People's lives would be more fulfilling if they were given greater freedom in the workplace.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/14/conformity-killing-creativity-at-work?CMP=fb_gu
Monday 16 December 2013
Bitcoin: Price v hype
Virtual currency Bitcoin has attracted increasing media attention over
the past year. It's also soaring in value, with a single bitcoin
surpassing $1,000 (£613) for the first time in November. So has the
media hype driven the price hike?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25332746
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25332746
How to Pack Like a Pro - Heathrow Airport Video
Heathrow Airport:
If you've ever had problems closing your suitcase, our video will show you just how to make the most out of every inch - so you can stop wrestling your case and start enjoy your trip!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIk8v__Osm8&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DLIk8v__Osm8&app=desktop
If you've ever had problems closing your suitcase, our video will show you just how to make the most out of every inch - so you can stop wrestling your case and start enjoy your trip!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIk8v__Osm8&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DLIk8v__Osm8&app=desktop
How to pronounce Qunu and Mandela’s middle name
Mandela was born in the Eastern Cape, the homeland of many Xhosa speakers. Xhosa, pronounced KAW-suh
(-k as in king, -aw as in law, -uh as "a" in sofa, stressed syllables
shown in upper case) in English, is one of South Africa's 11 official
languages and one of 28 languages spoken in the country.
Like Mandarin and Zulu, Xhosa is a tone language and the pitch of a syllable (high or low in the case of Xhosa) is used to differentiate the meaning of words, just as the consonant sounds -k and -s are used to differentiate the words "king" and "sing" in English.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-25356745
Like Mandarin and Zulu, Xhosa is a tone language and the pitch of a syllable (high or low in the case of Xhosa) is used to differentiate the meaning of words, just as the consonant sounds -k and -s are used to differentiate the words "king" and "sing" in English.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-25356745
Tuesday 5 November 2013
The Japanese men who prefer virtual girlfriends to sex
Unless something happens to boost Japan's birth rate, its population
will shrink by a third between now and 2060. One reason for the lack of
babies is the emergence of a new breed of Japanese men, the otaku, who
love manga, anime and computers - and sometimes show little interest in
sex.
Friday 18 October 2013
Chinese tourists detained in Paris over one-euro coins
Two Chinese tourists have been briefly held in
France on suspicion of forgery after trying to settle their hotel bill
with one-euro coins.
Police were called in after a hotel owner in Paris became
suspicious about the two men, and 3,700 one-euro coins were then found
in their room.
But the coins were not counterfeit.
Is 25 the new cut-off point for adulthood?
New guidance for
psychologists will acknowledge that adolescence now effectively runs up
until the age of 25 for the purposes of treating young people. So is
this the new cut-off point for adulthood?
"The idea that suddenly at 18 you're an adult just doesn't
quite ring true," says child psychologist Laverne Antrobus, who works at
London's Tavistock Clinic.
"My experience of young people is that they still need quite a considerable amount of support and help beyond that age."
Child psychologists are being given a new directive which is that the age range they work with is increasing from 0-18 to 0-25.
Say It Aint So: The Movement to Kill the Apostrophe
Today is the 10th annual National Punctuation Day, a high holiday on
nerd calendars across these great United States. Its stated purpose is
to be a celebration of underappreciated, misused marks like the
semicolon and “the ever mysterious ellipsis.” But a better-known piece
of punctuation has been getting some apocalyptic press and deserves
attention on this day of celebration: the apostrophe.
MIT’s President: Better, More Affordable Colleges Start Online
Everyone would like a solution to the problem of rising college costs.
While students worry that they cannot afford a college education, U.S.
colleges and universities know they cannot really afford to educate them
either. At a technology-intensive research university like the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it now costs three times as much
to educate an undergraduate as we receive in net tuition—that is, the
tuition MIT receives after providing for financial aid. To push the
research frontier and educate innovators in science and engineering
demands costly instrumentation and unique facilities. Even for
institutions with substantial endowments, subsidizing a deficit driven
by these and other costs is, in the long run, unsustainable.
Behavior Blame Game: Why We Hate to Feel Guilty Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2013/10/03/blame-game-why-we-hate-to-feel-guilty/#ixzz2i5TCJw4k
When things go south and we’re to blame, we’re supposed to feel guilty. Right? Not necessarily.
It turns out that when we do something
that causes negative consequences, we actually feel less responsible for
our actions. Not only that, but we see the entire interaction
differently than we would if our actions had yielded a more positive
result.
Business Soon You Can Pay Employees at This Wisconsin Business to Snuggle With You
A new business is opening in Madison, Wisconsin that will allow
customers to cuddle with employees for a small fee. It’s called Snuggle
House, and it’s not a brothel, okay?
The soon-to-launch establishment has run into a number of snags
in advance of its opening day, which was originally slated for Tuesday.
