There's a law in logic, called the law of the excluded middle, that states, with reference to the proposition 'a': not (a and not a). That is to say, something is either the case or is not the case, never both. There's no 'middle'. Aside from wishing I could exclude a bit more of my middle, I would observe that real life isn't that simple. We use equivocal phrases like: "Well, it is and it isn't..." "Yes and no..." "On the
In Martin McDonagh's dark comedy classic, In Bruges, Ray, played by Colin Farrell, gets into a fight with a fellow customer who complains after his date lights a cigarette in the smoking section of a restaurant. Sensing a degree of New World in the puritan diner's accent, Ray runs through a list of anti-Vietnam War grievances, before punching him in the face, and shouting "That's for John Lennon!". The diner, for his part, is totally confused. The joke, we later
They say that as comedians get older, they stop making jokes about drugs, sex and hedonism, and start focusing on the price of childcare and mortgage approvals. As their fans are ageing with them, many become oblivious to the drudgery of another "kids say the funniest things" routine. It doesn't need to be original or edgy, it's just a relief to be out on a Saturday night without a baby monitor. (For evidence of this phenomenon, see Michael McIntyre gigs.)
For most of my adult life, my attitude to haircuts has been the following. Get them done as infrequently, as cheaply and as close to home as possible, show the hairdresser a picture of South African cricketer Dale Steyn and say: "Like that, but a little tidier, please. I have an office job." Most of the time this strategy has worked out quite well. But as I get older it's becoming increasingly clear that this laissez faire attitude to haircuts
A former colleague of mine once told me how, as a junior economist, he used to record economic data releases in pencil. Pencil, he told me, was the key so that data could be erased to make way for subsequent revisions! Nowadays, Fathom's economists can simply click refresh on their Datastream Excel add-in; economic research has come a long way... Last week we argued that economists currently have little to fear from artificial intelligence (AI). We argued that economists add
It’s fair to say that computers have come a long way. Wind the clock back 80 years and Colossus, one of the first electronic computers, whose name was fitting of its size, was built during the second world war to decrypt secret German codes. Almost inconceivably, it used vacuum tubes and paper tape to perform several basic Boolean (e.g. true/false) logical operations. But fast forward to 2018 and not only do we carry them around in our pockets, but computers
It seems fitting that the NHS, which celebrates its 70th anniversary in July, should be the subject of one of the first TFiFs of the New Year. It is, after all, a time when many of us commit to year-long goals, the vast majority of which, it seems, relate to health and wellbeing. The bacon is banished, and quinoa and pulses fill the trolley in a bid to finally undo years of overindulgence and gluttony. Just over half of us
With the Christmas and New Year break now but a dim and distant memory, our thoughts turn naturally to the subject of annual leave. Are we getting enough? Or are we getting too much? These questions aren’t as daft as they might seem. Statutory leave — the minimum amount of paid holiday to which a full-time employee is legally entitled — varies enormously from country to country. With 28 days of statutory leave, including any public holidays observed by the
A friend used to coach table tennis to a very high level. He told me about a girl he was coaching, who had a shot at representing Great Britain at the Olympics in due course (she was aged 14 at the time). He said the most difficult part of coaching her was to shift her energy and attention from the negative to the positive: "She would spend hours, and wake up at night, fretting about the one tiny mistake she
People say that there's a grain of truth in every joke. If you watch enough stand-up comedy, you can find interesting economic observations too. In a performance from the 2000s, Chris Rock distinguishes between the rich and the wealthy. He says that Shaquille O'Neal, the NBA superstar, is rich; the team owner, who pays his multi-million-dollar salary, is wealthy. He goes on to list reasons why that distinction matters. Wealth, he points out, creates more wealth. It's passed from one