People often ask me how one person can do so many different things at once. Designing coatings for ship hulls, sketching a fusion reactor, developing a new model in physics, writing about democracy and education. As if it were coincidence that one mind holds all of that together.
My answer is always the same: because it is all the same thing. Whoever understands the flow of water around a ship's hull also understands why a society stagnates. Whoever sees that a molecule behaves like a colliding marble also sees why a school system that only counts and never weighs will eventually empty out. Seeing connections between things that others examine in isolation — that is what I call intelligence.
Why a newspaper of my own?
Because the existing media do not make those connections. A science editor writes about nuclear fusion. A political editor about elections. An education editor about pupil numbers. None of them reads the others' pieces. Nobody asks the question: might a fusion reactor and a school system obey the same law?
In this newspaper I try to do precisely that. In plain language, because most things that matter can also be explained simply if you take the trouble. And open to disagreement, because I hold no monopoly on the truth — I have, at most, a few interesting questions.
What you can expect here
Every fortnight an edition appears with a handful of articles grouped around a single thread. Some from my own work — coatings, biomass, fusion, the 7D model. Others on politics, education, economics. No party colour, no advertising, no hidden agenda.
And one important novelty: beneath each article there is a discussion box. You can respond there, disagree, probe further. AI helps me keep the discussion worthwhile — spam filtered out, summaries of the sharpest counter-arguments brought in. I read and respond myself, but the filters do the heavy lifting.
The name
The Open Visor — because I want us to be able to look one another in the eye when we make our claims. Not anonymously, not from the hip, not in hindsight. Open, with argument, with respect for those who know better.
"Anyone who thinks only within the walls of their own discipline is not a scientist but a civil servant of the known."
Welcome to edition one. Let us begin.