The children’s story of Goldilocks famously gave astronomy the “Goldilocks Zone” – the band around a star where it is not too hot and not too cold for water to exist in liquid form.  More recently, the idea of a Goldilocks Zone has been introduced to the economics of oil.  …

Even though humanity has barely scratched the surface of its dependency on fossil fuels, it is already hitting hard limits.  The most obvious of these is the storage/back-up problem, which limits renewables like wind and solar to a maximum of some 25 percent of electricity production before it begins to …

The mythical outlaw of Sherwood Forest famously fought back against tyranny by robbing from the rich to give to the poor.  Social democratic governments of yore did something similar by using the power of the state to collect taxes in place of the brute force of the bow and the …

Among the many things that don’t add up about the media coverage of the Skripal incident, one is so big that – like the proverbial elephant on the sofa – everyone is ignoring it. What is it? It is that we have absolutely no idea who Sergei and Yulia Skripal …

Earlier today, mainstream journalists were trumpeting the dawn of a new age of prosperity.  For the first time in three years, wages had, they forecast, risen faster than inflation.  It wasn’t to be, alas.  While inflation had fallen to 2.9% wages had only risen by 2.8%; leaving Britain’s workforce that …

Some months ago I decided to be a vegan.  I didn’t do it for any ethical or environmental reasons.  I simply noticed that all of the fittest women are currently attracted to vegan men.  So I figured that if I wanted to succeed in the dating stakes, I’d better dispense …

Not only is Theresa May’s magic money tree real, but it just produced a really bad harvest.  To understand why, we need to understand what makes modern currency valuable. It used to be that coins actually contained precious metals.  Then, when banknotes first appeared, they could be exchanged for precious …

Even historians stare with blank faces when asked who Voja Tankosic and Dragutin Dimitrijvic were.  The names are largely unknown today.  And yet, insofar as individuals can ever affect the course of history, they did more than most to shape the modern world. Let me try another name on you: …

Whenever the threat of war arises, some retired sandpit general will be wheeled out to pontificate on matters of strategy and tactics.  For the most part these turn out to be wrong simply because said general is out of the loop.  Nevertheless, the way such people are treated speaks volumes …

From the 1962 Cuban missile crisis to the 1983 deployment of intermediate range missiles in Europe, there remained one single constant: nuclear war was “unthinkable.”  The existence on both sides of the Iron Curtain of stocks of nuclear warheads capable of destroying both sides in a matter of hours created …