Forecasting Posts
The never-ending failures of the forecasters
The Bank of England isn’t the only ‘expert’ body that keeps getting its predictions wrong
Read the full article...Paul Ehrlich and the madness of climate alarmists
His prophecies of eco-doom have been proven wrong time and again – why is he still taken seriously?
Read the full article...22 Ideas About the Future
22 Ideas about the future, Edited by Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram, Cybersalon Press, 2022
Read the full article...Britain’s water shortages have nothing to do with climate change
Scaremongering about droughts lets the government and the water firms off the hook
Read the full article...Do you trust the SAGE modelling?
James responds to a discussion on GB News about why modellers tend to provide worst case scenarios around the Covid 19 pandemic
Read the full article...Working from Home: the 1985 verdict
The downsides to WFH were evident 35 years ago
Read the full article...An epidemic of doomsday forecasts
Worst-case scenario thinking has clouded political judgement for decades
Read the full article...Predicting the future
Developments tomorrow and the day after are more certain than is often assumed
Read the full article...What we can expect to see in technology
As 2018 gets underway, it’s time to take a look at what the year ahead holds for us. There are many areas we could focus on but the one that seems to be on many peoples’ minds is technology.
Read the full article...Automation anxiety and the future of work
Until fairly recently, most of the literature on the future of work was all too familiar: mobile working, working from home, hot-desking, teams, fun interiors to stimulate creativity, etc.
Read the full article...Hinkley, cybersecurity, China and the New Protectionism
To much controversy, Britain’s new prime minister, Theresa May, last month insisted on a fresh review of the building of two new nuclear reactors in the west of England.
Read the full article...Futureproofing your business
I feel good about not booking my Amtrak train from Washington to New York City two days earlier than I did. In this manner I avoided the murderous crash that happened on that line.
Read the full article...The idiocy of the New Catastrophists
The disparity between commentators’ warnings of doom and their proposed social solutions is hilarious.
Read the full article...Manias about change
Just because your email Inbox is brimming doesn’t mean that the real pace of change is accelerating. Panel discussion.
Read the full article...The end is nigh: is survival all we can hope for?
In their policies for energy and for the economy, British politicians hold up continued existence as the maximum goal we should strive for.
Read the full article...Gladwell: hero or zero?
Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers reveals more about the author’s prejudices than it does the nature of success.
Read the full article...The CFLs are on, but nobody’s home
The mad green war on light bulbs won’t save much electricity – it’s about enforcing moral rectitude in the home.
Read the full article...Forecasting the frontiers of design
Measures of design effectiveness have become more and more subjective. It’s time to call a halt
Read the full article...Futures and trends: foresight, forecasting or futurology
In brief, the market launch of a new product or service takes place months, and usually years, after its original conception and design.
Read the full article...Constructive ideas from the East
China needs new homes – don’t we all?
Read the full article...The Globalisation of UK manufacturing and services, 2004–24: toward the Agile Economy
Executive Summary: This report is based on interviews with influential companies, both British and foreign, as well as the author’s own research.
Read the full article...Risky business
Today every workplace boasts codes of business ethics. But as long as 10 years ago, it was clear that ethics were a symptom of a wider aversion to risk
Read the full article...Before we rush to declare a new era
The doctrine that the world has entered a new Age of Information has plenty of precedents. It is wrong.
Read the full article...Back to the future again
Review of Megamistakes: Forecasting and the Myth of Rapid Technological Change. By Steven Schnaars. The Free Press/Collier Macmillan
Read the full article...The legacies of a high-tech holocaust
This is a very odd book.
Read the full article...Herman Kahn – the forecaster as think-tank
Interview with the man who was the model for Dr Strangelove. Herman Kahn is big. He always was big
Read the full article...Malcolm McLaren: the punk Svengali as forecaster
Thirty-six years on, the famous British impresario is entirely prescient here – about the infantilisation of adults, the cult of play, and the rise of selfies
Read the full article...
Details in this Sunday Times article are extraordinary but unsurprising: Seems the PUBLIC are seen as a problematic threat to be managed/manipulated. Surely CPS impartiality is compromised by this decision? Read on...
1.6GW total from wind and solar this morning, from a total of ~45GW installed capacity. We're keeping the lights on by burning trees and gas. Nukes and reliance upon interconnectors making up the difference. No chance we can hit Net Zero grid by 2030.
“Mother Nature is in charge, and so we must make sure we adjust”.
Ex-cop Democratic Party mayor, indicted on federal bribery and corruption charges, supported by Trump and critical of antisemitism, tells people to tighten their... throats.
What a mess! https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/02/new-york-water-shortage?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
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Bookmarks
Innovators I like
Robert Furchgott – discovered that nitric oxide transmits signals within the human body
Barry Marshall – showed that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori is the cause of most peptic ulcers, reversing decades of medical doctrine holding that ulcers were caused by stress, spicy foods, and too much acid
N Joseph Woodland – co-inventor of the barcode
Jocelyn Bell Burnell – she discovered the first radio pulsars
John Tyndall – the man who worked out why the sky was blue
Rosalind Franklin co-discovered the structure of DNA, with Crick and Watson
Rosalyn Sussman Yallow – development of radioimmunoassay (RIA), a method of quantifying minute amounts of biological substances in the body
Jonas Salk – discovery and development of the first successful polio vaccine
John Waterlow – discovered that lack of body potassium causes altitude sickness. First experiment: on himself
Werner Forssmann – the first man to insert a catheter into a human heart: his own
Bruce Bayer – scientist with Kodak whose invention of a colour filter array enabled digital imaging sensors to capture colour
Yuri Gagarin – first man in space. My piece of fandom: http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/10421
Sir Godfrey Hounsfield – inventor, with Robert Ledley, of the CAT scanner
Martin Cooper – inventor of the mobile phone
George Devol – 'father of robotics’ who helped to revolutionise carmaking
Thomas Tuohy – Windscale manager who doused the flames of the 1957 fire
Eugene Polley – TV remote controls