If you are visiting a foreign country, you might take along a pocket guide to the language to help you order things in restaurants or explain to the local police what the person who snatched your cell phone looks like. It beats pointing and grunting or shouting in English, and the natives will admire you for making the effort, even if they bring you squid instead of chicken.
Arts funding cuts in the UK have bitten deep. The Arts Council has lost a third of its funds, forcing it to axe some of its projects and scale down others. In this atmosphere of austerity, arts fundraising needs to go into overdrive to save some of Britain’s best cultural assets from extinction.
Shaan Patel is such a driven and high-achieving person that his claim to boost anyone’s SAT score by 200 points or more carries some credibility. From humble beginnings growing up at his parents’ motel in Nowheresville, Nevada and attending the local public school which had a dropout rate of 40%, he graduated from Yale with an MBA and USC with an MD. And his own SAT score on the way there? A perfect 1600, after starting out with only an average score. This lends weight to his claim that he can boost anyone’s SAT score by 200 or more, because he boosted his own by several hundred points.
International luxury goods group Kering owns brands such as Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Boucheron, Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen. Possibly stemming from the company’s origins in the timber industry – or perhaps in spite of them – since 2012 it has been committed to a sustainability plan that aims to minimise its impact on the environment. This includes avoiding PVC in manufacturing operations, sourcing gold from ethical providers, and purchasing its leather from responsible and verified sources.
It’s funny how the contestants on TV baking shows like the Great British Bake Off always seem to have plenty of creative ideas and expert baking skills. The results on the day vary – otherwise there wouldn’t be a show – but they all seem to have been studying, learning and baking like crazy before getting on the show and receiving their first challenge.
With music education facing extinction in UK schools and budget cuts leading one prominent musician to proclaim the situation ‘child abuse’, at least it’s good to know that some of our friends across the pond are getting it right, at least in one major city. Chicago schools are generating high levels of student engagement through allowing them to form their own mariachi bands.
In 2014 The University of California, Irvine staged an eight-week MOOC on the sociological, scientific and ethical questions posed by the zombie apocalypse portrayed in AMC’s The Walking Dead. With the mega-popular TV series as its starting point, the course explored key science and survival themes ranging from understanding social identities to modeling the spread of disease.
The well-known manufacturing principle of just-in-time aims to ensure that the right part arrives on the assembly line in the right place and the exact moment it is needed, thus reducing inventory overheads and making for a lean and efficient process. The same principle is being applied to learning for today’s busy professionals, by using algorithms to deliver just the learning content they need – and nothing else – at the time they need it.
According to Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the universe was sneezed out of the nose of a being named the Great Green Arkleseizure. But that theory was only accepted by the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI, who lived in perpetual fear of the time they called the Coming of the Great White Handkerchief. Here on Earth, we have our own theories on how the universe began, and thankfully they are a lot less icky and a lot more peer-reviewed.
After regional conflicts, when one side has won, both have given up and gone home, or when there’s nobody left to fight, there is work to do. Post-conflict reconstruction does what it can to clean up the mess, and business has a key role in it. Many conflicts are started by demagogues stirring up anger over real or perceived economic inequalities, which often still persist after the fighting has ended. The task of business in reconstruction is to restore production and distribution systems to energize the economy, create jobs and growth, and positively influence local perceptions.
Gardeners everywhere know the benefits of getting outside, getting their hands into the earth and, when the right time comes, enjoying the fruits of their labours. Working with the seasons rather than against them has a calming and grounding effect that can reduce worrying about life stresses by keeping in touch with nature. People who regularly work their gardens often have an aura of contentment about them that non-gardeners envy.
