Regression Camper

An apparent trouble-shooter or consultant who arrives at an organisation during a downturn, hangs around making small changes until the organisation regresses back towards the mean, then leaves with another apparent success on their CV.

Information Theory and Privacy I (EFF)

This is a shameless cut and paste of the excellent EFF article here.

If we ask whether a fact about a person identifies that person, it turns out that the answer isn't simply yes or no. If all I know about a person is their ZIP code, I don't know who they are. If all I know is their date of birth, I don't know who they are. If all I know is their gender, I don't know who they are. But it turns out that if I know these three things about a person, I could probably deduce their identity! Each of the facts is partially identifying.

There is a mathematical quantity which allows us to measure how close a fact comes to revealing somebody's identity uniquely. That quantity is called entropy, and it's often measured in bits. Intuitively you can think of entropy being generalization of the number of different possibilities there are for a random variable: if there are two possibilities, there is 1 bit of entropy; if there are four possibilities, there are 2 bits of entropy, etc. Adding one more bit of entropy doubles the number of possibilities.1

Because there are around 7 billion humans on the planet, the identity of a random, unknown person contains just under 33 bits of entropy (two to the power of 33 is 8 billion). When we learn a new fact about a person, that fact reduces the entropy of their identity by a certain amount. There is a formula to say how much:

ΔS = - log2 Pr(X=x)

Where ΔS is the reduction in entropy, measured in bits,2 and Pr(X=x) is simply the probability that the fact would be true of a random person. Let's apply the formula to a few facts, just for fun:

Starsign: ΔS = - log2 Pr(STARSIGN=capricorn) = - log2 (1/12) = 3.58 bits of information
Birthday: ΔS = - log2 Pr(DOB=2nd of January) = -log2 (1/365) = 8.51 bits of information

Note that if you combine several facts together, you might not learn anything new; for instance, telling me someone's starsign doesn't tell me anything new if I already knew their birthday.3

In the examples above, each starsign and birthday was assumed to be equally likely.4 The calculation can also be applied to facts which have non-uniform likelihoods. For instance, the likelihood that an unknown person's ZIP code is 90210 (Beverley Hills, California) is different to the likelihood that their ZIP code would be 40203 (part of Louisville, Kentucky). As of 2007, there were 21,733 people living in the 90210 area, only 452 in 40203, and around 6.625 billion on the planet.

Knowing my ZIP code is 90210: ΔS = - log2 (21,733/6,625,000,000) = 18.21 bits
Knowing my ZIP code is 40203: ΔS = - log2 (452/6,625,000,000) = 23.81 bits
Knowing that I live in Moscow: ΔS = -log2 (10524400/6,625,000,000) = 9.30 bits

How much entropy is needed to identify someone?

As of 2007, identifying someone from the entire population of the planet required:

S = log2 (1/6625000000) = 32.6 bits of information.

Conservatively, we can round that up to 33 bits.

So for instance, if we know someone's birthday, and we know their ZIP code is 40203, we have 8.51 + 23.81 = 32.32 bits; that's almost, but perhaps not quite, enough to know who they are: there might be a couple of people who share those characteristics. Add in their gender, that's 33.32 bits, and we can probably say exactly who the person is.5

An Application To Web Browsers

Now, how would this paradigm apply to web browsers? It turns out that, in addition to the commonly discussed "identifying" characteristics of web browsers, like IP addresses and tracking cookies, there are more subtle differences between browsers that can be used to tell them apart.

One significant example is the User-Agent string, which contains the name, operating system and precise version number of the browser, and which is sent every web server you visit. A typical User Agent string looks something like this:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6

As you can see, there's quite a lot of "stuff" in there. It turns out that that "stuff" is quite useful for telling different people apart on the net. In another post, we report that on average, User Agent strings contain about 10.5 bits of identifying information, meaning that if you pick a random person's browser, only one in 1,500 other Internet users will share their User Agent string.

EFF's Panopticlick project is a privacy research effort to measure how much identifying information is being conveyed by other browser characteristics. Visit Panopticlick to see how identifying your browser is, and to help us in our research.

  • 1.Entropy is actually a generalization of counting the number of possibilities, to account for the fact that some of the possibilities are more likely than others. You can find a pretty version of the formula here.

