Posted in belief, cars, cliques, correspondence, cycles, enmity, friends, individual, intuition, lies, mind, morality, opinion, person, psychology, research, safety, society, transport, truth, understanding on August 11th, 2010 2 Comments »
To the editor of Cycle, the CTC magazine:
Sir,
It’s always a shame to see factions of CTC cyclists still arguing with each other over whether one “ought” to either wear, or be forced to wear, a helmet. The argument last in a recent couple of letters pages rears its head so often that the editor might [...]
Posted in climate, cliques, consumption, crime, education, enmity, environment, location, people, politics, pragmatism, research, responsibility, society, truth, understanding on December 31st, 2009 2 Comments »
Christmastime and Christmastide wait for no man, and there’s been plenty to prevent me from following up on my doom-laden thoughts about COP15 and what might happen if it failed: which it did. Before 2009 draws entirely to a close it’s probably worth a few brief words on the subject.
It’s important to acknowledge from the [...]
Posted in buildings, cars, central_heating, climate, coaches, consumption, cotswolds, cycles, decor, environment, journeys, location, online_applications, people, public, research, responsibility, society, technology, time, trains, transport, understanding, web on December 13th, 2009 3 Comments »
Last year I discussed my carbon audit for 2008. I use The Carbon Account to keep as close a track of my personal carbon emissions as possible. This year I’ve been keeping a similar record, but the result is confused and a bit unimpressive: the bottom line is a CO2 equivalent of 2.8 tonnes. You [...]
Posted in climate, education, environment, far_right, language, location, morality, opinion, person, philosophy, politics, pragmatism, rants, research, semantics, society, technology, truth, understanding on December 6th, 2009 No Comments »
I admire skepticism. Being cool-headed about empirical situations helps you make informed conclusions, and hence decisions, even as you might labour under the pressure of those situations.
Science constitutes formalized skepticism: strictly so in its theoretical, dehumanized sense; more approximately so in the way that scientists as a whole practice their craft. But science’s skepticism is [...]
I’ve been a Popperian for years. That’s not to say I’m a fan of Robert Popper (although I am); rather that I susbscribe broadly to Karl Popper’s philosophy of science. The basic tenet of it is that science advances only through making audacious predictions; that such predictions are ones that ought, given our existing experience, [...]
Posted in climate, cotswolds, cycles, education, environment, experience, inspiration, location, nature, research, seasons, technology, time, tools, transport, understanding on March 10th, 2009 3 Comments »
Tonight I cycled home during both a moonrise and a sunset. The sky to the west was cloudless, shading from a liquid blue to a sort of strawberry pink at the horizon, with the moon peach-coloured and sitting on it; over to the east, the sun was struggling down hunkering down through dark grey duvets [...]
Posted in cliques, dphil, mind, occupation, organisations, past, person, research, society, time, understanding on February 23rd, 2009 5 Comments »
I decided to cancel my membership of the Institute of Physics. I’m no longer working in the industry or academia generally, so the organisation wasn’t really offering me anything any more. The monthly journal was interesting enough but ended up skimmed rather than read, certainly compared to the way I devour the LRB or Private [...]
Posted in blogs, charity, climate, columnists, communication, diary, dickheads, editing, environment, experience, idiom, instant_messaging, journalism, language, location, loyalty, media, nu-media, opinion, parties, rants, research, society, spelling, syntax, technology, understanding, wisdom_of_groups on February 18th, 2009 1 Comment »
I used to love The Register. It stood up for digital rights, stuck the knife into governmental IT projects, shone the light on ID cards and gave due attention to the largely pointless and wasteful intrusions of technology in the form of CCTV or the database state. But for the past twelve months or so, [...]
Posted in blogs, climate, commenting, dickheads, environment, journalism, lies, location, media, nu-media, opinion, publishing, rants, research, truth, understanding on January 31st, 2009 10 Comments »
Bad journalism should not be mistaken for bad research. For example, via Brennig comes an instance of the BBC casually and cavalierly cutting and pasting from the inaugural speech. This is pretty low, but hardly a surprise. It’s certainly no lower than the levels to which the BBC, the Mail, the Sun or the rest [...]
Posted in cars, christmas_2008, climate, environment, journeys, location, online_applications, public, research, seasons, technology, time, trains, transport, understanding, web on December 7th, 2008 2 Comments »
I track my main sources of carbon emissions using The Carbon Account. You put in your mileage—it works out your car’s efficiency from its make and model—and your meter readings—it works out your electricity’s greenness from your provider—and it does the rest. Here’s a graph of my carbon emissions for 2008: the recorded total for [...]
