Last Friday night, walking the dog, the sight of oranges mouldering on the ground, mushed in puddles, abandoned in the mud, upset me. I filled my pockets with fruit from the trees that line one of the paths under the Villa Doria Pamphilij, finished the walk, and plunged headlong into a search for...

The US Congress is apparently trying again to allow low-income pregnant women and mothers to use their food aid to buy "white potatoes," which they are not currently allowed to do. And various people with mashed potatoes between their ears are against this. ¹ The argument seems at least partly to...

Just back from walking to dog and listening to Planet Money's latest podcast A Bet On The Future Of Humanity. In 1980 economist Julian Simon bet biologist Paul Ehrlich that the price of a basket of metals would go down over the next decade. Ehrlich lost, with repercussions still being felt in today's highly polarised discussions about what, if anything, we need to do to ensure a decent future. As it happens, I remember the bet clearly.

24 February 2017: Almost all of this is dead and gone now. I'm still using Sleep Cycle. The others, not so much.

I am not an obsessive self-quantifier, nor am I in training, so I don't have goals to score or targets to hit. I just like to measure a few things like weight and activity each day to...

Of course one creates just for the pleasure of it, with no audience other than oneself in mind.¹ And yet, having an actual audience of living, breathing people interested enough in what one has created to give it some of their precious currency is a wonderful reward and a spur to action. When the...