Watch this Space...

At some time in the future I'll be writing a review of The Meaning of the 21st Century by James Martin.

In it he mentions "the tragedy of the commons" and how companies should factor in the cost to society and cost to the environment of their activities, as well as more familiar expenditures.

These ideas are similar to those explored by Genichi Taguchi in the eponymous Taguchi method of industrial design.

Just thinking aloud. Read and prosper.

Slightly later: LARRY NIVEN'S WRITTEN A NEW KNOWN SPACE BOOK! Thanks.

Purge

Because I have new years resolutions to draft I want to get all the bile out of the way as quickly as possible so that I can enter 2008 a clean vessel ready to be filled with another year's worth of anger, fear, depression, hatred and smug vindictiveness.

Here is an essay that, even though I don't live in the USA, has inspired me to new levels of self-righteous arrogance. Doing the right thing for the wrong reason is such a joy.

Here is a HowTo at Vice magazine that is so un-PC I could weep. Bravo.

And Charles Stross has written a wonderful Christmas wishlist. I'd add one of these neat-o Soviet supersonics as well.


And to round off: we need nukes! Nuclear power is brilliant! Long live Monty Burns! Hooray for the atom!

Technology

I was in the Manchester Museum recently (it is rather good), and I saw a rather splendid display of bows and arrows. These were in many different styles and from many different cultures. There were little interactive displays that told you how the bows were made. An awful lot of effort and craft goes into what I had always assumed was a simple piece of wood.

Thinking about this as I struggled to operate my rapidly aging Sony Ericsson K750i it occurred to me that nowadays that level of development is rarely reached. Innovation and evolution happen so quickly that there is no point in refining a particular device. Hence mobile phones and mp3 players are rather unpleasant and tacky. Good design does crop up occasionally but the general rate of development is such that avenues of design are left unexplored and concepts are left incomplete.

Putting aside speculative discussion of a spike or singularity in the near future I sometimes wonder what “technology” and devices will really be like in, say, a thousand years time. What will human beings look like and how will they move around? In what manner will they reach orbit? Will they even bother?

In the realm of the state change seems constant and always disruptive. The pointless and dangerous desire to collate and store information is partly simply due to the technology being available to do it. This leads to accidents.

I feel privileged to live in this time of change but I do sometimes wonder if humanity will ever achieve an equilibrium with its environment. 99% of human history consists of people living in hunter-gatherer style societies. The current "singularity" we're living through will presumably result in either out destruction or in some new equilibrium. I wonder what it will look like.

An Observation

Why is it that marketeers seem to think that people really use their laptops in grassy parks?

In every university prospectus on the "online" page there will be a picture of an attractive student sitting in a park using an Apple MacBook Pro.

For some reason these people also frequently barefoot.

Why would anyone be using the web in the middle of a public park without any shoes?

Objections:

1. You'd get mugged.
2. Students that can afford MacBook Pros can also afford appropriate footwear.
3. Most grassy parks are not the sort of places you want to walk about barefoot in.
   

American Gangster

I went to see American Gangster. It was rather good. I made the – not original – observation that the only ethnic group not heavily represented in organised crime in the USA are the WASPs. This is because they got in early and legalised all their rackets. Hence instead of drug smuggling, gun running and racketeering you have General Tobacco, Boeing and the World Bank.

Happy Birthday Arthur C Clarke

Happy birthday Arthur C Clarke!

Stephen Fry

Every so often I come across some piece of writing, drawing, idea, or scientific theory that is so goddamn good that it depresses me that I will probably never be able to create something half as good.

I've been re-watching the first season of The West Wing recently. I've also been attempting The Guardian cryptic crossword. I've also been catching up on Stephen Fry's blog. All these things are wonderful. Two of them are guaranteed to make you feel warm and fuzzy and smart. The crossword is a bit of a downer until you get a word and then you feel on top of the world.

Fry's blog is actually "a joy to read." The simple act of reading it makes you happy. I've been linklogging everything he's written because it is of such superlative quality.

This blessay is especially brilliant: Fry summarises the positions of the three broad attitudes towards global warming and why (in game theory terms, considering what it is at stake...) it is most correct to adopt an attitude that holds that CO2 emission should be reduced.