  • 2.This quantity is called the "self-information" or "surprisal" of the observation, because it is a measure of how "surprising" or unexpected the new piece of information is. It is really measured with respect to the random variable that is being observed (perhaps, a person's age or where they live), and a new, reduced, entropy for their identity can be calculated in the light of this observation.

  • 3.What happens when facts are combined depends on whether the facts are independent. For instance, if you know someone's birthday and gender, you have 8.51 + 1 = 9.51 bits of information about their identity because the probability distributions of birthday and gender are independent. But the same isn't true for birthdays and starsigns. If I know someone's birthday, then I already know their starsign, and being told their starsign doesn't increase my information at all. We want to calculate the change in conditional entropy of the person's identity on all the observed variables, and we can do that by making the probabilities for new facts conditional on all the facts we already know. Hence we see ΔS = -log2 Probability(Gender=Female|DOB=2nd of January) = -log2(1/2) = 1, and ΔS = -log2 Probability(Starsign=Capricorn|DOB=2nd of January)=-log2(1) = 0. In between cases are also possible: if I knew that someone was born in December, and then I learn that they are a Capricorn, I still gain some new bits of information, but not as much as I would have if I hadn't known their month of birth: ΔS = -log2 Probability(Starsign=Capricorn|month of birth=December)=-log2 (10/31) = 1.63 bits.

  • 4.Actually, in the birthday example, we should have accounted for the possibility that someone was born on the 29th of February during a leap year, in which case ΔS =-log2 Pr(1/365.25)

  • 5.If you're paying close attention, you might have said, "Hey, that doesn't sound right; sometimes there will be only one person in ZIP code 40203 who has a given birthday, in which case you don't need gender to identify them, and it's possible (but unlikely) that ten people in 40203 were all born on the 2nd of January. The correct way to formalize these issues would be to use the real fequency distribution of birthdays in the 40203 ZIP code.

Trivial Pursuit

So I couldn’t sleep…

In Trivial Pursuit there are Roll Again squares around the rim, but none up the spokes – so it is always a bad strategy to go up the spokes. But how much better is it? You can compare the probabilities of landing on the square you want from any square to work that out.

For the centre square that’s easy. No throw will get you back to the centre. Then from wherever you land there is a 1/6 probability of landing back on it. Job done.

For a pie slice you want it is more complicated… Let’s number the squares, with 0 being your target square (and where we will begin):

s-l1000.jpg

The board is symmetrical, so you can treat crossing a pie slice square the same as bouncing back from it – so for example four steps clockwise from square 2 returns you to square 2.

For simplicity, consider the non-target pie-slice to be a normal question.

Throw #0

t1.png

Your first throw from square 0, by itself, cannot get you back to square 0. It will only get you to the square with the same number as your dice-roll. From square 0, throws of 1, 3, 4, or 6 will end the run (that is, force you to answer a question). In my working they are red, for fail throws. A throw of 2 or 5 will give you a second throw. They are black, for still-in-play.

Let’s do the same thing for all the other squares, ie starting from square 1, 2, etc:

Throw #1

t2.png

Squares 2 and 5 are Roll Again.

A roll of 1 from square 1 gets you to the pie-slice-you-want-square. That is green for win. Likewise a roll of 2 from 2, 3 from 3 etc…

The colours indicate the outcomes of each possible throw from each possible square. Win, Continue, or Fail. There are two possible outcomes for each throw (clockwise and anticlockwise), but this diagram supposes you pick most strategically, preferring the pie-slice square to a Roll Again, and a Roll Again to a question.

This whole picture is just throw #1, from any square.

Ignoring square 0, there are 6 throws from six squares (36 outcomes)

14 fails (reds) = 14/36 = 7/18

16 continues (blacks) = 16/36 = 8/18 = 4/9

6 wins (greens) = 6/36 = 1/6

The black throws will only take you to square 2 or square 5. So the second throw can only be from square 2 or square 5…

Throw #2

t3.png

(The brown numbers are just the previous dice roll).

So a roll of 3 or 4 from square 1 on throw #1 gets you to square 2 or 5 respectively for throw two, and throw 2 outcomes are illustrated.

