- Written by Peter Edwards Editor, Global Cement Magazine
My secondary school was a bit old-fashioned in how it categorised students into easy-to-manage groups. For instance, it was generally the view that girls were ‘better’ at languages and the arts. In contrast, boys were ‘more logical’ and ‘suited’ to the sciences and maths. I was among those boys, convinced that - because of my gender and ability to press the right buttons on a calculator - my future lay in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM). I vividly remember an awkward meeting with a ‘careers advisor.’ After a short questionnaire, he basically told me to focus on the sciences, which I did... because I enjoyed them. Exactly how much this enjoyment had been prompted by the school’s biases is up for debate.
- Written by Peter Edwards Editor, Global Cement Magazine
I was amused by the recent Space X launch, not because I like seeing spaceships explode, but because the company clearly doesn’t like talking about its own failings. The launch on 27 May 2025 resulted in a ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly.’ It was not an explosion, failure or crash. That would have been really bad...
- Written by Peter Edwards Editor, Global Cement Magazine
Years ago, I spent a university industrial placement at the UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the ultimate calibrator for measurements in the UK. In everyday life, it was traditionally responsible for keeping traders and shops honest when it came to selling goods by weight or length. It has similar roles when it came to time - indeed it was behind the development of the atomic clock, which is crucial to ensuring that the modern world - including the internet - works on time. In science and engineering, it makes sure that everyone is ‘on the same page’ when it comes to the units used in fundamental research.
- Written by Robert McCaffrey Editorial Director, Global Cement Magazine
During a family dinner-time discussion recently, the question arose of what people in the future, say in 30 years, would look back on that we do today, and shudder. It’s an interesting question, because we can look back 30 years and shudder at some of the things that they used to do back then, and say to ourselves, “What were they thinking?”
- Written by Robert McCaffrey Editorial Director, Global Cement Magazine
In this column I have summarised the history of the Universe from the Big Bang some 14.6Bn years ago until the present day, and have also looked at the future of the universe until it just fades away, aeons hence, I thought I would fill in the gap by summarising the whole history of the cement industry - so far.
