Disenchantment with the impersonal nature of the current education system is leading to a return to an old-school idea which puts character development ahead of standardized academic achievement.
When it comes to eating healthily, would you take advice from a celebrity or a world-famous medical school? (Hint: would you take financial advice from a random person in the street or from Warren Buffett?)
Chlorella algae and activated charcoal smoothies. That’s one example of substances that lifestyle gurus will suggest you ingest to ‘cleanse’ the body of ‘toxins’. And we won’t even go into what they often suggest you put in your other end to – guess what – cleanse the body of toxins. Because ... ew.
The cuisines of New York City are the cuisines of the world. Not because of some kind of American culinary imperialism but because it is a city made up of immigrants. Over the generations families tend to stick to the cooking of the countries of their forebears, which is why in New York you can find the most authentic examples of ethnic food, cooked not for tourists but for family, friends and community.
The BBC has used research data from the Institute for Fiscal Studies to publish an interactive salary checker based on degree subject and university in the UK. It shows how graduate earnings vary five years after leaving each institution and subject, relative to the average degree, whatever that is. And it shows data for men and women, thus highlighting the gender pay gap.
Narcissists are particularly dangerous people. They can be charming, intelligent, and entertaining to be around. They can be colourful characters who are attractive because they see life differently. At first it can be like a breath of fresh air to meet a narcissist, because they do not conform to the way most of us think. They have big ideas, big plans, big goals – the very things we are told to strive for in all the success self-help books we read. This is why many narcissists are successful in work and business.
What is the real value of an MBA? The skills developed, or the prestige of the issuing institution? For those seeking to add an MBA to their resume, their answer to that question will make the difference between spending thousands of dollars and spending no dollars at all.
Drones are filling our skies. If companies like Amazon manage to negotiate their way past aviation restrictions, drones will soon be delivering our shopping to our homes and workplaces. No longer just toys and aerial photography tools, drones are here to stay. They are used in search and rescue, disaster relief, bomb disposal, military and civilian reconnaissance, archaeology, infrastructure inspection, anti-poaching, conservation, construction and law enforcement.
In 1233 a papal bull decreed that anyone admitted to the mastership at the University of Toulouse should be allowed to teach freely in any other university. Ever since then it has been set in stone that the rite of passage into a master’s degree is a three or four-year undergraduate degree. Pretty much by definition, a master’s is a follow-on from a bachelor’s degree.
Sometimes the Earth bites. Some would say ‘sometimes the Earth bites back,’ with climate change and rising incidents of flooding in mind. But most natural disasters are not man-made. There’s very little we can do at the moment about earthquakes and volcanoes, for example. And hurricanes and typhoons were around long before we started filling the atmosphere with CO2. So studying natural disasters and preparing for them shouldn’t be undertaken with a sense of guilt about self-inflicted damage. It should be done with a simple sense of self-preservation.
Those involved in decision-making in business and law might have heard of the OODA loop. Standing for Observe-Orient-Decide-Act, it is a methodology for treading carefully, avoiding unnecessary conflict, and winning in challenging situations by performing actions based on rational decisions. To make those decisions, one must first fully understand the situation by observation, and get to know one’s opponents’ intentions and likely actions by orientation. The four steps in the loop are:
