“Please think about the environment before printing this email.” It’s a request many of us are probably familiar with. It seems reasonable, but it also implies that an email, and by association the web, is a green medium. Sadly, this isn’t exactly true. What if I told you that the Internet is the largest coal-fired […]
Category archives: Opinions
Rolling your own carbon offset scheme
Before going any further here, I want to make it clear that I’m well aware of the shortcomings of carbon offsetting, wonderfully satirised by the folks behind Cheat Neutral. However, carbon offsetting is undeniably better than doing nothing. And as sustainable as you might try to be, it probably isn’t enough. The World Resources Institute […]
Brutalist design is the bad influence we all need
For the past few weeks, I’ve been living in the French ski resort Flaine. It’s a bit different to most ski resorts. Whereas the general aesthetic of a ski resort is picturesque wooden chalets with smoking chimneys, Flaine is a brutalist concrete paradise. The Barbican of the Alps.
Joining the POSSE
About two years ago, I decided that I wanted to “take back control”1 of my data. I had been mulling over the idea for some time, conscious of arguments that had been raised by web celebs like Jeremy Keith and Jeffrey Zeldman. I became aware of a growing movement known as POSSE – Publish (on […]
There are no words…
The man in the middle of the photo below (in the baseball cap) is Thomas Muir. Thomas was a member of Britain First, and last year he murdered Jo Cox MP while shouting the name of this organisation. In France, a road has been named after Jo Cox in honour of her life and in […]
I wrote to my MP to ask her to support my views in a parliamentary debate, her response was to tell me I was wrong and she didn’t even attend the debate
(Update: It turns out she also didn’t bother to actually write a letter to me either, see the bottom of the post.) For a multitude of reasons, I support proportional representation (PR) systems of voting. The UK currently operates a first-past-the-post (FPTP) system of voting. This means that almost every Government in power in the […]
Can’t you take a joke?
During “the final” last night, I stumbled upon a tweet from Julia Hartley-Brewer. If you haven’t heard of her, and it’s understandable that you wouldn’t have, she’s one of these “journalists” who presents a talk radio show and pops up on current affairs programmes like Question Time and The Andrew Marr Show. Here’s the tweet: […]
No, I don’t respect the outcome of the EU referendum
In the last 36 hours, many people I know have passed through the various stages of the Kübler-Ross model of grief (denial, anger, bargaining etc.) in the wake of the EU referendum. Most of them now seem to be reaching stage five, acceptance: “I’m not happy with the result of this referendum, but the people have […]
George Monbiot on the Cumbrian floods
Depressing yet fascinating article by George Monbiot on the Cumbrian floods: Do little, hide the evidence: the official neglect that caused these deadly floods
Robb Wolf, mental illness, and the bollocks du jour
Just as I was dosing off a few weeks back, my brother mentioned that Robb Wolf (messiah of the paleo diet’s disciples) had tweeted about how vegan diets were linked to mental disorders.1 He read the tweet out to me. At first, I wasn’t particularly concerned about the actual link. I’m very sceptical of the […]