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I'm sitting at the back of a class I've been particularly excited about promoting: How To Bring About Large-Scale Behavior Change. The instructor has a really strong cognitive science background, and the core idea underlying the class is that we (*) will do a much better of job of persuading people to respond to our messages if we understand and ( Read more... )

I just realised that it's over a year since I blogged anything at all about work. I've been reluctant to write much because it can be hard to say anything interesting about a job I'm in within the limits of what's appropriate to post publicly, and a private post would be redundant since everyone who can see one would also be hearing other things ( Read more... )

Prompted by a couple of friends' interest, I recently read the Dark Mountain Manifesto. It's long but worth a read, because it's a beautifully written expression of some important ideas. In spite of this, it didn't quite sit right with me.

( Go and read the Manifesto first, then click here for my reaction to it )

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Please excuse the cross-post from my work's blog, but we are looking for volunteers this Saturday:

This Saturday, New Belgium Brewing is bringing their Tour de Fat to Seattle. It's a bike carnival in Gas Works Park, with a parade around Fremont, costumes, "insane bicycle contraptions", music, and of course beer. As well as being a fun event, we ( Read more... )

Over the past couple of weeks, I've written a series of posts for the work blog, about the Deepwater Horizon disaster and how we should react to it. Inevitably, it's become a bit of a meditation on my attitudes about environmentalism in general:

• Deepwater Horizon should surprise nobody
• What you can do to use less oil (simple advice that's probably ( Read more... )

I'm listening to Generation Terrorists, the Manic Street Preachers' debut album, which came out when I was 14 and into Warhammer 40K. I remember that detail because my one and only attempt at painting the miniature soldiers was a bit of a marathon, during which I listened to this album 4 times over, before admitting to myself that I just didn't ( Read more... )