According to ABC affiliate WKOW, the cuddle castle still needs to pass a
fire inspection as well as file a business plan with the city.
Sleep 'cleans' the brain of toxins
The brain uses sleep to wash away the waste toxins built up during a hard day's thinking, researchers have shown.
The US team believe the "waste removal system" is one of the fundamental reasons for sleep.
Their study, in the journal Science, showed brain cells shrink during sleep to open up the gaps between neurons and allow fluid to wash the brain clean.
Smart Strategies That Help Students Learn How to Learn
What’s the key to effective learning? One
intriguing body of research suggests a rather riddle-like answer: It’s
not just what you know. It’s what you know about what you know.
To put it in more straightforward terms, anytime a student learns, he
or she has to bring in two kinds of prior knowledge: knowledge about
the subject at hand (say, mathematics or history) and knowledge about
how learning works. Parents and educators are pretty good at imparting
the first kind of knowledge. We’re comfortable talking about concrete
information: names, dates, numbers, facts. But the guidance we offer on
the act of learning itself—the “metacognitive” aspects of learning—is
more hit-or-miss, and it shows.
In our schools, “the emphasis is on what students need to learn, whereas little emphasis—if any—is placed on training students how
they should go about learning the content and what skills will promote
efficient studying to support robust learning,” writes John Dunlosky,
professor of psychology at Kent State University in Ohio, in an article just published in American Educator.
However, he continues, “teaching students how to learn is as important
as teaching them content, because acquiring both the right learning
strategies and background knowledge is important—if not essential—for
promoting lifelong learning.”
Four Tips to Keep Students on Track When Using Devices in Class
Bringing technology into the classroom comes with a unique set of
challenges, some of which could make classroom management more
difficult if teachers don’t think out strategies beforehand. It’s hard
for teachers to keep students focused on their work when they’ve got the
internet at their fingertips. Early adopters of one-to-one device
programs discovered with trial and error what works and what doesn’t.
Now those teachers have a lot to share with others. Liana Heitin’s Education Week article does a good job of spelling out the biggest challenges and the solutions teachers are using to deal with them.
What Can We Learn From the Global Effort Around Mobile Learning?
Closing the achievement gap and giving all
students access to a world of learning online remains one of the
strongest allures of education technology. In the U.S., that
conversation is often centered on the newest shiny device, slickest
software or free app, but internationally mobile technology is
revolutionizing learning too, often without fancy gadgets. Recognizing
the creative learning strategies being implemented in developing
countries could help expand thinking in the U.S and inform the ongoing
discussion about how to use technology to deepen learning.
“In developing countries, mobile has leap-frogged fixed-line connectivity,” said Steve Vosloo,
a program specialist, in mobile learning at the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). “People who
were never connected before have access.”
Africa is the fastest growing mobile market and the second largest
after Asia. Vosloo says there are more mobile phone subscriptions than
people in Africa, meaning some people have more than one. Many people in
developing countries have only accessed the internet through a mobile
phone and mobile connectivity far surpasses desktop connections.
Monday 23 September 2013
iOS 7: readers tips on hidden iPhone and iPad features
Users of Apple's iPhone and iPad have sent us some of their tips on how to find fun and helpful hidden features in the new iOS 7 operating system.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/iphone/10323318/iOS-7-readers-tips-on-hidden-iPhone-and-iPad-features.html
Monday 16 September 2013
#100Women: Join the BBC's new conversation
Women around the world have achieved extraordinary things during the
past century. But despite major steps forward in securing political,
cultural and social rights, women everywhere face steep challenges
compared to their male counterparts.
How to Stop Wasting Time
It’s time to get real about how you waste time. These tips and tools can help you add more hours to your day.
Time is an entrepreneur’s most valuable asset. So how can you get
more time in your day? You can’t buy, sell or trade it; you have to
reclaim it.
In order to do that you need to identify how and when you’re wasting
time. Let’s be real about this: everyone wastes some time during the
day—we’re only human after all. The trick is to honestly evaluate your
work habits. Only then can you use your time more efficiently.
The monotonous world of overused CV words
A survey suggests that
the terms "hard-working", "team player" and "motivated" are so
ubiquitous in CVs that they have become utterly meaningless. But what
might you write instead, asks Finlo Rohrer.
It's not easy to write the covering letter that goes with
CVs. You know it's going into a massive pile that will leave some poor
recruiter dead-eyed in a supremely bored fugue. The sentiments you want
to express are not just samey, they can even be counterproductive. Simply stating you're "creative" does seem rather to show the opposite.
Perhaps you should adopt the old journalistic adage of "show
me, don't tell me". As an old journalism professor once said: "Don't
start a sentence with 'interestingly…'. Let the reader be the judge of
that." If having described a feat you have to say it is "spectacular"
either a) you're not very good at describing feats or b) the feat really
wasn't that spectacular.
