Cement in China

Apparently China used more cement between 2011 and 2013 than America did in the whole 20th century. This is incredible - but the figures are 6.4 gigatons for China in those two years and 4.4 gigatons for that century in the US.

How come? China has a massively bigger population and super fast urbanisation - and the Americans use a good deal of lumber in house construction where China uses concrete blocks. It's still incredible.

Artificial Super Intelligence

I read this article in the FT. It is a the very best sort of review/essay that looks at the possibility of Artificial Super Intelligence an...

Read more »

Alzheimers

I saw Still Alice last week - a remarkable film With Julienne Moore as an articulate academic dealing with early onset Alzheimers. It is pa...

Read more »

Plagiarism

Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams have just lost a case in America to the estate of Marvin Gaye who claimed that Blurred Lines (if you h...

Read more »

Why doesn't the bank of England cancel the Gilts they hold? (2)

In December I quoted a rather civilised blog conversation about whether it was possible for the Bank of England  - probably in unison with ...

Read more »

Biscay Islands

Last summer we did a flight of discovery around insular France: not the Caribbean or Indian Ocean but the Bay of Biscay. It turned out to ...

Read more »

Carbon Rationing

This year is Climate Change year. There will be much hand-wringing and good intentions – but despite the covering of much of the most beau...

Read more »