by Martin Eiermann* In international comparison, the United States stand out for the wide range of political hopes that are attached to the right to privacy—which covers anything from abortion and contraceptive access to employee claims against workplace surveillance and consumer rights—and for having a uniquely fragmented landscape of privacy laws. The privacy of health-related […]
Books
It’s UK publication day for ‘A Poem for Every Question’, my new collection of poems for children, illustrated by the brilliant Joe Berger. Inside there are poems to answer all sorts of interesting questions: how many stars in the universe exploded today?; who had the first holiday?; how many times a day do we laugh?;…
I’m in the midst of doing research, teaching, and outreach activities on a set of questions around economic growth and its relationship to what we value. My research team has Tim Jackson visiting tomorrow, who will give a talk on postgrowth economics and also talk a bit about his new book, The Care Economy. The […]
by Crawford Spence* There is plenty of work out there on financial intermediaries. Most of this can be found in finance or economics journals and displays little evidence of its authors having spent any time with financial intermediaries at all. Rather, studies looking at asset managers or investment bankers tend to be carried out at […]
Roger’s Thesaurus In order to grow, expand, widenhis lexicological corpus,Roger bought, acquired, purchaseda synonymopedia, a thesaurus. Soon, presently, without delay,he no longer ran out of things to say,speak, utter, express, articulate,give voice to, pronounce, communicate. This was all very well, fine, great,wonderful, super, terrificbut his friends, mates, pals found himboring, tedious, dull, soporific. So let…
Arriving in November, BBC's "The Art of Time Travel" is a Doctor Who concept art book that showcases 20 years' worth of concept artwork.
by Vijay Selvam* Bitcoin has failed. Seventeen years since inception, Bitcoin remains a solution in search of a problem. With its eyewatering volatility, it has flopped as an inflation hedge. The much-touted scarcity of its 21-million-coin cap is rendered meaningless in a landscape teeming with thousands of other cryptocurrencies, each claiming to be scarce in its own […]
I took delivery yesterday of some advance copies of the gorgeous new edition of ‘You Took the Last Bus Home’. In celebration of that, here’s the title poem … You Took the Last Bus Home you tookthe last bus homedon’t know howyou got it through the door you’re always doing amazing stuff like the time…
A few unconventional beach reads from the Conversationalist team.
by Jawied Nawabi* At least, since the end of WWII the world has advanced significantly in scientific knowledge, technology, and the institutionalization of universal human rights conventions, yet there still prevails enormous levels of inequality, malnutrition, and poverty in the world. With all our advancements in the social sciences in the past seven decades on how […]