About

Dressed for Ruminant Pink Friday

Who am I?

I am a South African chemical engineer with a PhD, a former academic, a long-serving inhabitant of the petrochemical industry and, once again, an academic. This time at a business school.

I spent nearly 30 years in petrochemicals, much of it attending meetings, producing PowerPoint presentations and very occasionally helping to make useful things happen. The experience left me with an enduring interest in energy, industrial policy, corporate failure, unintended consequences and corporate cognitive dissonance.

I am 65, married, and the father of two adult sons. I am annoyingly opinionated, instinctively irreverent and suspicious of certainty, except where the scientific method is concerned.

I remain in awe of what science has revealed about our tiny place in a vast, ancient and largely indifferent universe. This perspective has done little to improve my position in the global dominance hierarchy, which remains reassuringly low.

Ruminant Pink Friday is where I think aloud about energy, economics, politics, business, science and the general absurdity of modern life, occasionally assisted by a pink cow.