I was going to write about why people are irrational, but the sheer stupidity of the EU bureaucracy trumps ordinary irrationality. Continue reading
Politics
What happend to increasing leisure?
Thirty or forty years ago widely expected that as technological advances made labour more productive, working hours would shorten and the biggest problem, at least in develop countries, would be educating people to enjoy leisure instead of working. This has clearly not happened, so what went wrong? Continue reading
Socialised is bad?
The logic of open access to research is simple: if taxpayers pay for research, taxpayers should be able to see it without also paying (very expensive) subscriptions to academic journals. Similarly, non-profit organisations like the Welcome Foundation want the research they fund to be used by as many people as possible. Continue reading
Ignore terrorism
I have lived in two cities (London and Colombo) which have been heavily targeted by terrorists. Bombs twice went off somewhere I was going to. I have once been close enough to see serious injuries. I have always regarded it as a duty to to simply carry on with life as normal, and I still regard this is the best way to deal with terrorism.
Terrorism is a means by which small groups with limited resources can cause serious disruption and gain wide publicity. As their aim is to disrupt our lives, we can best defeat them by not allowing our lives to be disrupted. Continue reading