A Problem...

I just thought of something: when you say "Christian" or "Catholic" or "Muslim" you immediately think of someone who has adopted a particular set of ideas and beliefs. These beliefs will generally include:

1. A belief in God, and a belief in some kind of personal relationship with God
2. A belief that the world is the way it is because of God's will
3. A particular moral code and lifestyle

When you say "atheist" the first two are essentially the opposite:

1. There is no God
2. The world is the way it is for reasons other than God or the supernatural

Number 3. is absent. There is no immediate identification with any kind of moral or ethical code in atheism.

I appreciate that Dawkins, Hitchens et al are approaching the problem from the front end - attempting to persuade those who have settled into lazy agnosticism to actually express their atheism openly.

Morality is ultimately a creation of people - not God - and as such atheists should be clear that whilst they reject God, irrationality, and the power structures these things support they are in fact advocating morality more strongly than religionists.

Atheists strip away the fretwork and tinsel of religious ceremony and expose the uncomfortable truths that we are all profoundly alone (in the sense that there is no omnipotent divine being) and our only comfort is in each other and as such we should support and respect each other as best we can.

Atheists should be clear that morality is everything. There is no cosmic scorecard, only the people who surround us, how they judge us and how we judge ourselves.

The Hydrogen Hoax

In Robert Zubrin's latest book Energy Victory he argues that liberal, wealthy countries should wean themselves off oil as a prime mover because OPEC and most specifically the House of Saud funds Muslim terrorism and radicalises moderate Muslims.

The money to fund this radicalism comes from oil revenues that come from us in Europe, North America, and Asia. This money is then used to radicalise the Muslims amongst us.

Also, because OPEC sets the price of oil over what the free market would set it at, OPEC prevents developing countries from accessing the cheap energy they need to develop.

A line quoted in this article on Zubrin's book at The Register concerns the "hydrogen economy" - something I've always felt was a canard:

"It’s all pure bunk. To get serious about energy policy, America needs to abandon, once and for all, the false promise of the hydrogen age... Hydrogen, therefore, is not a source of energy. It simply is a carrier of energy... an extremely poor one."

It's nice to have my own opinions vindicated by people who know what they're talking about.

Datagate

I initially felt more contemptuous of the media than of the government following the loss of those data disks. Rationally I realised the seriousness of the problem, but after I checked my bank balance and it became clear that there has been no widespread identity theft I realised that the media has been turning this into a story of government incompetence when it is really a matter of state incompetence generally.

So some fool messed up somewhere. This sort of thing happens all the time in big organisations.

[And why is Alastair Darling being criticised over Northern Rock? He couldn't nationalise it earlier and he made the right choice in securing people's savings. The fact that it will now cost the electorate is irrelevant. This is why I could never be an elected politician: I despise the electorate. All those whiny, self-involved bloggers and commentators with their precious and ill-concieved opinions. Ugh. (And yes, I am referring to myself as well as everyone else...)]

When will people learn that the government has a very small ability to actually affect people's lives and that this is something we should be thankful for? The state has a much greater direct impact on our lives and the state will always be big and monolithic and dysfunctional (even when it's trying to be hip and efficient by outsourcing non-core tasks to the public sector).

"Datagate" just goes to show that the state should stick to its core tasks of welfare, healthcare, defence, justice, and money supply. Trying to analyse and micromanage every aspect of the lives of every citizen only leads to a greater possibility of these sorts of mistakes happening.

Also: why isn't Gordon Brown concentrating on his vision of equality of opportunity for everyone? Why isn't he pushing this forward at every opportunity and making it clear to everyone that this is what he stands for?

Unavoidable errors can be forgiven if politicians can provide a moral story and justification for their continued stay in power. I don't particularly object to the state losing the data disks as no harm was done and as long as they ensure it won't happen again.

However the lack of an inspirational narrative from Gordon Brown on the environment, equality of opportunity and social cohesion means that all that will ever stand out about this government will be its mistakes and blunders.

