The challenges Lots of people. How do they live? There are more people than the world can sustain without ever more technical interventions. Does anyone consider the energy these interventions might need to satisfy the richer and most able financially, who manipulate their personal economies so well? More humans, more…
Ivor Ralph (Rafe) Edwards The title is from something my father used to say. I always thought it rather odd. Surely the more one knows the better? Today, we are overwhelmed by information and data. As I get older I process it more slowly, as colleagues, friends and family have…
Have you heard someone say “change is good” recently? I have, more than once, and I don’t like this expression. Change is something different from before. It is not intrinsically good, nor bad. The reason for change may be good or bad or something in between; and the result may…
On warfare, propaganda and difficult choices The government of Sweden has now abandoned a 200-year-old strategy to keep out of formal military alliances. There may well be compelling reasons for a change – many politicians argue that there are - but the forced pace of this decision and the lack…
Last time I went to the airport I heard a woman saying to her friend “Isn’t it odd that we managed to put people on the moon before figuring out that it would be a good idea to put wheels on suitcases”. Quite so, I thought. In the 1960s we…
Att tro att det finns total objektivitet och EN sanning i infekterade politiska debatter förefaller naivt, i vissa fall rentav på gränsen till livsfarligt. Många hänvisar till att de ’lyssnat till vetenskapen’ när de uttalar sig i olika frågor. Men vad betyder det egentligen? De flesta forskare vinnlägger sig om…
Waking up this morning, I have a few blissful seconds of serenity before a deep feeling of gloom washes over me, like an unstoppable wave. The sadness and anger over what’s happening in the world, our world, my world, fills every crevice of my half-awake mind, and I struggle to…
Dear Mr. Putin, Please stop this war before you damage your reputation completely by being responsible for the loss of ever more lives. You are waging a war apparently on the basis of a POSSIBLE threat from the Ukraine and NATO. If there are any grounds for such a threat…
Having left my employment last year, I’m not sure what to say when people ask me “what do you do?” To explain that I do all sorts of things, thinking, reading, writing, volunteering in a school, dog-walking, not to mention being a working board member of two family companies would…
To say, “I hate yellow” or “I hate sausages” is trivializing a dangerous word. Saying, “I hate Catholics or Jews or Muslims or whites or black people or…..” is not just harmful, hurtful and dangerous, it is illogical The United Nations has the following to say about hate speech. “Hate…