Twenty-one

Science usually steers firmly away from questions about the inner lives of animals. Surely they have inner lives of some sort. But like a child who is admonished that what he really wants to ask is impolite, a young scientist is taught that the animal mind — if there is such a thing — is […]

Anti-Capitalism?

You can’t escape it; capitalism has a bad rap. Last night, thousands of anti-capitalist protestors took to the streets in capital cities across the world. Wearing V for Vendetta-inspired Guy Fawkes masks (most of which are made in China), these self-styled “anti-establishment” demonstrators, who took part in annual Million Mask March, sought to express their […]

Not Happy?

Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, and a team of psychologists have found evidence for what they call “prevalence-induced concept change”. What this means is that how we apply concepts changes depending on how many examples of that concept are around. In one experiment, psychologists showed subjects coloured dots on the spectrum of blue […]

The Inconvenient Truth about Your “Authentic” Self

Everyone wants to be authentic. You want to be true to yourself, not a slavish follower of social expectations. You want to “live your best life,” pursuing your particular desires, rather than falling in line with whatever everyone else thinks happiness requires. Studies have even shown that feelings of authenticity can go hand in hand […]

Technology is not the demon, it is our social psychology

Ofcom released its Communications Market Report 2016 last week. According to the report, UK digital consumption patterns have reached an all-time high, and trends for more universal access are bullish. Yet rather than celebrating the web for bringing the world’s information to our fingertips, coverage of the report focused on what it called “connectivity creep”: […]

Brexit Pt I

What a cluster fuck Brexit is. This popped up in my Facebook feed earlier today and I had an immediate knee jerk reaction to it, nothing is ever this clear cut: So, without any further ado-ing, here’s the full post for your delectation: Alright, you filthy animals. I don’t normally do this, because I […]

The Banker and The Fisherman

An American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The Mexican […]

Selling ourselves. Selling everything.

I still cannot understand the logic behind why there is such an obsession with celebrity in western society today. Such bizarre voyeurism from both the paparazzi and the people who support them. Daily Mail, I’m looking at you. What are we doing? Selling ourselves. Selling everything. The happiest day of my life – oh, […]

It’s not my problem

I think we’ve been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it’s the government’s job to cope with it: ‘I have a problem, I’ll get a grant.’ ‘I’m homeless, the government must house me.’ They’re casting their problem on society. And, you know, there […]

The Golden Spruce

Grant Hadwin got a chainsaw and did something terrible. Originally posted on The New Yorker There was only one giant golden spruce in the world, and, until a man named Grant Hadwin took a chainsaw to it, in 1997, it had stood for more than three hundred years in a steadily shrinking patch of […]