George Monbiot

Global warming is a problem that needs solving. Polly Toynbee's fellow Guardian columnist George Monbiot is infuriatingly demanding when it comes to carbon dioxide emissions.

"A 90% emissions cut by 2030" is one of Monbiot's stated goals. Although this is technically feasible, it almost certainly won't happen.

The problem is energy. If you list, as Richard E. Smalley does in his Terawatt Challenge, the biggest issues facing humanity over the next 100 years you would probably get something like this:

1. Energy
2. Water
3. Food
4. Environment
5. Poverty
6. Terrorism and war
7. Disease
8. Education
9. Democracy
10. Population

A moment's consideration reveals that energy is fundamental to all of the problems after energy, with the possible exception of terrorism, war, and democracy - but there is no denying that the politics of energy have an enormous effect on war and terrorism. With enough energy you can accomplish anything.

As of this moment there is a vast chunk of humanity (>4 billion) with access to considerably less energy than I do. This is unfair, of course, and in order to promote increased living standards we need to find energy for all the people who don't have enough.

Monbiot's argument in Heat is that we in the UK are currently using "too much" energy. This is inaccurate. We are using precisely the amount of energy we choose to consume. We are however emitting too much carbon dioxide.

In order to stop the twin catastrophes of global warming and global poverty we need more energy and less CO2 emissions. This will be difficult and will require many of the solutions already suggested: increased efficiency, nuclear power, sequestration, and lifestyle alterations.

Finkelstein

For several months now I have been trying to put my finger on exactly what about Polly Toynbee's attitude towards high-pay for bankers and CEOs I find so distasteful.

Her argument is that it is morally incorrect for footballers, directors, and bankers to be paid quantities of money so much greater than other people, whilst these "other people" include many who experience poverty.

Daniel Finkelstein wrote in a recent article:

"...what all these people have missed is that wages are not a statement about status or a measurement of moral worth. They are a price for a service..."

He makes the point that if you personally disapprove of how much someone is paid then you do not pay for their services.

In the case of footballers' salaries you do this by not purchasing Sky, watching ITV, attending matches or buying club merchandise.

In other words the market, through the invisible hands of supply and demand, will decide the salary of each person based on the demand for the services that person can provide.

Toynbee would rejoin that markets are prone to failures and that the massive bonuses for company directors are an example of this. The directors can influence how large their salaries are and each year the amounts paid increase, as the directors decide they'd like more and more money for their troubles.

In the case of large public companies shareholders would presumably take action against any directors that paid themselves too much. It is the shareholder's prerogative to ensure the director is providing a good service for a fair price.

I prefer the materialistic logic behind Finkelstein's argument to the self-righteous moralising behind Toynbee's.

The problem with Toynbee's arguments is that her methods and goals always seem to require greater state-intervention. I don't believe "the free market" is any better than the state at deciding who gets paid what, but I respect the point that things are the way they are because our current system sort-of-works.

And our economy is still growing and the world is becoming a more pleasant place to live.

A Bit of Fry and Hari

Today my topic is one of problems. Problems are often defined as particular questions or sets of options. In the case of immigration the problem is usually phrased:

"How can we reduce or control immigration so that it becomes a positive force within our society rather than a negative force?"

And, as always, the way the problem is phrased begs the question: "Is immigration a negative force right now?"

Blurgh.

I don't really care about immigration. It's a Daily Mail issue and has been parsed entirely in terms of being something negative, despite the obvious fact that with an aging population it is entirely necessary that we import cheap, youthful labour to care for our elderly.

Many of the great debates in life, the universe and everything devolve to questions that are misapplied. When I say I don't care about debating about God or poetry or global warming or the the ethics of scientific research (empiricism and the scientific method in the real sense of the concept is/should be gloriously free of these considerations, that it clearly isn't is regrettable) I don't mean I don't care. I mean I don't care about the issue as it is usually expressed because I feel it has been misrepresented.

Take transhumanism and the closely related issue of AI. Putting aside the vast technical and scientific barriers to both, the debate is often put in terms of "should we pursue this line of research?" This is a ridiculously stupid question to ask. The appropriate response is:

We are already pursuing this research in a form you don't yet recognise as transhumanist research and AI research.

