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© James Whinfrey 2007—2012. All rights reserved.
This week Adam Curtis turned his eye on humans and how science reduced us to nothing but machines controlled by genes bent on their own survival, controversial as always.
At my Father’s bidding I just watched the first episode of All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace on BBC’s iplayer – a first for me – and found myself compelled to try and organise my thoughts. As a sometimes blogger, and at the risk of commoditising myself, it seems appropriate to do that [...]
I’ve just watched an edition of “People and Power” on Al Jazeera about the situation in Yemen. It ignored the government Officials to focus on the views of Yemenis from both sides of the political divide, and there does appear to be two sides in Yemen. If that’s the case in Yemen then may be [...]
I’m occasionally subject to interesting, if abstract thoughts, and the most recent to pop into my mind concerned the nature of physical shape. It seems to me that shape is too dependent upon solidity of matter, and this raises a problem, because the existence of anything solid feels filled with intentionality.
I’ve always loved pipe following: the practice of getting to know how chemical process plants work. Get yourself a set of process flowsheets, a few engineering drawings and get out on the Plant. You trace the flow of feedstocks as they turn into products through the network of pipes, pressure vessels and other process machinery.
I’ve just watched a Bloomberg piece on the sequel to “Wall Street” and the “Greed is Good” culture that surrounded it. They interviewed a number of the leading characters of the real Wall Street at the time, and most called the prolonged Bull market of the ’80s and exciting time. I was too young to [...]
My wife ordered an Amazon Kindle 3 a couple of months ago, but recently decided that an Apple iPad was much more to her taste. When the Kindle finally turned up last week it was all mine, and I’d been very much looking forward to it.
This is a problem I came across recently as a client who’s an artist explained that she wanted to grow her online presence. However, when I explained that we needed to present a consistent image of her work, she expressed concern.
I’ve often wished I was more mathematically talented, particularly when I sat my ‘A’ levels. My frankly mediocre performance isn’t due to disinterest, I’ve always found mathematics to be fascinating. But it wasn’t until I watched the BBC series “Story of Maths” presented by Marcus du Sautoy that I realised why.
From a historical perspective the Conservative Party has always been out on it’s own, first opposite the Liberals and later the Labour Party. Is it any wonder they’re less than keen on Proportional Representation (PR) when they’ve never polled more than 49.7% of the vote?
What is the meaning of “strong government”? I’ve heard the term bandied about by many people over the last couple of days, but no one’s tried to define it for me. It appears that it’s just one of those things we must want without knowing what it actually means.
I’m trying to renovate my bathroom at the moment, it’s looking and feeling a bit run down. I don’t want to replace everything, just those parts that are beyond repair, so that I’m not needlessly adding to landfill. Who’d have thought it would be so hard on my wallet and my time?
The huge cloud of volcanic ash that’s sweeping over Europe from Iceland has had a devastating effect on air travel. Personally when I saw the story on the news last night it struck me as wonderful. It’s true that I’m a little strange, but it really is an event full of wonder.
The terms ‘Carbon Neutral’ and ‘Sustainable’ are often found invoked in the same context, but they’re not necessarily compatible: carbon neutrality can be achieved without, or even at the expense of sustainability.
I attempted to describe what being a Professional actually means to me in a recent conversation with my brother. I have to admit it started me examining the concept more closely.
I understand that if your working life depends on effective transportation all the snow chaos around the Country isn’t fun. But what if modern life wasn’t so dependent upon travelling, could life become more relaxed? Travel could be something of choice, not obligation, and our lifestyle might be a little more robust at times like this.
Further to my shock revelation about the Government and climate change — OK I realise it’s been obvious all along — I’ve come up with another idea to focus our personal efforts.
I’m not normally given to naivety and unrealistic bouts of optimism, but last week I discovered to my surprise that I genuinely expected some positive agreement on climate change from the Copenhagen summit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those campaigners on the TV, or that pour forth tweets, and I haven’t been glued to the news from Denmark, but at the end of the conference I have to admit to feeling a little deflated.
We evolved to be adaptable as a response to environmental uncertainty. Have we created a social structure that neutralises this attribute for avoiding extinction?
Very little in science and engineering is as precise as we’d like to believe, and climate change is no exception. What’s more, we have no right to expect that it’ll become more clear cut at any point in the near future, so we have to make our decisions based on what’s on offer now.
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Constructed by Conceptric to be Powered by WordPress.
© James Whinfrey 2007—2012. All rights reserved.