Belated Happy New Year everyone. Today I am traveling back to New York – weather and air traffic permitting – after a great family ski vacation in Colorado. As announced at the end of last year I took a break from (most) email and also largely from social media, other than occasionally looking at Twitter. The net result was that I had time to read several books, including the wonderful Age of Wonder (thanks to Ed Cooke who gave me a copy), Abundance, much delayed Guns, Germs and Steel, and an...

Belated Happy New Year everyone. Today I am traveling back to New York – weather and air traffic permitting – after a great family ski vacation in Colorado. As announced at the end of last year I took a break from (most) email and also largely from social media, other than occasionally looking at Twitter. The net result was that I had time to read several books, including the wonderful Age of Wonder (thanks to Ed Cooke who gave me a copy), Abundance, much delayed Guns, Germs and Steel, and an...