Even more succinctly, and with regard to transhumanism you could say:

We are already transhumans and could well be considered posthumans.

Consider: prior to the industrial revolution humans were essentially bright apes and they (or other organisms) provided the majority of the energy required to run civilization. We are approaching a period in human development where manual labour might well become obsolete. The key lies in the control mechanisms.

It is still massively cheaper to employ Chinese humans to make most things than to develop and manufacture a robot capable of doing the same job.

Similarly with construction: the problem here requires a robot capable of navigating a building site, following vague instructions, applying "common sense" to problems, drinking tea and reading The Sun: all of which are as yet beyond the capabilities of even the most complex (or simple-minded, in the latter case) non-biological machines.

The point is that I wear glasses and wear clothes and take drugs and read books and use a pocket calculator and function much better, and am much happier, than I would be if I did not do these things.

Scientists of many different disciplines have made it their business to model parts of the human brain and the neural structures of other animals and have been doing so for decades.

Meanwhile genetic engineering continues apace. If you're smart enough to identify the red lines that mark any particular area of research as being dangerous then you're probably smart enough to cope with the outcomes. If you can't identify the red lines then we're probably fucked anyway.

Fukyama's argument boils down to the precautionary principle. The precautionary principle is flawed for all the reasons discussed by Ray Kurzweil in The Singularity is Near, so I won't bother going into it.

Johann Hari's recent article touches on a subject dear to my heart: transhumanism. As a devoted absorber of the teachings of More, Kurzweil, et al, I am always happy to see reference to this interesting ideology in the national press.

(...as an aside, and due to the purchase of T-shirts and prints by myself and many others the sublime Dresden Codak is to be published weekly!)

Apart from a reference in New Scientist a few years ago and a few "eccentric American" stories in The Guardian and other newspapers this is the first serious reference to transhumanism I've seen in the Dead Tree Press. Doubtless more will emerge over time and it will begin to gain credence (or at least name-recognition, which is all you seem to need these days c.f. Boris Johnson) amongst the general populace.

Hari also makes an excellent point regarding the criticism of transhumanism by Francis Fukyama. The debate has been warped to fit the extremes. Either we ban all research that might lead to the creation of a separate posthuman species or we actively pursue such research to the end of creating such a species.

As Hari points out, bickering over creating new species of human is pointless and stupid. Evolution only seems static to us because it works on such a long timescale (but not unthinkably long - only about 40 000 years separate us from prehuman hominids).

I think, like Hari, it is much more sensible to concentrate on the possibilities to create smarter, faster, stronger, healthier, more long-lived people.

The Gattaca issue, that maybe one day humanity might be divided between haves and have-nots, between the rich and the poor, between the upgraded and the legacy, between the Eloi and the Morlocks is also silly.

Human beings have always suffered inequality of health and ability due to inequality of wealth. The key to liberal democracy lies in all individuals being equal under the law (the problem of defining individals, particularly with regard to posthumans, is an issue for another day).

The issue for transhumanism is how to provide people with better lives and greater powers of self-expression and more opportunity for happiness. The issue is not the creation of a new species, although this might be a means to the end of creating more opportunity for happiness.

As always the problem is not as it is phrased, it is something altogether different. In the case of Stephen Fry's recent blog posting (which The Guardian has taken on as a series of articles) the issue as it is often phrased is "do you prefer looks/form to functionality?" in the context of consumer electronics.

Of course, as Fry points out, when it comes to a device you use every day form is very much tied up with functionality. For me beauty in consumer electronics stems from design, and design is also a key component of usability and hence functionality.

If a house is a "machine for living in" then that house should look aesthetically pleasing or it is not fulfilling it's function.

Anyone who claims that those who reject the existence of God are "close minded" is treading on thin ice. The debate should be not be: "does God exist?" The debate should be: "how did the universe begin?"

There are, I assert, ways of finding out if God exists. If God exists then presumably those who pray to God for help will achieve statistically higher in their endeavours than those who don't pray.

If there was a correlation between frequency of prayer ("faith" is difficult to measure) and say, salary, then you could begin to build a hypothesis for the existence of something that could be called God.

