Author: Dilip

I'm a scholar, writer and teacher; and my blog is designed for intellectual exploration. It carries no advertisements and requires no cash subscription

Jonathan Freedland: This scandal reveals a Conservative party corrupted by Boris Johnson – and by Brexit / Rory Stewart: Britain needs a new era of serious leaders

The origin of all this – a Conservative party happily trampling on the union, the monarchy and the cultural organisation that binds these islands together like no other – is not hard to fathom, though it has become impolite to mention it. It’s Brexit that transformed the Conservative party. Where once Tories revered tradition, Brexit filled them… Read More Jonathan Freedland: This scandal reveals a Conservative party corrupted by Boris Johnson – and by Brexit / Rory Stewart: Britain needs a new era of serious leaders

Dilip

Antifragile: How to Live in a World We Don't Understand by Nassim Nicholas Taleb – review

Nassim Taleb divides the world and all that’s in it (people, things, institutions, ways of life) into three categories: the fragile, the robust and the antifragile. You are fragile if you avoid disorder and disruption for fear of the mess they might make of your life: you think you are keeping safe, but really you are… Read More Antifragile: How to Live in a World We Don't Understand by Nassim Nicholas Taleb – review

Dilip

Chemical pollution exceeds safe planetary limit

The production and release of plastics, pesticides, industrial compounds, antibiotics and other pollutants is now happening so fast and on such a large scale that it has exceeded the planetary boundary for chemical pollution, the safe limit for humanity, a new study claims. We asked Patricia Villarrubia-Gómez, a PhD candidate at Stockholm University and one… Read More Chemical pollution exceeds safe planetary limit

Dilip

Alfred McCoy: The Epic Struggle over the Epicenter of Global Power

Great Britain’s dominion over the oceans began with an historic naval triumph over a combined French-Spanish fleet off Spain’s Cape Trafalgar in 1805 and only ended when, in 1942, a British garrison of 80,000 men surrendered their seemingly impregnable naval bastion at Singapore to the Japanese — a defeat Winston Churchill called “the worst disaster and largest… Read More Alfred McCoy: The Epic Struggle over the Epicenter of Global Power

Dilip

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Is midnight upon us? Doomsday Clock panel to set risk of global catastrophe

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to unveil its measure of how close human civilisation is to the edge of extinctionOn 24 October 1962, an American nuclear chemist, Harrison Brown, started to pen a guest editorial for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists just as the Cuban missile crisis reached its climax. “I am writing on… Read More Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Is midnight upon us? Doomsday Clock panel to set risk of global catastrophe

Dilip