Lucretius, who lived in the 1st Century BCE, wrote in his famous poem de Rerum Natura a powerful diatribe against creationism and intelligent design. Fear of the gods, he said was inconsistent with civilised life. Science provides the explanations for natural phenomena. The poem supports Epicurean atomism, physics, theology and other points of doctrine. Stephen …
Epicurus would probably have said that education is the most important gift you can give a child, along with self-discipline. Forgive me for repeating something I recently wrote, but it is so important that it bears repeating – frequently! Many people seem to think that schools and universities have to train you for a job. …
Continue reading ‘Education : No. 4 in the list of Gross National Happiness criteria’ »
US law curiously states that the air above our heads is public above 500 feet and that individuals own the air space above their homes up to 83 feet. So who owns the space between the 83 feet and the 500 feet? The Federal Aviation Administration is currently regulating it in the cause of public …
Continue reading ‘Dogfights in the sky: the future of drone delivery’ »
We could end up living “the bad dream of an economy in which robots do all the production, including the production of robots”, says the 1987 Nobel laureate Robert M. Solow. People may become better at emotional skills – the one realm where they might out-compete robots – but face-to-face interaction may continue to lose …
The grammar-hammers are at it again, this time trying to abolish the comma. People intent on tearing apart the language, word by word, hyphen by hyphen, cannot see the importance of correct grammar, maybe because they have never learned it? The poet, Geoffrey Hill, highlighted a typical and subtle example of the value of the …