I'd be interested to see if any such research has been done and what the result was. I suspect as I am not aware of any such research then the results (if any) did not suggest God exists, as I'm certain the various Churches would be trumpeting it to the heavens.

Of course prayer is there as a comforter. I, as a secular humanist, choose to reject it as a piece of mental transhumanism that is not self-contained enough to be safe.

Faith in God or manifest destiny is too powerful and dangerous. Singularitarianism and transhumanism is as open to corruption as any ideology but, like liberalism, the fundamental precepts of the transhumanist meme are overwhelmingly positive.

Any corruption of liberalism would cease to be usefully described as such. So with transhumanism. Then it devolves to word games and Orwellian propaganda.

I feel it is much better to form a core of easily expressible beliefs and live by them. In the case of humanism this is all there is and I am alone.

This sucks. I'd like to do something to make this last longer and something to make me less lonely.

So transhumanism is the next logical step after humanism.

del.ici.ous

Since indulging in the web 2.0 goodness of del.ici.ous I have had less cause to blog. Suffice to say that little has caught my fancy recently.

My first six weeks at university (of Manchester) have been enjoyable and uneventful. I'm back home for reading week and have another four weeks at uni after this before Christmas.

Life is good.

North, South, Britishness and Class

Class is everywhere in Britain. Middle class people seem obsessed by it and often write insightful articles about the attitudes of the middle class (guilt and fear) and (presumably from observation through a powerful telescope) the attitudes of the working class/poor people.

Class is one of those issues I feel very strongly about but have absolutely no idea what I feel. Is it a problem, or is it part of our national identity and therefore something to be celebrated? Is it right or wrong? Should we be proud of and identify with our fated caste?

Recently there has been much discussion over some research from Sheffield University over the "new North-South divide." This fits in with discussion of class: as with class, most of the debate centres around the stereotypes: the comfortable, Daily Mail-reading, wine drinking suburbanite southerner and the poor, flat-cap wearing, beer-swilling, urban (or rural?) Northerner.

Recently I was in Lancaster (in the North) and saw a poster advertising a particular brand of chewing gum. The tagline was: "softer than a shandy-drinking southerner". The advert was remarkably fit for purpose. It also occurred to me that the advertiser had done an excellent job plugging into (presumably) local feelings of identifying with "the North."

I also wondered what the distribution for this poster could be expected to be. I was surprised when, after taking the train from Lancaster to Birmingham, I saw the same advert in Birmingham.

So if Sheffield University thinks the North-South divide runs between Bristol and the Humber Estuary, where do Cadbury Schweppes think it is, based on the distribution of their inspired advertising campaign.

Disclosure: I am a major shareholder in Cadbury Schweppes. No, just kidding! I don't even like chewing gum that much.

Mechanism Design

There is a fascinating article over at Reason Online about the theory of "mechanism design" and how it won Leonid Hurwicz, Eric Maskin, and Roger Myerson the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Mechanism design is the study of how to create institutions that produce desirable outcomes whilst respecting privacy of the individuals the institution interacts with, and respecting the fact that individuals are self interested.

The "institution" in this context is taken as a simple mechanism that takes input from "agents" or individuals and produces some output.

This is very relevant to the UK today. Our current government has adopted a fairly authoritarian attitude towards the public. ID cards, DNA databases, and increased surveillance (2) are all aspects of this tendency towards advocating control and authority.

I don't have particularly strong feelings on any of these issues. I doubt very much whether any ID card biometric databases would be competently administered.

However I think it is worth studying how institutions (like the state) behave.

According to the article on Reason Online, it is fairly difficult to "design" such mechanisms from the ground up. The free market functions, but is prone to failures and interference. States function, but are also prone to failures and also tend to extend the influence of the state.

I am interested to see if any of these economic theories are ever applied in real life. Presumably one day we will stumble across an optimum method for dealing with scarcity (but, I suspect, not before scarcity itself has been reduced somewhat by technological factors), a sort of Economics 2.0.