There are 96 possible outcomes for throw 2. However, the proportion of each outcome is the same for each starting square (the yellow or green highlighted ones). So it doesn’t matter how many sets of outcomes there are. There are:

3/6 fail (red) = 1/2

2/6 continue (black) = 1/3

1/6 win (green) = 1/6

 *** This is the same for throws 3, 4, 5, …. n. ***

Throw n

t4.png
 

The probability of winning on throw 1 =

The probability of winning on throw 2 =

The probability of winning on throw 3 =

The probability of winning on throw 4 =

The probability of winning on throw 5 =

The probability of winning on throw n =

 

P[1] =

P[2] =

P[3] =

P[4] =

P[5] =

P[n] =

 

1/6

4/9 x 1/6

4/9 x 1/3 x 1/6

4/9 x 1/3 x 1/3 x 1/6

4/9 x 1/3 x 1/3 x 1/3  x 1/6

4/9 x (1/3)^(n-2) x 1/6

= (2/27)*(1/3)^(n-2)

= 1/27 (see below)

Partial sum formula:

x1.gif

Decimal approximation: 0.037037037037037037

Convergence tests: By the geometric series test, the series converges.

Partial sum formula:

x2.gif

Partial Sums:

Throw 1 Onwards

The probability P of returning to your target-pie-slice-square, from is

P = P[1]+P[2]+…P[n]

P = 1/6 + (4/9 x 1/6) + 1/27

P = 5/18

So it’s 3/18 in throw 1, then an additional 2/18 for all throw combinations thereafter!

(And you should try to land on 3 or 4 if you can’t get your slice.)

Back to sleep…

The Revolution Will Be Live-Tweeted

You will not be able to log out, brother.
You will not be able to turn on, log in, and lurk.
You will not be able to lose yourself off-grid or
Block the ads from your feed,
Because the revolution will be live-tweeted.

The revolution will be live-tweeted.
The revolution will not be brought to you by credible
Unbiased or accountable journalists.
The revolution will not show you both sides
All sides or points in-between,
Nuance, uncertainty, clarity or fact.
Citations will be needed.
The revolution will be live-tweeted.

The revolution will be brought to you by
Algorithms grown from the regurgitated output
Of hate with traction, and outrage with likes.
The revolution will not gain the impressions you expect
The revolution will not respect your privacy
The revolution will re-tweet your lunch
Because the revolution will be live-tweeted, Brother.

There will be pictures of your face tagged by your friends
Which you can delete, if you can find that option,
But which will already have been used
To train AI’s, and to add to the 50,000
Datapoints that already identify you.
The revolution will be live-tweeted.

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Bury your options behind forty clicks in pale text.
The revolution will continue in thirty seconds…

The revolution will be live-tweeted.
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The revolution will distract you with in-app purchases.
The revolution will sell you things that you cannot own.
The revolution will not need your name to know who you are.
The revolution will know you better than you know yourself.
The revolution will own your industry with no assets.

The revolution will be live-tweeted, will be live-tweeted
will be live-tweeted, will be live-tweeted.
The revolution will be live-tweeted, Brothers.
The Revolution will be live.

Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach

Sacha Baron-Cohen’s ADL speech was excellent. Here it is stolen wholesale from the Guardian.

Thank you, ADL, for this recognition and your work in fighting racism, hate and bigotry. And to be clear, when I say “racism, hate and bigotry” I’m not referring to the names of Stephen Miller’s Labradoodles.

Now, I realize that some of you may be thinking, what the hell is a comedian doing speaking at a conference like this! I certainly am. I’ve spent most of the past two decades in character. In fact, this is the first time that I have ever stood up and given a speech as my least popular character, Sacha Baron Cohen. And I have to confess, it is terrifying.

I realize that my presence here may also be unexpected for another reason. At times, some critics have said my comedy risks reinforcing old stereotypes.

The truth is, I’ve been passionate about challenging bigotry and intolerance throughout my life. As a teenager in the UK, I marched against the fascist National Front and to abolish apartheid. As an undergraduate, I traveled around America and wrote my thesis about the civil rights movement, with the help of the archives of the ADL. And as a comedian, I’ve tried to use my characters to get people to let down their guard and reveal what they actually believe, including their own prejudice.

Now, I’m not going to claim that everything I’ve done has been for a higher purpose. Yes, some of my comedy, OK probably half my comedy, has been absolutely juvenile and the other half completely puerile. I admit, there was nothing particularly enlightening about me – as Borat from Kazakhstan, the first fake news journalist – running through a conference of mortgage brokers when I was completely naked.

