A year ago I tweeted about wanting to hear the positive stories about children whose abilities had flourished during lockdown. I wasn’t overwhelmed, but I am sure those stories are there waiting to be observed, waiting to be told. …

Good food is expensive, right? It is costly to produce, it is in short supply, and it can only be afforded by the affluent. Dead wrong. I learned this again last week. There is a man local to our smallholding here whose job is to manage deciduous woodland. A charity…

A Ponzi scheme has built-in dynamics: he whole point is that the people into the scheme early come off well and are encouraged, and the suckers who are in late get fleeced. But not all schemes that are Ponzi in their dynamics intended to be so. Any market-priced investment has…

Our immune system is mind-bogglingly complex. The distinctions it is capable of making between the 99%+ of organisms that are vital to our health and the few that can undermine our health is subtle beyond belief. And of course, we are not talking about a standard catalogue, we are talking…

How much can you read about any current issue without someone describing it as complex? Granted that there are technical definitions of what complex means, what does the term mean in everyday language? What is being conveyed when someone says “but this is complex”? The acronym is clumsy and, I…

Is there anything quite so depressing and deadening as the requirement to be positive and upbeat? Bright-eyed and bushy tailed? Can do? Willing to compromise and find a way “forwards”? How much life do we sacrifice to this small god of keeping things comfortable? …

Aidan Ward and Philip Hellyer It is vital that the observer takes on responsibility for their observations, language, and action. The observer is inextricably linked to the object that they are observing. Heinz von Foerster Is an explicit model such as a mathematical equation or a theory in theoretical physics…

Aidan Ward and Philip Hellyer The series of connected revolutions known as the Arab Spring did not happen in a vacuum. Partly, of course, they inspired each other and made revolution seem possible. But one of the contexts was a drought and famine throughout the region that is settling into…

Aidan Ward and Philip Hellyer We need to pay attention to how stupid and greedy people get their own way by hiding behind plausible lies. Those lies have a seemingly technical argument behind them that makes people feel that the experts probably understand important things that they themselves do not. …