Blobfish Voted Ugliest Animal
And you can see why
http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/09/12/blobfish-voted-ugliest-animal/
Monday 19 August 2013
The 4 Keys to Killer Customer Service
The secret to a loyal customer base is no secret at all: Great
customer service will bring them back every time. Here’s what you need
to know.
Whether it’s a bored demeanor, a dismissive look or just plain rude
behavior, sloppy customer service spells disaster faster than just about
any other business transgression. People complain about bad customer
service with the same level of vitriol usually reserved for taxes and
presidential elections.
But bad customer service is no joke. According to Micah Solomon,
customer service consultant and author of ”High-Tech, High-Touch
Customer Service,” it can kill your reputation and devastate your bottom
line. But here’s the thing: It can also spell opportunity for savvy
business owners looking for a way to differentiate themselves from the
competition.
We live in an age where a business can thrive or die based on how it
understands and approaches customer engagement. In an article on Small Business Computing, Solomon says there are three groups of people who determine whether or not customers do business with you.
Living room TV is 'making a comeback', says Ofcom
UK families are more likely to watch TV together now than they have been in over a decade, according to a study.
Communications regulator Ofcom said 91% of adults watched
their main TV set once a week - up from 88% in 2002 - but their
attention may be distracted.
It said the popularity of smartphones and tablets was taking teens out of bedrooms back into family rooms.
Most family members now multi-tasked while sitting in front of the TV, the survey of 3,700 over 16s found.
Far from technology pulling family time apart, it said, the
huge growth in mobile was actually having the opposite effect. Family
members are being brought together just as they were in the 1950s when a
TV was likely to be a home's only screen.
Why did offices become like the home?
While the idea of working
from home has failed to kill the office, workplaces have started to
look much more like homes, says Lucy Kellaway.
The other day I got into the office early to find a young
colleague noisily munching his way through a bowl of Fruit 'n Fibre at
his desk. Just behind him his dry cleaning was hanging on the coat
stand, and on the back of his chair was a damp towel.
"Doesn't he have a home?" I thought.
Selfish traits not favoured by evolution, study shows
Evolution does not favour selfish people, according to new research.
This challenges a previous theory which suggested it was preferable to put yourself first.
Instead, it pays to be co-operative, shown in a model of "the
prisoner's dilemma", a scenario of game theory - the study of strategic
decision-making.
Published in Nature Communications, the team says their work shows that exhibiting only selfish traits would have made us become extinct.
Game theory involves devising "games" to simulate situations
of conflict or co-operation. It allows researchers to unravel complex
decision-making strategies and to establish why certain types of
behaviour among individuals emerge.
You're probably more racist and sexist than you think
Not surprisingly, we tend to hear the most about bigotry and prejudice when it surfaces explicitly: see Oprah Winfrey's recent experience in a high-end Swiss boutique, for example, or the New York police department's stop-and-frisk policies, ruled racially discriminatory
by a judge this week. But the truth is that much prejudice – perhaps
most of it – flourishes below the level of conscious thought. Which
means, alarmingly, that it's entirely possible to hold strong beliefs
that point in one direction while demonstrating behaviour that points in
the other. The classic (if controversial) demonstration of this is
Harvard's Project Implicit, made famous in Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink. You can take the test here:
whatever your race, there's a strong chance you'll take a split second
longer to associate positive concepts with black faces than white ones.
Two-Faced Facebook: We Like It, but It Doesn’t Make Us Happy
The more we use Facebook, the worse we feel.
That’s what social psychologists at the University of Michigan
report after tracking how 82 young adults used their Facebook accounts
over a two-week period. When the participants started the study, they
rated how satisfied they were with their lives. During the following two
weeks, the researchers texted them at two-hour intervals five times a
day to ask about how they felt about themselves, as well as how much
time they had spent on Facebook since the last time they were texted.
The more time people spent on Facebook during a single two-hour period,
the worse they reported feeling.
Friday 16 August 2013
Back to School: Off to Oxford with a MacBook Air
In late July, I had the great privilege of attending a special course
about the history of British scientists at Christ Church in Oxford,
U.K.
Going to Oxford to study has always been on my bucket list, so when
this opportunity came up, I jumped at it. As one who has chronicled the
PC industry from its birth and tracked the tech market since 1977, I was
pretty much on top of the modern day scientists and inventors that
drove our current tech revolution. However, when I was in college, my
history and engineering classes paid only lip service to the pioneers in
physics, computing and natural philosophy who did a lot of the research
and experiments in these fields from 1720 through the early 1920s or
thereabout, which laid much of the groundwork for a lot of the
technology we have today.