But when Borat was able to get an entire bar in Arizona to sing “Throw the Jew down the well,” it did reveal people’s indifference to antisemitism. When – as Bruno, the gay fashion reporter from Austria – I started kissing a man in a cage fight in Arkansas, nearly starting a riot, it showed the violent potential of homophobia. And when – disguised as an ultra-woke developer – I proposed building a mosque in one rural community, prompting a resident to proudly admit, “I am racist, against Muslims” – it showed the acceptance of Islamophobia.

That’s why I appreciate the opportunity to be here with you. Today around the world, demagogues appeal to our worst instincts. Conspiracy theories once confined to the fringe are going mainstream. It’s as if the Age of Reason – the era of evidential argument – is ending, and now knowledge is delegitimized and scientific consensus is dismissed. Democracy, which depends on shared truths, is in retreat, and autocracy, which depends on shared lies, is on the march. Hate crimes are surging, as are murderous attacks on religious and ethnic minorities.

What do all these dangerous trends have in common? I’m just a comedian and an actor, not a scholar. But one thing is pretty clear to me. All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history.

The greatest propaganda machine in history.

Think about it. Facebook, YouTube and Google, Twitter and others – they reach billions of people. The algorithms these platforms depend on deliberately amplify the type of content that keeps users engaged – stories that appeal to our baser instincts and that trigger outrage and fear. It’s why YouTube recommended videos by the conspiracist Alex Jones billions of times. It’s why fake news outperforms real news, because studies show that lies spread faster than truth. And it’s no surprise that the greatest propaganda machine in history has spread the oldest conspiracy theory in history – the lie that Jews are somehow dangerous. As one headline put it, “Just Think What Goebbels Could Have Done with Facebook.”

On the internet, everything can appear equally legitimate. Breitbart resembles the BBC. The fictitious Protocols of the Elders of Zion look as valid as an ADL report. And the rantings of a lunatic seem as credible as the findings of a Nobel prize winner. We have lost, it seems, a shared sense of the basic facts upon which democracy depends.

When I, as the wannabe gangsta Ali G, asked the astronaut Buzz Aldrin “what woz it like to walk on de sun?” the joke worked, because we, the audience, shared the same facts. If you believe the moon landing was a hoax, the joke was not funny.

When Borat got that bar in Arizona to agree that “Jews control everybody’s money and never give it back,” the joke worked because the audience shared the fact that the depiction of Jews as miserly is a conspiracy theory originating in the Middle Ages.

But when, thanks to social media, conspiracies take hold, it’s easier for hate groups to recruit, easier for foreign intelligence agencies to interfere in our elections, and easier for a country like Myanmar to commit genocide against the Rohingya.

It’s actually quite shocking how easy it is to turn conspiracy thinking into violence. In my last show Who is America?, I found an educated, normal guy who had held down a good job, but who, on social media, repeated many of the conspiracy theories that President Trump, using Twitter, has spread more than 1,700 times to his 67 million followers. The president even tweeted that he was considering designating Antifa – anti-fascists who march against the far right – as a terror organization.

So, disguised as an Israel anti-terrorism expert, Colonel Erran Morad, I told my interviewee that, at the Women’s March in San Francisco, Antifa were plotting to put hormones into babies’ diapers in order to “make them transgender”. And he believed it.

I instructed him to plant small devices on three innocent people at the march and explained that when he pushed a button, he’d trigger an explosion that would kill them all. They weren’t real explosives, of course, but he thought they were. I wanted to see – would he actually do it?

The answer was yes. He pushed the button and thought he had actually killed three human beings. Voltaire was right: “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” And social media lets authoritarians push absurdities to billions of people.

In their defense, these social media companies have taken some steps to reduce hate and conspiracies on their platforms, but these steps have been mostly superficial.

I’m speaking up today because I believe that our pluralistic democracies are on a precipice and that the next 12 months, and the role of social media, could be determinant. British voters will go to the polls while online conspiracists promote the despicable theory of “great replacement” that white Christians are being deliberately replaced by Muslim immigrants. Americans will vote for president while trolls and bots perpetuate the disgusting lie of a “Hispanic invasion”. And after years of YouTube videos calling climate change a “hoax”, the United States is on track, a year from now, to formally withdraw from the Paris accords. A sewer of bigotry and vile conspiracy theories that threatens democracy and our planet – this cannot possibly be what the creators of the internet had in mind.

I believe it’s time for a fundamental rethink of social media and how it spreads hate, conspiracies and lies. Last month, however, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook delivered a major speech that, not surprisingly, warned against new laws and regulations on companies like his. Well, some of these arguments are simply absurd. Let’s count the ways.

