Why my Uncle Bill was Contemptible
When Germany invaded Belgium and France in August 1914, many people on both sides thought it was going to be something of a walk over. The Germans put two and a half million armed…
Science
The Wisdom of Crowds
Since the beginning of the “age of the common man” in the nineteenth century, there has been a widely held belief that, as Henry Thoreau put it, ‘The mass never comes up to…
Why SOE gave away Britain’s top war secret to the Nazis
At a crucial stage of World War II, the Special Operations Executive deliberately allowed one of its most closely guarded top secrets to fall into Nazi hands – as part of a…
Why Freud is important to the future of science
Most of Freud’s ideas are considered rather old-fashioned today, but I suspect that, before we exiled the old boy so completely, we should have checked his luggage more…
Can the UK afford standards after Brexit?
Writing on the effects of Brexit, tax expert Richard Murphy asks whether the UK is capable of meeting international standards once we leave the EU. He writes, “Saying we will…
Lies, damned lies, and immigration figures
University College London (UCL) prides itself – rightly – on being “London’s leading multidisciplinary university, with 11000 staff, 35000 students and an annual…
The limits of reason?
Everyone educated at a European or American university in the past 50 years has emerged with the tenets of Western Scientific rationalism as the foundation of that education and…
What if we just walk away?
Despite repeated claims that our membership of the single market has been beneficial to the UK economy, no-one ever actually studied the matter or examined the evidence that…
“Science is not a liberal conspiracy”
The title of this blog is an aphorism coined by Dr. Neil de Grasse Tyson, the American astrophysicist and populariser of science. Tyson has taken on the mantle previously worn…
Perpetual Emotion?
Perpetual motion is scientifically impossible, right? The impossibility of energy for nothing is not merely a matter of habit of thought with science. It is enshrined in one of…