I imagine that many of us often raise our hands in despair when thinking of how to change the social and economic system under which an entire planet is yoked. A profit driven system, with those profits going to just a few as the planet is trashed and the majority struggle along, often going without. …
Author archives: HM
Guns ‘n Massacres. All the rage among teens
Tragically, we speak not a pop band but another senseless massacre by gun and, as nearly always, in the USA, this time in Texas. Disingenuously, gun lobbyists declare it has nothing to do with guns. Gun control advocates; that it has everything to do with it. The latter position might seem to be the most …
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Re-education Vacation
Dear Mr Xi Jinping,I read about the re-education camps in your country. They look fabulous. I’ve been thinking of attending summer school for a while, and this sounds ideal. How can I apply?Your faithfully DPC Ed
Free Energy Evangelists Hiding Something
Watching the experts on Free Energy demonstrate their secrets of perpetual motion raises a small question. Why not make money from the free energy method they’ve discovered rather than making videos about it? A comment by jetplaneflyer on the video below perhaps answers this: “When I was at school we made a very similar electric …
Cats, Psychology, And Nonsense
If asked to decide on the matter, Erwin Schrödinger would very likely have answered that the cat was “going both up and down the stairs, until you looked at it.”
Airbnb and the Elephant in the Room
Following the announcement by KPMG and Netflix to suspend operations in Russia and Belarus over the attack on Ukraine, the CEO and founder of Airbnb has announced similar measures for the global holiday rental platform. Speaking on the BBC Radio 4 Today program (7 March 2022), Brian Chesky talked of a difficult decision that in …
Corporate Misinformation and Slight of Hand
The American Petroleum Institute provides an important public information service. Though this is mainly on behalf of the fossil fuel sector, and not actually for the advancement of truth and public understanding. On a page entitled “Natural gas is alternative energy”, the API boldly states that “Natural gas is an alternative and natural form of …
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Perversity of Modern War: Russia and West poised for war while we all watch Netflix
In a July 2020 interview on the rounding up and imprisonment of the Uighur people in China, BBC journalist Andrew Marr showed a clip of the human rights abuses to the Chinese ambassador to the UK, clearly uncomfortable at the scenes before him. “Can I ask you why people are kneeling blindfolded and shaven and …
Climate Change: A Short Experiment in Politics
Climate change can be viewed as a handy, planetary scale, natural experiment whose outcome will cast new light on the politics of left and right. In amongst the gathering climate disaster and impending catastrophe of unchecked climate change there is an uncounted blessing. Small comfort though it is, we might finally have a test that …
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Climate Change Denial
Climate change deniers argue that if anthropogenic global heating is real, there is little to worry about because geoengineering will fix it. The best response to this is to pose the counterfactual, and ask whether a cold planet could be made hotter, and if so, what would be the best mechanism for achieving that? Raise …