I digress … thoughts on fish & the environment
If you are involved in communicating about risk, you need to have read the writing of Dan Gardner and Cass Sunstein. I don’t mean flick through. I mean ‘read’ in the way Mortimer Adler suggested. A Simple Rule of Thumb Unsurprisingly for a chemical lobbyist, I discuss issues around risk and cost-benefit analysis a lot. To … Read more
On Friday I gave a talk to the Public Affairs Council. I was asked how far in advance I could tell if a legislative or regulatory proposal would come. I answered ’10 years out’. Maybe this sounds like an incredulous mystic, so I thought it would be useful to test out this ‘gut feeling’. This … Read more
On Friday 10th May, the European Ombudsman raised hope for open law making for secondary legislation (link). Today, most lawmaking by the EU is done by way of secondary legislation. It’s more or less carried out in secret. First, the Commission refuse to release how each Member States vote in the Committee. Second, they don’t … Read more
I just finished Niall Ferguson’s “Kissinger: 1923-1968: The Idealist.” I bought this 882 page authorised biography for two reasons. First, I enjoy Professor Niall Ferguson’s writing. He is a rare academic who can write well. Second, I wanted to gain an insight into how the US government landed up in the Vietnam war. The book is not … Read more