Here is a brisk piece by Tim Harford on Causation and Cigarettes, where he looks at how Big Data help (helps?) us see patterns that were not obvious before or confirm our previously unproved hypotheses: We cannot rely on correlation alone, then. But insisting on absolute proof of causation is […]
Finally, this other one from the now-defunct Business and Politics website. How many times do I have to rail against Football Fascism before people in this country get the point? It started off with Labour’s Football Fascism. Now it’s spread to the unlikely pages of Conservative Home and Tim Montgomerie […]
Here’s another one from 2010. Although can we really say that five years on the Conservative-led UK coalition government really sent out any of the right messages? There has been an oddly half-hearted, pessimistic tone throughout. Jeremy Jacobs thinks that I am being too harsh in saying that it is […]
Back in 2010 when I was young and optimistic and had more time than nowadays, I poured out work for a website called Business and Politics. That site has vanished, as sites do. So my work is no longer accessible. But some of the pieces are still a jolly romp […]
After all the tomfoolery getting this iMac 5K Retina delivered, it did finally arrive. And what a device it is. Talk about minimalism. The computing power is built into the screen. Yet the screen at the edge is about the thickness of the pencil. You lift it from its box. You plug […]
A grotesque situation of post-modern techno-bureaucracy unfolds live, before your very eyes! On Wednesday I ordered from Apple a wonderful new iMac 27″ Retina machine. Naughtily expensive, but VERY nice. I was told to expect it on the following day via UK Mail, “but if for some reason it doesn’t arrive, […]
Actor Michael Sheen makes a ‘blistering’ speech about the UK National Health Service. Hurrah! If only our milksop politicians would have a bit of that passion and sincerity! Or not. Here is the speech. It’s a fine example of a good but very bad speech. Rather like the ill-fated Neil […]
My latest piece for Commentator, co-authored with Pratik Chougule, describes in broad terms how we might do some good solid work to build on the Obama Administration move to start normalising US relations with Cuba, by actively but sensibly doing the spadework needed to help Cuba get ready for the day a […]
Almost there with my ebook. Thanks for your patience. We recently noted two consecutive movie speeches offering very different techniques for engaging with an audience. Yes, I mean Black Dynamite! I have been pointed to this other superb pair of consecutive movie speeches, this time offering substantive policy and moral […]
The Internet offers endless hours of amusement watching Russian (and to be fair others’ too) car crashes. Russia seems to be especially well endowed with footage of these startling episodes, as its drivers like to carry a karkam, a small forward-pointing video camera on the dashboard. This is useful if there […]
