In WW2 BF Skinner – behaviourism’s big cheese – created a pigeon guided bomb. Skinner built his theories about free will (it didn’t exist) and education (reinforce “good” behaviour through repetition and reward) through experiments that usually involved animals in cages pressing levers for reward. To build his bomb-guiding mechanism he trained pigeons to peck […]
I share a skull with a madman, who is also an arsehole. And he’s wrong. Yesterday I was watching a TV quiz show while eating dinner (The Wheel – to much show, not enough quiz) and one of the questions was about which New York borough was furthest north. The options were Staten Island, Manhattan, […]
French philosopher Bruno Latour has died. I was introduced to his work as an undergraduate at Brunel University by his collaborator Steve Woolgar in the late 1980s, and his writings have continued to play an important part in the way I think about the world. Here’s a piece I wrote last year, having read his […]
Over the last few weeks, and especially since the end of Matt Hancock’s tenure as Health Secretary there has been a notable shift in the government’s language regarding the future of the UK’s response to Covid-19. When he announced the further extension of restrictions at the start of June, the Prime Minister used a phrase […]
So, a few months ago a student on Middlesex University’s journalism degree approached me with some questions about how a journalism student could prepare for work in public relations. Anyone who knows me will be entirely unsurprised to discover that I answered at somewhat stupid length. I think some of the stuff here might be […]