10 Ways We Get Smarter As We Age
As we age, the brain‘s
processing speed begins to slow, and memory may sometimes slip. But
there are other ways that our mental powers grow as we get older. In the
current issue of the journal Psychological Science, researchers report that older people (over 65) showed less variability
in their cognitive performance across 100 days of testing than did
younger people aged 20 to 31. The older adults’ greater consistency “is
due to learned strategies to solve the task, a constantly high
motivation level, as well as a balanced daily routine and stable mood,”
notes one of the scientists, Florian Schmiedek of the Max Planck
Institute for Human Development in Germany.
A colleague of Schmiedek’s, Axel Börsch-Supan, adds that his research
shows that older workers are more productive and reliable, and less
likely to make serious errors, than are their younger colleagues.
Friday 5 July 2013
Ferrari puts brakes on staff emails
Luxury carmaker limits employees' ability to send group emails in attempt to encourage people to 'talk more and write less'
It makes some of the fastest cars on the planet, but the Italian
manufacturer Ferrari is concerned that the indiscriminate use of emails
in the office is slowing down its employees.
So, in a move likely to spark fresh debate about the intricacies of workplace netiquette, the company – one of Italy's
leading luxury brands – has decided to clamp down on the number of
group emails sent and remind staff that, as tiresome as it may be, they
should perhaps "talk to each other more and write less".
Wednesday 3 July 2013
English rude word enters German language
Germany's standard dictionary has included a
vulgar English term, used by Chancellor Angela Merkel among others, as
an acceptable German word.
Duden, the equivalent of the Oxford English Dictionary in the
UK, said it was reflecting the common use of the word "shitstorm" among
Germans.
The word, which is used in German to denote a public outcry, seems to have caught on during the eurozone crisis.
German language experts voted it "Anglicism of the year" in 2012.
One of them, Michael Mann, explained in a report by the Local newspaper,
that the English word conveyed a "new kind of protest... clearly
different in kind and degree from what could be expected in the past in
response to a statement or action".
In the past there have been controversies over German usage
of words like "download", "job-hopping" or "eye-catcher", the BBC's
Steve Evans reports from Berlin.
The new word has crept into the language, imported by people who heard its use primarily in American English, he says.
It is used by the highest and lowest in the land and when
Chancellor Merkel used it at a public meeting, nobody batted an eyelid,
our correspondent adds.
Tuesday 2 July 2013
Sir Ken Robinson: How to Escape Education’s Death Valley
The ever eloquent Sir Ken Robinson contends in this TED Talk
that the culture of American education contradicts three principles
that make human life thrive: diversity, curiosity and creativity. Humans
naturally embody those qualities, but school has become a system based
on conformity and testing, qualities that don’t use the natural learning
tendencies inherent within every child.
He makes an argument for individualizing learning, but also for
valuing teachers and thinking of their professional development as an
investment in children and the future.
From World of Warcraft to Weight Loss: How Virtual Reality Can Change Behavior
Most studies involving video games and avatars have been connected
with weight gain, but seeing our virtual selves could also melt pounds
away — if the avatar adopts the right healthy habits.
The appeal of virtual-reality games lies in their power to simulate
realities that we create ourselves — from the mundane familiarity of our
own existence to the stimulating excitement of a fantasy world where
anything goes. And the appeal of simulated worlds is driving researchers
to investigate how these virtual experiences are changing or shaping
our behaviors. Does connecting with a virtual version of yourself alter
your perception of who you are and what you are capable of doing? And if
that’s the case, could such virtual realities become a new tool for
influencing social behaviors like relationships, or even lifestyle
choices such as exercising, smoking or eating?
Monday 1 July 2013
The Oxford English Dictionary and its chief word detective
Oxford English Dictionary
Chief Editor John Simpson is to retire after 37 years at the famous
reference work. Here he writes of a life hunting for the evidence behind
the birth of words.
Historical dictionaries are not just about definitions.
Every word or phrase has a story, and the historical
lexicographer has to tease this story out from whatever documentation
can be found. That is one of the pleasures of working on the Oxford
English Dictionary.
Career Strategies You Probably Hate Your Job — But You Don’t Have To
Seventy percent of U.S. employees are either “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” at work, according to Gallup’s 2013 State of the American Workplace report. Put more simply, most of us hate our jobs. But there are ways to make work more than just a place to count down the seconds until you’re back home again.
Peter Attia: Is the obesity crisis hiding a bigger problem?
As a young surgeon, Peter Attia felt contempt for his obese patient with
diabetes. She was overweight, he thought, and thus responsible for the fact that
she needed a foot amputation. But years later, Attia received an unpleasant
medical surprise that led him to wonder: is our understanding right? Could the
precursors to diabetes cause obesity, and not the other way around? A look at
how assumptions may be leading us to wage the wrong medical war.