First, Zuckerberg tried to portray this whole issue as “choices … around free expression”. That is ludicrous. This is not about limiting anyone’s free speech. This is about giving people, including some of the most reprehensible people on earth, the biggest platform in history to reach a third of the planet. Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach. Sadly, there will always be racists, misogynists, antisemites and child abusers. But I think we could all agree that we should not be giving bigots and pedophiles a free platform to amplify their views and target their victims.

Second, Zuckerberg claimed that new limits on what’s posted on social media would be to “pull back on free expression”. This is utter nonsense. The first amendment says that “Congress shall make no law” abridging freedom of speech, however, this does not apply to private businesses like Facebook. We’re not asking these companies to determine the boundaries of free speech across society. We just want them to be responsible on their platforms.

If a neo-Nazi comes goose-stepping into a restaurant and starts threatening other customers and saying he wants kill Jews, would the owner of the restaurant be required to serve him an elegant eight-course meal? Of course not! The restaurant owner has every legal right and a moral obligation to kick the Nazi out, and so do these internet companies.

Third, Zuckerberg seemed to equate regulation of companies like his to the actions of “the most repressive societies”. Incredible. This, from one of the six people who decide what information so much of the world sees. Zuckerberg at Facebook, Sundar Pichai at Google, at its parent company Alphabet, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Brin’s ex-sister-in-law, Susan Wojcicki at YouTube and Jack Dorsey at Twitter.

Clipboard01.jpg

The Silicon Six – all billionaires, all Americans – who care more about boosting their share price than about protecting democracy. This is ideological imperialism – six unelected individuals in Silicon Valley imposing their vision on the rest of the world, unaccountable to any government and acting like they’re above the reach of law. It’s like we’re living in the Roman Empire, and Mark Zuckerberg is Caesar. At least that would explain his haircut.

Here’s an idea. Instead of letting the Silicon Six decide the fate of the world, let our elected representatives, voted for by the people, of every democracy in the world, have at least some say.

Fourth, Zuckerberg speaks of welcoming a “diversity of ideas”, and last year he gave us an example. He said that he found posts denying the Holocaust “deeply offensive”, but he didn’t think Facebook should take them down “because I think there are things that different people get wrong”. At this very moment, there are still Holocaust deniers on Facebook, and Google still takes you to the most repulsive Holocaust denial sites with a simple click. One of the heads of Google once told me, incredibly, that these sites just show “both sides” of the issue. This is madness.

To quote Edward R Murrow, one “cannot accept that there are, on every story, two equal and logical sides to an argument”. We have millions of pieces of evidence for the Holocaust – it is an historical fact. And denying it is not some random opinion. Those who deny the Holocaust aim to encourage another one.

Still, Zuckerberg says that “people should decide what is credible, not tech companies.” But at a time when two-thirds of millennials say they haven’t even heard of Auschwitz, how are they supposed to know what’s “credible”? How are they supposed to know that the lie is a lie?

There is such a thing as objective truth. Facts do exist. And if these internet companies really want to make a difference, they should hire enough monitors to actually monitor, work closely with groups like the ADL, insist on facts and purge these lies and conspiracies from their platforms.

Fifth, when discussing the difficulty of removing content, Zuckerberg asked “where do you draw the line?” Yes, drawing the line can be difficult. But here’s what he’s really saying: removing more of these lies and conspiracies is just too expensive.

These are the richest companies in the world, and they have the best engineers in the world. They could fix these problems if they wanted to. Twitter could deploy an algorithm to remove more white supremacist hate speech, but they reportedly haven’t because it would eject some very prominent politicians from their platform. Maybe that’s not a bad thing! The truth is, these companies won’t fundamentally change because their entire business model relies on generating more engagement, and nothing generates more engagement than lies, fear and outrage.

It’s time to finally call these companies what they really are – the largest publishers in history. And here’s an idea for them: abide by basic standards and practices just like newspapers, magazines and TV news do every day. We have standards and practices in television and the movies; there are certain things we cannot say or do. In England, I was told that Ali G could not curse when he appeared before 9pm. Here in the US, the Motion Picture Association of America regulates and rates what we see. I’ve had scenes in my movies cut or reduced to abide by those standards. If there are standards and practices for what cinemas and television channels can show, then surely companies that publish material to billions of people should have to abide by basic standards and practices too.

