Raising the threshold crappiness
I love anything open late at night. Never mind ‘the sigh of midnight trains in empty stations’; even mundane activities…
Make life easier and all else will follow
You can try to change people’s minds, but this is difficult. You can bribe people to change their behaviour, but…
iAddicts
For many years The Spectator employed a television reviewer who did not own a colour television. Now they have decided…
Migration is complicated. Don’t pretend it’s not
I expect you’ve already noticed it, but in case you’ve been living in a cave or an economics faculty for…
Want greater diversity? Try being less fair
In its hasty dismissal of James Damore, Google showed a worrying disregard for one of the most important freedoms within…
Sutherland’s Law of Bad Maths
Imagine for a moment a parallel universe in which shops had mostly not yet been invented, and that all commerce…
Cruel boy errors
Perhaps you are slightly concerned about your son. At present he is sitting in the crawlspace beneath your home wearing…
The monkey-brained case for Donald Trump
A few years ago I was asked to speak at a conference in New York. ‘Where would be the best…
Warning: rationality could be bad for your health
Almost every popular commercial product owes its success to two different qualities. First, it does the job it is ostensibly…
Why it makes sense to buy your banker lunch
We recently moved -offices from Canary Wharf to Blackfriars bridge. When you move after a long time in one place,…
The secret to doing better at darts – and life
I have always been intrigued by the scoring systems for different sports, and the degree to which they contribute to…
What makes Argos worth £1.4 billion? I reckon I know
When I was at school in the 1970s, some of the richer kids would come back from their summer holidays…
Always obey your satnav? Then you can vote rationally on the EU
In many ways a satnav is a miraculous device. A network of US military satellites more than 10,000 miles above…
Google's driverless car has finally crashed. Might humans be safer?
A first last week: a Google driverless car in autonomous mode was partly at fault in a collision, interestingly one…
The 5 per cent of people who decide everything (and how to be one of them)
What happens when 95 per cent of people like something, but 5 per cent of people prefer something else? You might think…
Maybe you should tax me more – just don’t touch my dishwasher
There was a big fuss a year or so ago about a book by a French chap called Piketty about…
How contactless cards will change the world (much more than you think)
I am one of those annoying, mildly claustrophobic people who sit at the end of a row in cinemas. There…
Q: What is a good school? A: One that everybody else likes
A few months ago I received a call from someone running a small private school near New York. They believed…
There are things we don’t mind paying for – and things we do
Here’s a challenge for film buffs: can anyone remember, from the entire canon of cinema and television, a single scene…
Why the greatest innovations do only one thing, but do it well
McDonald’s got rid of cutlery. Uber does not allow you to pre-book taxis. Amazon began by selling only books. Conventional…
The other side to the division of labour: the concentration of attention
Adam Smith’s theory on the division of labour first appeared in 1776 in The Wealth of Nations. The idea was…
The most important test that HS2 doesn’t pass
Despite my opposition to High Speed 2, I am quite a big fan of HS1, the line which runs from…
Hayek was right: you can’t understand society without evolution
In December the controversial satellite TV channel ReallyTV launches its Christmas season with a flagship reality show called From Homs to…
Spontaneous recombustion: how vapers have re-invented pipe-smoking in electronic form
A fascinating newcomer on the British high street is the vape shop. These were perfectly described by my friend Paul…
We let programmers run our lives. So how’s their moral code?
A few years ago, in the week before Christmas when supermarket sales are at their highest, staff at one branch…