Warning: Cover Up Your Webcam When Not in Use
The BBC has uncovered an entire industry centering on the buying and
selling of access to compromised webcams, especially those owned by
women.
D’awww: Buttercup the Duck Gets a 3D-Printed Foot
Born with a backwards left foot, Buttercup the Duck turns to 3D printing for a replacement.
Can we make ourselves happier?
Can we make ourselves
happier? According to studies from all over the globe collated by the
World Happiness Database in Rotterdam, we can. But the path to happiness
may not be where we are looking for it.
Professor Ruut Veenhoven, Director of the Database and
Emeritus professor of social conditions for human happiness at the
Erasmus University in Rotterdam, says his own study found a slight
negative correlation between the number of times people in a study
spontaneously mentioned "goals" and their happiness.
"Though it is generally assumed that you need goals to lead a
happy life, evidence is mixed. The reason seems to be that unhappy
people are more aware of their goals, because they seek to change their
life for the better."
But perhaps the most intriguing finding from an array of
studies on file at the database is the lack of correlation between
seeing meaning in life and being happy.
The Happiness of Pursuit
If you're an American and you're not having fun, it just might be your
own fault. Our long national expedition is entering its 238th year, and
from the start, it was clear that this would be a bracing place to live.
There would be plenty of food, plenty of land, plenty of minerals in
the mountains and timber in the wilderness. You might have to work hard,
but you'd have a grand time doing it.
Wednesday 26 June 2013
Germans are speaking Denglish – by borrowing words from us
Fed up with unwieldy compound nouns, younger Germans are turning increasingly to catchy English words
Monday 24 June 2013
What’s Europe Got Against Google? France Threatens Fines Over Privacy
With Google already trying to contain the damage to its reputation
from the National Security Agency (NSA) leaks, it now risks another dent
to its image, as European privacy officials threaten to fine the
company for sucking up vast amounts of user information without
explaining the purpose.
On Thursday, French officials gave Google three months to explain how
long it stores the information it gathers through Gmail, YouTube and
other services, and to explain why it is collecting it. If Google fails
to comply, which looks possible, it could face fines in France of up to
about $400,000. “We realized that they are collecting a huge amount of
data on each of us, and most people know nothing about this,” Isabelle
Falque-Pierrotin, president of France’s National Commission on Computing
and Freedom, told TIME on Thursday. “It is time for action.”
Paris is beating London in charm offensive to lure wealthy Chinese shoppers
For one fleeting instant, an expression of intense exasperation
flickered across the face of the immaculately groomed sales assistant in
a chic Parisian department store as the Chinese tourists jostled and
gestured at watches costing several thousand euros apiece.
Then she bit her lip and smiled. The Chinese visitors counting out wads of euros and engaged in what the Paris
authorities call "fervent shopping" neither noticed nor seemed to care.
They had cash, lots of it, burning holes in their pockets and, with
visits to the Louvre and Versailles beckoning, not much time to spend it
on the luxury goods and logos they were seeking.
Stay in a university residence
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The Anglo Invasion: France Debates Teaching Courses in English
When I opted to send my child to an all-French school, rather than one of the expat-heavy ones catering to Americans in Paris
like us, I braced myself for some complications. And indeed, three
years on, much baffles me, like assignments that requires one to
memorize Breton librettos or the work of 19th century poet Paul Verlaine
— all before the age of 7. But now, with first grade winding down, one
baffling aspect of French education has jumped the school wall and into
politics, as President François Hollande’s government takes on a
contentious issue: how to persuade — or even allow — the French to speak
more English, while preserving their own cherished language.
Monday 17 June 2013
Rindfleischetikettierungs-überwachungsaufgaben-übertragungsgesetz
Sad news from Germany: the British Telegraph reported this
week that the Germans are decommissioning what seems to have been the
language’s longest word, the little mouthful that is the title of my
post today.
The term, which the Telegraph translates as “law delegating
beef label monitoring,” apparently arose during the 1990s in response to
bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Spawned by a crisis, the R-word may
now be the first linguistic fatality attributable to mad cow disease.
It is perhaps too easy to giggle at the agglutinative property of
German nouns. It’s one of the ways the German language works, as if word
components came with Velcro tabs. For decades, this feature of the
language was a gold mine to Anglophone comedy writers, for whom German
sounded funny and funny in a particular way (and for historical as well
as linguistic reasons). While that form of humor has largely faded, the
mystery of these giant linguistic fauna endures. They can perplex and
repel, but they are not without interest.
So to their defense: As ours is the world of IMs and tweets, I come to praise long words, not to bury them.
Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide'
When the government gathers or analyzes personal information, many
people say they're not worried. "I've got nothing to hide," they
declare. "Only if you're doing something wrong should you worry, and
then you don't deserve to keep it private."
