Grombles

So it's all unfolding as expected. The UK has declared itself in competition with the EU who can't afford for us to succeed. Obvious and predicted. Here . Here . Here . And here . Now we're faced with a compromise that is neither in nor out - and with none of the benefits of either - and kicking the same can down the road regarding issues that can't be resolved today, so will never be resolved (Irish border, Gibraltar, Cyprus even, etc), or a hard exit where we trade under WTO terms and citizens outside their country of origin (Brits in the EU and EUs in the UK) will have to rely on compassion (or more likely incompetence) to remain where they are. The likely scenario is that parliament rejects the 'deal', Brussels refuses to change any of it, and we're left with a hard exit or... a People's Vote to end this madness... or will it? Ignoring for the moment that we are a very divided nation that being either in or out won't resolve, what are the pos...

I started my career in the online, or digital world as it likes to be called today, in the mid 1980s. In those days we used incredibly slow modems to connect crude computers via phone lines at a whopping 240 bits a second. There are 8 bits in a byte, so that's just 30 bytes per second. You would watch the magic of characters slowly scroll across the screen as they were revealed one by one. Pictures wouldn't be transmitted for another decade or so and video took another twenty years to become widely available. Only a few people knew how to connect to it or what to do with it once they were. The forerunner to the internet was little more than email and a bit of data between banks. Very few of us guessed what was about to happen. 30 years later we think little of instantly accessing YouTube on our 4G mobiles. And with 5G just around the corner there will be nothing stopping full instant on-demand whatever zapping into our mobiles, watches or glasses. We've all very suddenl...

I've been stunned in the past weeks about the ubiquity of misunderstanding in the press and even amongst friends about what is a Jew and what is a Muslim (or a Christian come to that). It's very simple. Jews are a race, Muslims (and Christians) aren't. You can't choose to be a Jew (or not to be one). How many fewer might have been selected to be murdered in the Holocaust if the Nazis had excluded anyone who simply didn't want to be a Jew or were prepared to prove they didn't believe in Judaism. Islam, Christianity and Judaism are all religions which you are at liberty, assuming you haven't been permanently brainwashed by your parents, community and teachers, to follow or not as your conscience or fear of reprisal demands. This is why comparing antisemitism with islamophobia is like comparing apples with pears. Actually it's not even that close since they are patently both fruit. Jews can only be Jews if their mothers were Jews. Curiously Jewish fathers...

There are around 1,500,000,000 muslims, 1,000,000,000 christians, just 14,000,000 jews (it surprises most people how few) plus assorted other faiths on our planet. What they all have in common is an allegiance to outdated thinking and a nervousness about waking up and moving on. A tiny few are so nervous, they believe they are sanctioned by a mystical deity to kill people who suggest their books are out of date and should be considered historical curios rather than offering some sort of enlightenment. All sentient species develop faith. They need constructs to explain the world they experience and to establish safe, reliable strategies to deal with them. A chicken knows not to go into water because it can't swim and will therefore drown. It doesn't know why it can't swim, nor what drowning is. It just has faith that water is bad news. Likewise humans who live in far more complex environments and social groups have developed a vast range of constructs to ensure that they s...

I am a big fan of The Royal Institution  where I've been a member for about 30 years. Their most interesting activities are their Friday Evening Discourses which last exactly one hour and feature august speakers from somewhere in the wide world of science - usually academics. The audience comprises RI members and their guests who broadly enjoy learning about leading edge science presented in an entertaining and, usually, easy to understand way. The RI was in fact founded by Michael Faraday and Humphrey Davy to promote science to the glitterati of London society. Today it's a bit of an anachronism overtaken to some extent by TV documentaries, the internet and social goliaths like TED. But I personally get a great deal out of membership if for no other reason that it gives me a good excuse to start the weekend with a Friday night out in London preceded by a stimulating topic of conversation for the West End dinner which follows. Last Friday I went to a particularly interesting...