News and Updates

How odd that the categories in THE's Higher Education awards have no room for anything to do with sustainability.  The list is here: Excellence and Innovation in the Arts Outstanding Digital Innovation in Teaching or Research Research Project of the Year Outstanding Employer...

When an unsolicited survey from an academic lands in your inbox, and says something like this, you know it's not going to be true, but you do hope that it will be a reasonable estimate. The purpose of this particular...

That's now the Economist titled its recent Erasmus blog on Islam and Ecology. It ends: "... the very nature of environmental challenges gives a certain integrity to eco-religious discussions.  Rising sea levels, melting glaciers and expanding deserts will affect everybody, regardless...

The €ureaucrat responsible for climate change within the EU, Miguel Arias Canete [ surely, it cannot all be his fault ], says that the forthcoming (or so optimists think) United Nations’ climate deal (which is supposed to be a triomphe pour President Hollande) should be...

This video about the birth of giant panda twins in Washington is X-rated stuff, and almost beyond satire.  Surely any species that needs sperm donors, artificial insemination, and multiple midwives is beyond saving.

The BBC is about to dispense with the services of the Met Office for its weather forecasting.  This high profile divorce has money, maths and technology at its heart.  The BBC says that the Met couldn't come up with a...

There was a piece in the G last week about a recent article in the T which had gone out of its way to praise England's tax-funded schools in the great pre-university [A-level] qualifications race, comparing them favourably with 'independent' schools – that is,...

A recent Free Exchange column in the Economist was a feature on helping the world's most poor people to help themselves.  It begins: "THE poor do not just lack money. They are also often short of basic know-how, the support of...

For all those who've still got withdrawal symptoms from WEEC 15, along comes WSSD-U-2016.  I know it sounds like a WW2 submarine, but it's another conference (as if the poor Earth hadn't had enough already).  So, if you're anywhere Boston next September,...

A (kind) colleague in the US sent this to me wondering about the state of our education system.  As a mix of credulity and ignorance, it is almost beyond comment.