The nothing-to-hide argument pervades discussions about privacy. The
data-security expert Bruce Schneier calls it the "most common retort
against privacy advocates." The legal scholar Geoffrey Stone refers to
it as an "all-too-common refrain." In its most compelling form, it is an
argument that the privacy interest is generally minimal, thus making
the contest with security concerns a foreordained victory for security.
Sunday 16 June 2013
eat your words The Etymology of the Word 'Yogurt'
Food words have some seriously gnarly roots, but follow them far
back enough, and you can see culinary history all tangled up in a few
short syllables. Welcome to Eat Your Words
You Can Now Get A 3D Printed Action Figure Of Yourself, And The Detail Is Incredible
3D printing color figures of yourself is threatening to become a trend—in Japan last year designers PARTY opened
a temporary 3D printing photo booth in a Tokyo gallery where people
could turn up, get scanned, and walk away with a mini-figurine of
themselves.
And now, following on from that, comes Twinkind who are offering a similar service, but these guys are based in Germany.
Lego People Are Angrier Than Ever
Life in Legoland used to be so simple – smiling doctors helped cheerful
patients, contented petrol pump operators filled the tanks of satisfied
drivers and classrooms of ecstatic children were taught by beaming
teachers.
But then life became more complicated. Anger, puzzlement and
confusion started to set in – the beatific existence of the Lego
figurine was over.
British citizenship test 'like bad pub quiz'
The British citizenship
test taken by 150,000 people every year has the intellectual rigour of a
"bad pub quiz", a report suggests.
Thom Brooks of Durham University criticised the inclusion of
"trivial" facts such as the age of Big Ben and the date on which the
country's first curry house was established.
Most people in the UK would struggle with such questions, he added.
But the government said it had "stripped out mundane information".
The Life In The UK test must be passed to qualify for indefinite leave to remain in the country.
But Dr Brooks, a US immigrant who sat and passed the test in
Newcastle upon Tyne in 2009, becoming a British citizen in 2011, said it
was "unfit for purpose".
To tip or not to tip... or should it be banned?
A New York restaurant
has banned tipping to spare customers the bother, while some restaurants
in other US cities have already replaced the gratuity with a fixed
optional service charge. So is the discretionary tip falling out of
favour in the land where it's king?
A young man and woman are sitting in a restaurant in New York, enjoying their second date.
The man pays the waiter the bill and heads to the bathroom while the woman gathers her things.
"How much did he tip?" she asks the waiter. He tells her.
When the man comes back to the table, there is an angry exchange and she says she doesn't want to see him again.
A tip of 8.5% brought that romance to a premature end.
Thursday 13 June 2013
Living in the mountains can change the way you speak
Living at high altitudes can change the way people speak and may help to explain why different languages have evolved around the world.
Scientists have found that languages that use "ejective" consonants – rapid bursts of air exhaled while making a sound – tend to be spoken at higher altitudes.
Ejective consonants are not used in the English language, but may be easier to
produce in thin mountain air, the researchers believe.
It is some of the first evidence for how geography can influence the sounds
produced in a language.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10117037/Living-in-the-mountains-can-change-the-way-you-speak.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10117037/Living-in-the-mountains-can-change-the-way-you-speak.html
Monday 10 June 2013
Boundless Informant: the NSA's secret tool to track global surveillance data
The National Security Agency has developed a powerful tool for
recording and analysing where its intelligence comes from, raising
questions about its repeated assurances to Congress that it cannot keep
track of all the surveillance it performs on American communications.
The Guardian has acquired top-secret documents about the NSA datamining tool, called Boundless Informant, that details and even maps by country the voluminous amount of information it collects from computer and telephone networks.
The
focus of the internal NSA tool is on counting and categorizing the
records of communications, known as metadata, rather than the content of
an email or instant message.
Gegen die NSA ist Gegenwehr kaum möglich
Ein Überwachungssystem wie Prism lässt sich zumindest
zum Teil austricksen. Aber wer einmal in Verdacht der Geheimdienste
gerät, ist chancenlos, sagen Experten.
Die NSA interessiert sich brennend für deutsche
Internetnutzer. Das jedenfalls geht aus Daten des Analysewerkzeugs Boundless
Informant des US-Geheimdienstes hervor, die der Guardian veröffentlicht hat. Demnach fragt die NSA in keinem europäischen Land mehr Nutzerdaten ab als in
Deutschland. Warum das so ist, schreibt der Guardian nicht. Für viele dürfte
eine andere Frage eh wichtiger sein: Wie können sie verhindern, ins Raster der
US-Behörde zu geraten?
Es gibt darauf mehrere Antworten. Die erste lautet: Boykott.
Wer Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL,
Skype und YouTube nicht nutzt, wird vom Prism-System nicht direkt erfasst.
