The idea of eating more of something because it contains some miracle active ingredient is a pointless waste of time. For one thing, it further medicalises our whole view of diet and health and plays into the hands of the supplement wallahs. For another, it denies the pleasures of eating a diverse d...
My latest toy is giving me a great deal of pleasure. It is a tube DAC, made by Aune, a Chinese manufacturer. 1 I'd read a bit about digital-to-analog converters here and there, and always figured that my all-knowing iMac could handle all my audio needs. Then I read a couple of reviews of the Aune T1 that made it seem unmissable, and at the same time got involved in a group buy. So, you know, what the heck?
"Malthus is usually full of it," said an online friend and instead of walking quietly by, I plunged in. The conversation then went down paths as familiar as a night-time trip to the bathroom. He talked about birth control and food-production technology as "disproving" Malthus. I talked about primary productivity and long timescales and tried, unsuccessfully, to say that you couldn't disprove Malthus since the fundamental ideas are axiomatic. Population growth is -- has to be! -- exponential, although with very effective birth control the exponent can be close to zero. And food supply grows geometrically, even with fabulously advanced technology, because it requires surface area to intercept sunlight. As a result, population is bound to outstrip food in the absence of technological and behavioural change, the core of Malthus' argument.
An email arrived a few days ago. Here's a picture of it.
It just seemed fishy, so I dumped it in the trash, even though I am actually expecting a delivery that could well involve USPS (although not in Italy, and certainly not any time near Ferragosto). Why was it fishy? Because of the writing....
Richard Dawkins seems to have upset a bunch of people again with his latest “Muslim jibe”. So, Muslims, taken as a whole, are less well-endowed than Fellows of Trinity College when it comes to Nobels. So?
Frankly, I don’t give a fig how many Nobel prizes any group of people have won. What inter...
