have, or have less often. Before I tell this story, I think you need to know about a difference between British and American homes that is really obvious to a visitor from one to the other: British homes are made of different materials than American ones. In England, homes are almost all…
The COVID vaccines have been rejected by some people, especially in the USA. The reasons vary from lies about the use of aborted babies in their production, to doubts about how well they work. (A so-called ‘pro-life’ group has said there are no moral reasons not to use the Moderna, Pfizer, Astra Zeneca, or even Johnson and Johnson vaccines – source 1, source 2). To clarify that they do work, these graphs provide a very clear, simple comparison of similar…