Blog

Main audience: everyone It’s time for a break from serious topics. Let’s take a look at the garden, as we do every summer. We’ll start with the front today. Click here to read more.

Main audience: everyone Today, I suggest reading Robert Reich, specifically his post about the USA’s financial system. It has been months since I warned (gently, I hope) to expect major disruptions. Reich is in a much bigger league than me, … Continued

Main audience: everyone About rising authoritarianism & oligarchy bedeviling us, I see some layers of support for it discussed, but hardly ever people who can’t or won’t grapple with ambiguity. Click here to read more.

Main audience: everyone What happens when a university is subjected to coercive pressure by the government? If we are ever going to say how we want universities to behave in the face of such pressure, we’d better do it now. … Continued

Main audience: everyone For every research university in both of my countries, one of the ways to cope with diminishing funding from conventional sources is commercializing inventions coming from the research. But it has to be done intelligently and seriously … Continued

Main audience: everyone Six months ago the USA turned upside down. That has made the world a very different place. It feels like an appropriate time to make an extra effort to find out whether I should make adjustments to … Continued

Main audience: everyone Look at IBM’s definition of Artificial Intelligence. Think about what we are calling AI. In all the hoopla about it, what we have is still far short of that. So what do we have? What is it … Continued

Main audience: everyone I want to see people walk on the moon again. I hope it will not only ramp up science there again, but also help us remember the glimpse of humanity at its best in those exhilarating days … Continued

Main audience: everyone Flu virus changes so fast, our vaccines are always behind & not as effective as we would like. What if an annual jab could be almost twice as effective at fending it off as well as help … Continued

Main audience: UK people In the UK, while memory of a heat wave is fresh, it’s a good time to think about what you can do to handle more heat waves—especially as the Met Office says they will become hotter, … Continued