Garret Hardin's idea that the emotion of shame can help to manage a common resource has always been a favourite for me. Up to 150 people, as Hardin suggested, can help one another do the right thing (for them all) by instilling a feeling of shame in transgressors. Seems he and I have been wrong. Not about the role of shame, but about what to call it. Brené Brown told me so in her TED talk, listening to Shame.

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That’s the title of an article in the New York Review of Books blog by Tim Parks.

My laconic friend Luigi’s answer was “No”.¹ Parks comes to much the same conclusion, but in support he adds a great deal of insight and historical learning, which I am sure Luigi shares, internally.

I’ve yet to...

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Nature recently carried a Comment setting out A market approach to saving the whales. It got a fair bit of traction, which is nice.

The authors, Christopher Costello, Leah R. Gerber and Steven Gaines, admit that their proposal is complex and could be hard to administer. Rendered down, it is simp...

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This has been a public service announcement, for all my friends and colleagues looking for funding.

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The pressure has been building. At the last count, I was doing stuff online (i.e. sharing content) at 10 different places.¹ And they all seem to require feeding. That’s fine; after all, an online social relationship is no different from one in wetspace. They all need regular grooming. What I fin...

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