Strange Maps is fast becoming my favourite website: it's the only blog I've ever come across where I've scrolled all the way back to the beginning to read...
Alex Evans
Alex Evans is a Senior Fellow at the Center on International Cooperation (CIC) at New York University, and the author of The Myth Gap: What Happens When Evidence and Arguments Aren't Enough? (Penguin, 2017), a book about the power of deep stories to unlock transformational change. He lives in North Yorkshire and is currently working on political polarisation and learning dry stone walling. Full biog here.
You Tube horror stories
By now, we've all read enough horror stories to know that we have to exercise restraint in what we post on Facebook or Friends Reunited. But are we...
This year’s big issue at Davos
Last year's big issue at Davos was climate change - unsurprisingly, given that it was the first time the WEF crowd had convened since the Stern Review was...
On ketchup
Matt Yglesias says: Every once in a while, I come across a person who still hasn't read Malcolm Gladwell's definitive article on ketchup. Well, you should...
Honour among spooks
Last December, one book in particular seemed to crop up on every newspaper or magazine's list of books of the year: Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes: The History...
Why food is the new oil, part 94
And so to a new report on soft (i.e. agricultural) commodities from Bidwells, the agribusiness property consultancy, noteworthy for its observations about...
The bullshit index
Yale and Columbia universities have just published their 2008 Environmental Performance Index, which grades 149 countries on their sustainability. Here's the...
What do rising food prices mean for Africa?
The FT's consumer industries correspondent, Jenny Wiggins - who along with commodities correspondent Javier Blas deserves a medal (or at the very least a...
The World Social Forum. Yawn.
Continuing my mini-series on what happened to the anti-globalisation movement: if some of them became the Yes Men, some of them remain very firmly as the No...
Nick Butler’s big idea for Europe: 100% tax credit on all emissions-reducing activity
Nick Butler - treasurer of the Fabian Society, chair of the Centre for European Reform's advisory board, erstwhile chief of staff to BP's former CEO John...
Rehabilitating McCarthy
Yesterday, in the context of writing about the government's new Counter Terrorism Bill, I was discussing why MCarthyism had never made real inroads in the UK...
“A conscious decision to maintain civility in public life”
Reading Dominic Sandbrook's excellent Never Had It So Good - a history of Britain from Suez to the Beatles last night, I came across this interesting...
Ban Ki-Moon: the scarcity SG
One I missed from December last year: A struggle by nations to secure sources of clean water will be “potent fuel” for war, the first Asia-Pacific Water...
Who gets to be the utilities on the global Monopoly board?
From Der Spiegel via Matt Yglesias: Hasbro is planning to launch the first global version of Monopoly, and they're canvassing votes for which cities should be...
Bono and Gore
The BBC's Tim Weber is in Davos, listening to Al Gore and Bono search together for the Holy Grail - a policy framework that can integrate development and...
Introducing the Yes Men
A few weeks back, I was wondering aloud what had happened to the anti-globalisation movement. By way of a partial answer to that question: some of them...
Re: Can you see a black swan? OA can.
A propos of Charlie's post about Oxford Analytica's spanking new Global Stress Points Matrix, reassuring to see that they rank "increasing climate regulation"...
Jeremy Heywood new “Permanent Secretary, 10 Downing St”
According to the Number 10 website, Downing Street today announced the appointment of Jeremy Heywood as Permanent Secretary, No.10 Downing Street. This is the...
US energy security: an unexpected casualty of US climate policy
US unwillingness to sign up to binding climate standards, either domestic or international, is leading to a strange unintended consequence: the extent of...
Is Brown getting behind Merkel on a convergence-based climate policy?
Interesting to see this little nugget included in the UK / Indian communique resulting from Gordon Brown's talks with Manmohan Singh: Long-term convergence...
More from Global Dashboard
NGOs get their courage back on inequality and climate (thanks to the Pope)
"I'm off to the most radical country in the Western world," I told my colleagues, "the Vatican." There was a time when NGO radicalism would have made our collective attendance at a Vatican meeting appear like a strange moment of conservatism. Now it seems like one of...
The end of the defence of widening inequality, and the beginnings of a coalition to address it
Were it not for the amusing stunts mocking the G7 leaders, the world might not even know the G7 was happening. (What they most fear, I reckon, is that people stop mocking them. Imagine the indignity!) We're witnessing not just the decline of the old powers but the...
Time to Deliver the Post-2015 Agenda’s Promises to Children
The post-2015 agenda has a clear vision for children: the protection, survival and development of all children to their full potential. Four resonant and ambitious ‘core promises’ to children can be drawn from the child-focused goals and targets. The core promises...