Sort of went missing during last semester. Apologies to anyone following who (a) noticed and (b) was concerned. Don't panic, I did remember to go to Uni, hand in my assessments and pass everything with flying colours. I just didn't quite manage to provide the running commentary. All that quiet reflection turned into project management with military precision as the amazing synchronicity of assessment tasks meant everything was always due at once, seemingly at regularly decreasing intervals. There remains interesting stuff to share and I plan (perhaps not with the same aforementioned military precision) to deliver the belated version in weeks to come.
The world has moved on, I'm now looking down the barrel of O'Week 2012 (with very old, sensible eyes, alas) and the end is in sight. One last subject to go...
Like all good swots I did manage to spend some time at Uni over the summer break learning the finer arts of economics and climate change (where greenhouse gases meet brown cardigans in a smog of policy objectives). Taught by the economists and influenced by the scientists, it was designed to explain why if you let good old neo-classical economics (aka the markets) do their job, we'll be able to save the planet. Of course, it was made all the more curious by the fact one of the lecturers wasn't truly convinced that climate change is man-made. In a discipline notorious for listing its assumptions, this seemed even more curious - for if that assumption does not hold, what is the point of capping and trading known greenhouse gases, let alone teaching the finer points of the economics involved! As a side note, there is an interesting recent article in The Guardian summarising the views of scientists on the seemingly unrelentless attacks on science.
I respect that academics are suppose to develop the contrarian in all of us and I could probably argue for hours that not enough of us regularly question the state of the world and how we can address our small patch of humanity. I just wonder, increasing aloud, whether the fear of change is more powerful than that of scientific reason.
The world has moved on, I'm now looking down the barrel of O'Week 2012 (with very old, sensible eyes, alas) and the end is in sight. One last subject to go...
Like all good swots I did manage to spend some time at Uni over the summer break learning the finer arts of economics and climate change (where greenhouse gases meet brown cardigans in a smog of policy objectives). Taught by the economists and influenced by the scientists, it was designed to explain why if you let good old neo-classical economics (aka the markets) do their job, we'll be able to save the planet. Of course, it was made all the more curious by the fact one of the lecturers wasn't truly convinced that climate change is man-made. In a discipline notorious for listing its assumptions, this seemed even more curious - for if that assumption does not hold, what is the point of capping and trading known greenhouse gases, let alone teaching the finer points of the economics involved! As a side note, there is an interesting recent article in The Guardian summarising the views of scientists on the seemingly unrelentless attacks on science.
I respect that academics are suppose to develop the contrarian in all of us and I could probably argue for hours that not enough of us regularly question the state of the world and how we can address our small patch of humanity. I just wonder, increasing aloud, whether the fear of change is more powerful than that of scientific reason.
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