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How new words and new genes are coined
Matt Ridley
In the evolution of a language, the same principles apply to DNA as to English My latest Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal, with added links: Don’t look for the soul in the language of DNA Back in the genomic bronze age-the 1990s-scientists used to think that there would prove to be lots […]
The strange lack of limits to growth
Matt Ridley
Why do people have more resources when there are more of them? Here’s an interview I did with the `Five Book’s’ website in which I selected five books on techno-optimism: Julian Simon’s The Ultimate Resource 2 Bjorn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist Huber and Mills’s The Bottomless Well Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Discipline The key question […]
Cancer, chemicals, Carson and smoking
Matt Ridley
Rachel Carson, in her hugely influential book Silent Spring, wrote that she expected an epidemic of cancer caused by chemicals in the environment, especially DDT, indeed she thought it had already begun in the early 1960s: “No longer are exposures to dangerous chemicals occupational alone; they have entered the environment of everyone-even of children as yet […]
Matt Ridley
Britain tries to reverse the industrial revolution Update: the photo above shows a wind turbine’s parts blocking a road in Wales. Two hundred years ago, Britain discovered how to make energy cheaper and cheaper, which caused a rush to mechanisation, which raised living standards all around the world by making it easier to fulfil people’s […]
Miller on cognitive behavioral therapy
Matt Ridley
To cheer people up tell them things are OK Update: see below for a contribution from Steve Budiansky, the Liberal Curmudgeon. My friend Geoffrey Miller, the brilliant author ofThe Mating Mind and Spent, was kind enough to send me some comments on The Rational Optimist. I asked him if I could post them here as a guest […]
Matt Ridley
The longer your past, the longer your future My latest Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal is about how the human brain deals with the future. Here it is with added links. I recently came across the phrase “remembering the future.” Rather than some empty poetic paradox, it appeared in an article about […]
Matt Ridley
Will exagerated claims about ocean acidification provoke responses, or only sceptical ones? Update: as expected, Williamson has declined to take up my suggestion. But here is a chart Update: as expected, Williamson has declined to take up my suggestion. But here is a chart summarising over a thousand experimental results of acidification, taken from here. Note […]
Matt Ridley
Economics for environmentalsist in one short volume Bishop Hill has a review of Tim Worstall’s book Chasing Rainbows, which reminds me that I meant to write about this book. I wrote a cover quote for it that described it `fearless, fresh, forensic and funny’. What is particularly clever about the book is the way that Worstall makes […]
Self-sufficiency is another word for poverty
Matt Ridley
Why trade restriction lowers everybody’s living standards (picture from Eden’s Path) Steve Landsburg, writing at The Big Questions, takes issue with Paul Krugman’s argument that restricting free trade cannot cause a depression: Paul Krugman writes that trade does not equal jobs and concludes that trade restrictions cannot even in principle trigger a depression. After all, restricting trade […]
More on whether the weather is climate
Matt Ridley
The Economist turns to astrology Here’s a letter I sent to the editor of The Economist: Sir, Last winter, we were told by scientists that it was `stupid’ to take the cold weather as evidence against global warming. Yet this winter you are quite happy to speculate, entirely against the consensus view, that the cold […]