Tuesday 14 May 2013
British say the French are the most arrogant people in Europe - and the French agree
But a few eyebrows will be raised by an authoritative new survey’s findings
that the French agree they are the continent’s most arrogant people and that
the Greeks rate themselves as the most trustworthy.
The Washington DC-based Pew Research Centre polled more than 7,600 people in
eight European countries about their attitudes towards the EU, their
governments and their neighbours.
The findings throw up intriguing insights into new national stereotypes in the
wake of the Eurozone crisis, which has seen Germany take a leading role in
imposing unpopular austerity measures on the struggling economies of
southern Europe.
Everyone, including the British, agreed that the Germans were the most
trustworthy people in the EU, apart from the Greeks, who awarded themselves
that accolade.
The traditional antagonism between the UK and France is reflected in the
survey, with Britons judging their neighbours over the Channel to be the
least trustworthy and the most arrogant.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/10055933/British-say-the-French-are-the-most-arrogant-people-in-Europe-and-the-French-agree.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/10055933/British-say-the-French-are-the-most-arrogant-people-in-Europe-and-the-French-agree.html
"Stags Hens & Bunnies, Blackpool"
Junggesellenabschiede in Blackpool: "Das ist die Kultur der Arbeiterklasse"
Artikel:
http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/dougie-wallace-fotografiert-in-blackpool-ausufernde-junggesellenabschiede-a-899581.html#ref=rss
Link zu Fotos:
http://dougiewallace.com/356061/stags-hens-bunnies-blackpool/
Monday 6 May 2013
Working gun made with 3D printer
The world's first gun made with 3D printer technology has been successfully fired in the US.
The controversial group which created the firearm, Defense Distributed, plans to make the blueprints available online.
The group has spent a year trying to create the firearm,
which was successfully tested on Saturday at a firing range south of
Austin, Texas.
Anti-gun campaigners have criticised the project.
Europe's law enforcement agency said it was monitoring developments.
The Oxford English Dictionary and its chief word detective
Historical dictionaries are not just about definitions.
Every word or phrase has a story, and the historical
lexicographer has to tease this story out from whatever documentation
can be found. That is one of the pleasures of working on the Oxford
English Dictionary.
Pom
An enduring myth is that the word pom (as in whinging pom
and other more colourful expressions) is an acronym from either
"Prisoner of His Majesty" or even "Permit of Migration", for the
original convicts or settlers who sailed from Britain to Australia.
The first recorded use of pom comes from 1912, which is quite - but not unnaturally - early for an acronym.
There is no historical documentation to support these myths (rather like the disproved theory that posh derives
from tickets for the upmarket cabins on the old P&O liners - port
out, starboard home). Instead the etymology is apparently more
circuitous.
Monday 29 April 2013
I'd be all thumbs with a non-qwerty keyboard
What's got two thumbs and can type 65 words a minute? This guy!
Researchers have designed a new keyboard layout for tablets and
smartphones which leaves eight of the standard finger complement
hanging, rearranging the letters so that they can be speedily prodded at
by the helpfully opposable thumbs of the user.
Police-speak: An appreciation
The police have always
had their own language. But their often-mocked manner of speaking to the
public displays a streak of comic genius, says Charles Nevin.
As we tweet, text, abbreviate and generally truncate our way
through this frantic life, it's good to know that there is at least one
small area of public discourse where a relish for orotundity and a
delight in stately sarcasm still flourish. I refer, of course, to those
upstanding upholders of order, our police.
Sunday 28 April 2013
TED Talk: Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity
Sir
Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for
creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines)
creativity.
Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we're
educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school
systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of
intelligence.http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html
Monday 22 April 2013
Toddlers becoming so addicted to iPads they require therapy
Children as young as four are becoming so addicted to smartphones and iPads that they require psychological treatment.
Experts have warned that parents who allow babies and toddlers to access
tablet computers for several hours a day are in danger of causing
“dangerous” long term effects.
The youngest known patient being treated in the UK is a four-year-old girl
from the South East.
Her parents enrolled her for compulsive behaviour therapy after she became
increasingly “distressed and inconsolable” when the iPad was taken away from
her.
Her use of the device had escalated over the course of a year and she had
become addicted to using it up for to four hours a day.
Dr Richard Graham, who launched the UK’s first technology addiction programme
three years ago, said he believed there were many more addicts of her age.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10008707/Toddlers-becoming-so-addicted-to-iPads-they-require-therapy.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10008707/Toddlers-becoming-so-addicted-to-iPads-they-require-therapy.html
The peril of 'showrooming'
Have you ever seen
something you wanted in a shop, tried it, checked the price online on
your smartphone, found it was cheaper, and walked out? Welcome to the
world of "showrooming".