Bjorn Lomborg

I've just been reading a profile of Bjorn Lomborg on the Times Online. Lomborg has recently published a book: Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming. Lomborg (there is a o with a cross through it in the vowel of his first name) seems to be talking a lot of sense: he accepts that global warming is happening and is caused by human activity but rejects the belief that we should place "stopping global warming" at the top of our list of priorities, because:

A: No one is actually really doing anything to stop global warming. If we are serious about reducing our emissions of carbon dioxide and methane then we would immediately take certain steps. This simply isn't happening on the scale required to make a difference. Ergo, if no one really intends to do anything then there's no point doing anything, as the consequences of a full-blown global warming event will be equally devastating as a minor full-blown global warming event (i.e. one where we try to reduce our emissions somewhat).

B: There are much bigger problems in the world that we can see are causing suffering right now and that can be clearly and conclusively linked to various factors: the spread of AIDS in the African continent, the decreasing availability of crude oil and natural gas, wars in Iraq and elsewhere. All these are more immediately important than anthropogenic global warming and the problems are on a scale that makes it more plausible that we might be able to do something about them.

Lomborg suggests an annual $25 billion fund to study global warming. He also suggests that the problem can be solved through technological means.

As is observed in the profile the biggest criticism that can be levied against Lomborg is that of techno-utopianism. That he rejects what many environmentalists believe is the only workable solution to anthropogenic global warming: a harsh and sustained lessening of human ambition in terms of our industry and some elements of our standard of living.

Another criticism is that he underestimates the impact of global warming. I find it irritating when environmentalist charities publish images of natural disasters as "evidence of global warming" - as if natural disasters haven't always happened, and often aren't connected with the atmosphere (c.f. the Boxing Day Tsunami, the Majil Earthquake of 1990, the Landers Earthquake etc), or as if "climate change" hasn't occurred in the past. I suspect we'll never be able to accurately quantify the "impact" of climate change, but we've come up with some reasonable predictions of the impact and how the problem should be dealt with.

However the basic question is this: "Is there something humanity can do right now to prevent enormous and avoidable suffering in the future without unacceptable sacrifice now?"

I count creating an international superstate powerful enough to override the will of all other authorities in the pursuit of a reduction in emissions as an unacceptable sacrifice. I also count any reduction of development and industrialisation (if these are what is takes to improve the standard of living) in developing countries as an unacceptable sacrifice.

Another of my hang-ups concerning environmentalism is the refusal to discuss cost-benefit in terms of climate change. Environmentalists tend to view the Earth (a lump of iron and silicates with a thin outer layer of volatiles and light elements) as some king of spiritual being or godlike entity that must be worshiped. There hasn't been any mainstream discussion of benefit along the lines suggested by Freeman Dyson in this recent article at Edge.org.

Consider the following two scenarios:

1. Sub-Saharan Africa is given a certain number of carbon credits. The constituent countries of Sub-Saharan Africa are each encouraged (by the USA, EU and China) to sell these credits to multinational corporations (based in the USA, EU and China) and also directly to the USA, EU and China.

The countries of Sub-Saharan Africa do this, and get a lot of money, which is spent on aid but cannot be spent on industrialisation, as the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa are now required to limit their emissions of carbon dioxide. As a result there is some improvement but on the whole living standards remain behind those of the USA, EU and China.

Over the next century a series of environmental and ecological disasters that are strongly linked to anthropogenic global warming (largely caused by the emissions of the USA, EU and China) wracks Sub-Saharan Africa, millions die or are displaced. The EU struggles to cope with the influx of refugees. There is a humanitarian crisis of a scale unseen in human history.

2. Sub-Saharan Africa is given a certain number of carbon credits. The constituent countries of Sub-Saharan Africa are each encouraged (by the USA, EU and China) to sell these credits to multinational corporations (based in the USA, EU and China) and also directly to the USA, EU and China.

The countries of Sub-Saharan Africa do not do this, and begin the long and sometimes painful process of industrialisation. As a result there is a constant and sustainable improvement in living standards until Sub-Saharan Africa has parity with those of the USA, EU and China.

Over the next century a series of environmental and ecological disasters that are strongly linked to anthropogenic global warming wracks Sub-Saharan Africa, there is enormous suffering, but the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa are now rich and developed enough to take it on the chin. They invest in flood defences, irrigation, advanced farming methods, nuclear power, air conditioning, and continue to thrive and prosper despite the changing climate.

