Here’s a question: is it best to let your relationship with your dog develop on an ad-hoc basis, kind of warm and fuzzy and organic, or should you adopt a structured approach that lays down the ground rules right from the start? You probably know the answer. How many owners of nutty, uncontrollable dogs do you know who are now regretting not having trained them properly?
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:
Mindfulness is all about mental clarity, and alcohol is well known for having the opposite effect. So why has a course near Niagara Falls in Canada combined the two? Do they cancel each other out, or can they actually enhance each other?
Before looking at the Niagara Falls course on ‘winefulness’, let’s look at another phenomenon that is gaining popularity in Asia: beer yoga. Just follow the link. We’ll wait.
The world is full of books, DVDs and motivational speakers on the subject of how to become successful. Some are mere lists of platitudes to keep repeating to yourself. Others, like Napoleon Hill’s Classic Think and Grow Rich, focus on the character formation required for success. Others still are based on case studies with a fake-it-till-you-make-it approach.
Rihanna has been pushing for responses from world leaders on Twitter as part of her push to raise awareness for charity the Global Partnership for Education. And she has been getting them.
The pop star from Barbados received, among others, the following replies:
"Hola @Rihanna! Education is in the central core of our political aims. Only education can change the world." – Argentina President Mauricio Macri
There is a growing body of evidence for the effectiveness of mindfulness in areas such as health, medicine, schools, prisons, law, and even government. In numerous clinical studies including over 100 randomised controlled trials, its practice has been shown to correlate strongly with greater wellbeing and perceived health as well as physical health. It has also been shown to foster better decision-making and clarity of thought.
If we really want the cool stuff we see in Science Fiction Movies, we are going to have to train more people in nanotechnology: the manipulation of matter on an atomic, molecular and supramolecular scale. We’ve already got graphene, bendy screens, hydrophobic coatings and bandages infused with silver nanoparticles to help heal wounds faster. Those are cool. But where is Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak? Where are the sci-fi chairs that grow out of the floor and disappear when you stand up?
In 2010, Katy Perry walked into the MET Costume Institute Gala wearing a dress that constantly changed colour. 3000 shimmering LEDs created the effect, with Perry lighting up like a rainbow in the couture dress designed by wearable tech company CuteCircuit. Back in 2009, Sony Ericsson and the London College of Fashion ran a contest to design digital clothing, and the winner was a Bluetooth-enabled cocktail dress that lit up when a call was received.
When we go into a restaurant, we put our trust in its staff to give us food that’s in tip-top shape. Our health and happiness depend on procedures like maintaining the cold chain, cleaning surfaces, sterilizing utensils, checking cooking temperatures and a lot of other details that can make the difference between healthy and dangerous. A chef can kill a customer with a bad scallop, and even if everything is impeccably clean, you can still kill an allergy sufferer with a fragment of peanut. Hence the need for a tightly-regulated catering industry.
The macros function within Excel is such a powerful feature that only the initiated can handle it. You are ready to enter the realm of Excel macros when you are a confident and experienced use of Excel and comfortable creating formulas and manipulating spreadsheet data. A little experience in Visual Basic won’t go amiss, either. You will have mastered most of the functions that come as standard with Excel and be ready to create your own.
If you are into comic books, it can seem that their creators are so far beyond the rest of us in skill and imagination that only they have the divine right to produce comic books. The fantastic epics that roll off the presses and into comic book stores seem to be born in another realm to which mere mortals have no access. Yet if you stop to think about it, those people had to start somewhere and were once shaky novices producing forgettable work.
