Perhaps the biggest policy skeleton key of them all has to be single-payer, free-at-the-point-of-purchase (that is, paid for by strangers) national health insurance / social security. This is, let us be frank, a new experiment. The first test subjects are still alive, and the future sustainability of these nice entitlements is far from guaranteed. What … Continue reading The fine print
What I read in 2021, the comprehensive list. How to read this list: * = Recommend** = Really recommendNC = No comment (or, really, do not bother)RR = Re-readF = FictionNF = Non-fictionP = Plays No, I won't be posting purchase links, I suggest you purchase a copy of whatever sounds interesting from your favourite local second … Continue reading 2021 a Year in Books
“I don’t know what’s worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone.”~ Daniel Keyes It seems like one of the themes that emerged, again and again, in 2021 was the warning to be careful what we wish for, because what will … Continue reading Flowers for Algernon
As futurists, our role is to help others understand the world as it is; the likely futures ahead if we don't do anything about it; the trade offs and choices we face; and the complicated potential and probable unintended consequences and collateral damage of our present and future decisions and the incentives that shape them. … Continue reading Bad frames
Society is being virtualised in two different ways. Firstly, in the literal sense, as in how more and more of our experience is being digitised. The continuous is continuously being made discrete. What is digitised and discrete can be codified, flattened, and managed into "computer says no/go" rules which allow us to (at least pretend … Continue reading Virtualised and Discrete
“What can it profit a man to think if he does not dare to?” ~ Henry Hazlitt Henry Hazlitt is one of my favourite clear thinkers. The Way to Willpower is a straight talking guide to personal motivation (not my favourite genre by a long stretch, but somehow Hazlitt makes even self improvement bearable). The … Continue reading The Way to Willpower
“Evil comes from a failure to think. It defies thought for as soon as thought tries to engage itself with evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds nothing there. That is the banality of evil.”~ Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality … Continue reading Machette Season
The Red Queen is a long, hard look at human nature. It reminds us that in spite of our skyscrapers and space rockets, we humans are still, deep down, naked apes with animal instincts and desires. The most base desire we (as a species and as individuals) have is for immortality - genetic immortality, creative … Continue reading The Red Queen
"Eppur si muove" And yet it moves. Terry Pratchett's Small Gods is a sage tale for times when nothing is real, anything is possible, the rules are made up, and the points don't matter. In times where reality itself is under attack and science denialism is reaching pre-Renaissance levels of surreality; it is good to … Continue reading Small Gods
Friends with benefits are nice, friends with books are even better. I am privileged to know Pierre Du Plessis, the (extraordinarily wise) author of Train Naked personally. The book is written as a series of daily meditations and reflections - almost like miniature sermons that if followed will make your life richer and more rewarding. … Continue reading Train Naked
