Posts Tagged ‘celebrities

It is funny to see the Institute for New Economic Thinking (Inet) boasting about Joseph Stiglitz being named one of the world’s 100 most influential people by Time magazine. Both Inet and Stiglitz keep on whinging about how marginalised they are but Time does not seem to agree (this is the Stiglitz who has a Nobel […]

I should have realised this earlier but evidently growth scepticism is being preached to kids too. David Walliams, better known as a comic actor, was on BBC Breakfast yesterday talking about his new children’s book, Billionaire Boy.  According to his publisher: “Joe has a lot of reasons to be happy. About a billion of them, […]

Chris Evans may not support the idea of Ferraris For All but he definitely likes them for himself. The BBC DJ and avid Ferrari collector has just lashed out £12m on a vintage Ferrari 250 GTO. It would be great if everyone could spend money with such abandon.

William Easterly brilliantly parodies U2’s support for western intervention in Africa. Many of the comments are worth reading too.

Anyone who is interested in the redefinition of development should read today’s special issue of the New York Times magazine on “Why women’s rights are the cause of our time”. On a naïve reading such an initiative might appear welcome: the importance of development and women’s rights is being recognised. But a closer inspection shows […]

Until I caught up with the Pelican Brief, the 1993 legal thriller based on a John Grisham novel, on television I had not reallsed how much it reflects the environmentalist spirit of our times. The plot involves a law student (played by Julia Roberts) who stumbles across a conspiracy by a big oil company which […]

Happy chickens?

In: Uncategorized

27 Jan 2009

What is a happy chicken? The question occurred to me while watching the awful television documentary by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, a British celebrity chef, on Chickens, Hugh & Tesco Too. I won’t discuss the programme in general except to say it featured the Old Etonian campaigning against supermarkets selling cheap chicken. What struck me most was […]

Sense about Science, a British science education charity, has produced its third annual Celebrities and Science review (PDF). Not only is it amusing but it is also informative about common misconceptions on scientific topics.

Anyone brought up in Britain and above the age of about 25 is likely to remember David Bellamy. The TV botanist, with his bushy beard and distinctive way of speaking, made frequent appearances in the media till about a decade ago. Then he mysteriously disappeared. An interview in today’s Daily Express seems to explain his […]

A striking feature of yesterday’s speech by George Bush at the White House Summit for International Development was how much he agrees with NGOs such as Actionaid or Oxfam. The supposed conservative demagogue and the supposed radical activists are sleeping in the same bed. The following passage on water provision clearly illusrates this shared approach. […]