This is based on the assumption that little positive action is taken to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, and that the West represses industrialisation in developing countries.

I agree with Lomborg in his rejection of the idea that we should scale back human ambition in the face of global warming and climate change. I don't see why we should stand for it. I'm also increasingly uneasy about the lack of positive action being taken.

I feel if the nation states of the world feel that it is necessary to scale back industry, commerce, transport, and generally dismantle the machinery of globalisation (I have no clue as to whether globalisation is a good thing or not, let me finish, don't bug me...) then they should do it. I suspect this would be a Bad Idea, but I would be hard pressed to prevent them from doing so if they wished.

On the other hand if they're not going to do anything serious then they should stop wasting time and money on point-scoring commentary and pointless prevarication. I gather from what Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth et al are saying that action needs to take place now and it needs to be widespread and drastic. Anything less won't help, so why bother?

It's a bit of a Catch 22 situation in this respect: we can choose to promote technological and industrial development or we can choose to scale back industrialisation and the use of technology. In the first case we are better prepared to deal with climate change, in the second we're hoping it won't happen.

In conclusion I would say that I agree with Lomborg's arguments (as they have been reported, I haven't read his book) but suspect that he might perhaps be underestimating the scale of the problem, but I do believe it isn't beyond human ingenuity to come to an acceptable compromise between our ambitions and our prosperity or successfully deal with the consequences of inaction.

Note: I don't actually believe carbon trading is pointless (though it is potentially controversial) but I'll leave it in because I like the alliteration.

Strider Robot

I love how elegantly designed this three-legged robot is. With regards to a War of the World's full-sized model, the pilot would have to be suspended in a gyroscope within the body. The gyroscope would keep the pilot steady as the mechanism moved.



As to the application suggested in the video: this puts me in mind of Minority Report, and the scene where tiny three-legged robots are released into a building by policemen to identify every individual's (John Anderton/Cruise hides in an ice-filled bathtub to disguise his heat-signature from the IR-sensitive robots) iris.

One more step towards the Panopticon State.

Stephen Fry is Blogging

...and his blog is excellent. Superbly well-written, rather like the text-based equivalent of an episode of The West Wing. You feel you could lose yourself in the words even if they contained nothing of interest (and the articles are fascinating). Fry's posts have so far covered consumer electronics (yay!) and an in-depth analysis of the fame phenomenon, so they are fascinating in and of themselves as well as being brilliantly written.

Toynbee vs. Inequality

Hari has always impressed me with his insightful articles on a wide range of topics, and his ability to come to reasonable conclusions. I’ve always felt the social-democratic commentator Polly Toynbee concentrates too much on top-down methods of “solving” inequality.

7 out of Toynbee’s most recent 32 articles revolve around criticising the extremely wealthy for avoiding taxes, or the government for allowing the extremely wealthy to avoid taxes, or simply stating that executive pay is too large, the workers in the City are paid to much and it is disgraceful that the UK has become a tax haven.

She is right to say these things but I can’t help feeling that there are much bigger and more immediately practical issues to concentrate on, like the state of the bottom ten percent in terms of income, or the environment, or education. I suspect Toynbee has been suffering just as much as the rest of the upper middle classes when it comes to the recent influx of HNWIs and UHNWIs. My feeling is that there will always be rich people for whom the rules are slightly different, and I suspect that on balance these rich people are virtue-neutral, if not a slightly positive influences on our society. I think the biggest problem is that for anyone north of Slough, the problem is not extreme wealth (as it is in London) but extreme poverty, and Toynbee has found herself too far south of the border.

She should be concentrating her considerable talents as a polemicist on discussing ways for reducing poverty, not whining about the extremes of wealth that some enjoy. Obsessing over wealth makes her position unattractive to those she is trying to persuade (it reeks of the politics of envy) and alienates her from her natural supporters - the poor and the needy, for whom the world of non-doms, hedgies, private-equity barons and billionaire oligarchs remains frustratingly distant and inconsequential.