Take the issue of political ads. Fortunately, Twitter finally banned them, and Google is making changes, too. But if you pay them, Facebook will run any “political” ad you want, even if it’s a lie. And they’ll even help you micro-target those lies to their users for maximum effect. Under this twisted logic, if Facebook were around in the 1930s, it would have allowed Hitler to post 30-second ads on his “solution” to the “Jewish problem”. So here’s a good standard and practice: Facebook, start factchecking political ads before you run them, stop micro-targeted lies immediately, and when the ads are false, give back the money and don’t publish them.

Here’s another good practice: slow down. Every single post doesn’t need to be published immediately. Oscar Wilde once said that “we live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.” But is having every thought or video posted instantly online, even if it is racist or criminal or murderous, really a necessity? Of course not!

The shooter who massacred Muslims in New Zealand live-streamed his atrocity on Facebook where it then spread across the internet and was viewed likely millions of times. It was a snuff film, brought to you by social media. Why can’t we have more of a delay so this trauma-inducing filth can be caught and stopped before it’s posted in the first place?

Finally, Zuckerberg said that social media companies should “live up to their responsibilities”, but he’s totally silent about what should happen when they don’t. By now it’s pretty clear, they cannot be trusted to regulate themselves. As with the Industrial Revolution, it’s time for regulation and legislation to curb the greed of these hi-tech robber barons.

In every other industry, a company can be held liable when their product is defective. When engines explode or seatbelts malfunction, car companies recall tens of thousands of vehicles, at a cost of billions of dollars. It only seems fair to say to Facebook, YouTube and Twitter: your product is defective, you are obliged to fix it, no matter how much it costs and no matter how many moderators you need to employ.

In every other industry, you can be sued for the harm you cause. Publishers can be sued for libel, people can be sued for defamation. I’ve been sued many times! I’m being sued right now by someone whose name I won’t mention because he might sue me again! But social media companies are largely protected from liability for the content their users post – no matter how indecent it is – by Section 230 of, get ready for it, the Communications Decency Act. Absurd!

Fortunately, internet companies can now be held responsible for pedophiles who use their sites to target children. I say, let’s also hold these companies responsible for those who use their sites to advocate for the mass murder of children because of their race or religion. And maybe fines are not enough. Maybe it’s time to tell Mark Zuckerberg and the CEOs of these companies: you already allowed one foreign power to interfere in our elections, you already facilitated one genocide in Myanmar, do it again and you go to jail.

In the end, it all comes down to what kind of world we want. In his speech, Zuckerberg said that one of his main goals is to “uphold as wide a definition of freedom of expression as possible”. Yet our freedoms are not only an end in themselves, they’re also the means to another end – as you say here in the US, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But today these rights are threatened by hate, conspiracies and lies.

Allow me to leave you with a suggestion for a different aim for society. The ultimate aim of society should be to make sure that people are not targeted, not harassed and not murdered because of who they are, where they come from, who they love or how they pray.

If we make that our aim – if we prioritize truth over lies, tolerance over prejudice, empathy over indifference and experts over ignoramuses – then maybe, just maybe, we can stop the greatest propaganda machine in history, we can save democracy, we can still have a place for free speech and free expression, and, most importantly, my jokes will still work.

Thank you all very much.

I Know You Know

I'm going to forget this in about twenty-five minutes… So here it is for posterity.

DBS Self Statement

I have just been required to sign a self-statement stating that my clean Disclosure Barring Service (DBS) certificate remains accurate.

So… I have said “Yes” to the question “Can you make a personal assurance regarding the system designed to avoid reliance on personal assurances?”

A globalised solar-powered future is wholly unrealistic – and our economy is the reason why

This comprehensive article from Alf Hornborg in The Conversation is exactly my position on environmental/economic change.

It’s the rules which are the issue – not those who win. Theera Disayarat/Shutterstock.com

It’s the rules which are the issue – not those who win. Theera Disayarat/Shutterstock.com

“The only way to change the game is to redesign its most basic rules. To attribute climate change to an abstract system called capitalism – but without challenging the idea of all-purpose money – is to deny our own agency. The “system” is perpetuated every time we buy our groceries, regardless of whether we are radical activists or climate change deniers. It is difficult to identify culprits if we are all players in the same game. In agreeing to the rules, we have limited our potential collective agency. We have become the tools and servants of our own creation – all-purpose money.”