February 2011

  • Neither an optimist nor a pessimist be

    After my talk last week, I was asked whether I was optimistic about the future for sustainable schools (or at least positive).  My response was my stock one with such queries, that I thought that optimism and pessimism were morally...

  • Sustainable Energy – without the hot air

    This 383 page book by David JC MacKay is dedicated to "those who will not have the benefits of two billion years' accumulated energy reserves"; that is, to all those who, unwittingly, will follow us onto the Earth – the...

  • Don't mention the Decade!

    I gave a seminar in the University on Tuesday to Mark my retirement.  A little late, of course, but that was just about scheduling.  I talked about the way that an interest in sustainability and learning had developed over the...

  • Illiberal Liberals

    I see that Nick Clegg is threatening universities with all sorts of punishments if they don't do as they are told about "fair access".  Not quite the freedom that institutions were promised, I note.  Not very liberal either.  Just another...

  • For academics everywhere

    Colmcille the scribe My hand is cramped from penwork. My quill has a tapered point. Its bird-mouth issues a blue-dark Beetle-sparkle of ink. Wisdom keeps welling in streams From my fine-drawn sallow hand: Riverrun on the vellum Of ink from...

  • Just when you thought it was safe to go out ...

    Somebody has re-written the S3.  To comment further would be to condone this frivolity.

  • Another day, another questionnaire ...

    The Specialist Schools and Academies Trust [SSAT] has returned to the issue of how to support schools in their efforts to address sustainability.  Could this have anything to do, I wonder, with the advent of the Sustainable Schools Alliance ....