I am a curious person. You probably are, too. Most people are curious, although some learn to express their curiosity about others through speaking our judgements. If you look behind the criticism of someone’s shoes, their lifestyle, their choice of work, often you can see the unvoiced curiosity: how do …
I am suffering a bit from familiar foibles. You know what I mean: those foibles in other people and cultures – always easier to spot than one’s own. They make me grumpy – or, maybe I am already grumpy and therefore I notice how people in one country talk rather …
I wrote recently about corporate social responsibility and the need for this concept to be stretched and deepened to contribute more to changing our society. We need the equivalent to a mid-term review, to fundamentally question our economic system, to examine our assumption that economic growth is a good in …
The newspaper announced it today: trees affect their environment. I am amazed that this is news – are there people who still don’t know this simple fact. We don’t need the media to announce it to us – just walk into a forest in winter and feel how it is …
Just a few days ago, my first sight in the morning was a waterfall of droplets cascading down three stories of a wooden stairs, dripping through ceilings and walls, dropping along wooden stairs, and settling in the cellar. My schedule was dramatically re-arranged so I could clean up, although the …
There is an odd idea that corporations have responsibility only to themselves, and to their investors. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a term used to describe concern by companies for social and environmental impacts, and, ideally, action to improve these impacts. It is defined by the European Commission as “the …
One feature of the natural world is that it is incredibly complex. This interconnectedness plays havoc with our human desire to plan and stratify, to separate and control. The EU Water Framework Directive (WFD, 2000) gives us one example: the goal of 100% good ecological status of EU surface waters …
I recently had an opportunity to do some walking around what Quakers call the ‘1652 Country’. To those, like me, who are not very familiar with English geography, let me explain that this is north of Lancaster, on the western side of the narrow bit of England between the bulges …
One of the most important recent ‘discoveries’ in economics is not about either growth or jobs. It is about people. We have discovered that we are not actually the logical, cool, and selfish people that economic models often assume we are. In fact, we are so full of feeling-affected judgements …
One’s method of transport determines what one sees. A walking tour of a new city gives opportunity for far more detail than a driving tour. A cycle through the countryside gives one the opportunity to hear birds and smell the hot strawberries in a July field. I’ve even heard the …