ZEALANDIA
In February 2021, I wrote a blog about the “discovery” of Zealandia, the eighth continent that many had predicted to exist, but nobody had found. …
GENDER EQUALITY
How is the world doing on gender equality? According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), the picture is mixed. The needle is moving in the …
LENAT
“Writer of common sense into computers” was the header of an obituary I read in The Economist this week for Douglas Lenat. I don’t generally …
RUSSIAN SPIES
I have tended to think that worrying about Russian spies was a remnant of the old Cold War. It has certainly faded from the news …
RICHARD DREYFUSS
We are sending badly educated people to Washington DC to form the government that is supposed to represent us in the American experiment of democracy. …
TOO MANY HATS
“Too many hats” sounds like an admonition of a person who takes on so many different roles that they perform all of them badly. Equally, …
SEA SPONGES IN ZANZIBAR
Sea Sponges in Zanzibar struck me as a story that should have wider circulation. It is, at the same time, heart-warming, topical, and an indication …
THE BULLET
The Bullet is, debatably, one of the world’s most enduring manufactured products. With that statement, you may well think I am talking about the projectile …
STRANGE CONSEQUENCES OF CLIMATE CHANGE
There are many implications and strange consequences of climate change that we haven’t even begun to contemplate yet, and this story of crocodiles and hippos …
WAR OVER WATER
I have written several blogs suggesting “war over water” will be the next world war. We seem to have almost daily examples in our news …