"The staff at Jessops would like to thank you for shopping
with Amazon" read the sign in a shop window shortly after the British
camera chain went into administration.
It was a dry reaction to a growing problem for "bricks and
mortar"-focused retailers. Showrooming is said to have exacerbated the
decline of high-profile brands like Comet.
Gadget stores, bookshops and the cosmetics industry are all
losing sales to showroomers, but solutions have proved hard to find.
Kelly Buckle, 23, of Birmingham, sometimes spends more than
£200 in a single shopping trip - but never actually gets as far as the
checkout.
"I can go in and smell a perfume and then find it online for £30 less," she says.
First Printed Book in America Expected to Fetch Up to $30M in Auction
A copy of the Bay Psalm Book, the first printed book in the land that
would eventually become the United States of America, will head to
auction in late November where it is expected to fetch anywhere between
$15 million to $30 million.
Monday 15 April 2013
50 Must-Have iPad Apps
Fifty must-have apps, from A to Z: Here’s a list of essentials every
iPad owner should consider. Each entry features alternative options to
check out, too, for well over 150 apps in all. Did we miss something?
Tell us about the apps you can’t live without in the comments section
below.
Thursday 11 April 2013
Was wollen Sie von Sheryl Sandberg wissen?
Frauen verhindern ihren Aufstieg selbst, schreibt die Facebook-Managerin
in ihrem Buch. Ist sie die Stimme einer neuen Frauenbewegung? Wir
stellen ihr Leserfragen.
Als Sheryl Sandberg vom US-Magazin Forbes
zur fünftmächtigsten Frau der Welt gleich nach Angela Merkel und
Hillary Clinton gewählt wurde, fühlte sie sich bloßgestellt. Wie eine
Hochstaplerin sei sie sich vorgekommen, schreibt die Facebook-Managerin
in ihrem Buch Lean in – Frauen und der Wille zum Erfolg.
Unter dem Hashtag #leanin sind Kommentare zum Buch auf Twitter zu finden. Am kommenden Donnerstag wird Sandberg bei der ZEIT-Konferenz Frauen in Führungspositionen
in Hamburg zu Gast sein. Wir werden der Managerin ausgewählte
Leserfragen in einem Videointerview stellen. Unter #leanin können Sie
Fragen vorschlagen.
Wednesday 10 April 2013
6 Points to Make in Your Self Evaluation
When preparing for an annual review,
you'll want to compose a self evaluation that includes both your strong
points and areas in need of improvement. This exercise is meant to help
you evaluate your strong suits, as well as identify areas in need of
improvement. To devise such a document, you'll need to include certain
key points that will help you come up with an overall performance
improvement strategy.
Viewpoint: Why do tech neologisms make people angry?
The bewildering stream of
new words to describe technology and its uses makes many people angry,
but there's much to celebrate, writes Tom Chatfield.
From agriculture to automobiles to autocorrect, new things
have always required new words - and new words have always aroused
strong feelings.
In the 16th Century, neologisms "smelling too much of the
Latin" - as the poet Richard Willes put it - were frowned upon by many.
Willes's objects of contempt included portentous, antiques,
despicable, obsequious, homicide, destructive and prodigious, all of
which he labelled "ink-horn terms" - a word itself now vanished from
common usage, meaning an inkwell made out of horn.
Monday 8 April 2013
Margaret Thatcher Milchräuberin, Falkland-Kriegerin und Gewerkschaftsschreck
Innen- wie außenpolitisch war Margaret Thatcher eine Hardlinerin, die
keine Angst vor Konflikten hatte. 1982 führte sie ihr Land in den
Falklandkrieg gegen Argentinien, innenpolitisch legte sie sich vor allem
mit den bis dahin äußerst einflussreichen britischen Gewerkschaften an.
So umstritten sie war, als erste Regierungschefin in London prägte sie
ihr Land nachhaltig. Konservative Politiker verehren noch heute ihre
Politik des Thatcherismus. Margaret Thatcher starb im Alter von 87
Jahren an den Folgen eines Schlaganfalls.
Margaret Thatcher: Portrait of the Iron Lady
Margaret Thatcher died April 8, 2013 from a stroke. She was 87. She had
been the longest serving British Prime Minister of the 20th century. She
set off a profound reversal in national fortunes that became known as
Thatcherism — transforming her country's politics such that for Labour
to come back to power, the erstwhile Socialists had to adopt a much more
centrist stance, hence Tony Blair's "New Labour." What Margaret
Thatcher began is also rightly referred to as the Thatcher Revolution
because the leader of the Conservative Party was a radical ideologue
whose policies turned British society upside down — and still cause
heated if not vitriolic arguments. In recognition of her 11-1/2 years in
office and her immense achievements, historians will inevitably rank
her alongside Winston Churchill as the greatest of this century's
British Prime Ministers.
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