Live while you are alive
Accounting firm Grant Thornton estimates that fraud in the construction industry worldwide costs $1.5 trillion dollars. Corruption is endemic because many big projects are financed by governments and are one-offs, like Sochi’s ice arenas and ski jumps. It is hard to estimate the cost of a unique building, but the more expensive it is the …
The inventor of the popular AK-47 gun was secretly tormented by “unbearable spiritual agony”. Mikhail Kalashnikov, whose automatic rifle first went into production in 1947, became a Soviet hero and died recently at 94. Publicly, he never accepted any responsibility for those killed by the gun. But last year, in a letter to the Russian …
CVS is the second largest pharmacy company in the US. Its public image has not been great – it has effective local monopolies in many parts of the country, its staff are generally so-so, and the look of its stores is uninviting (I compare it with the bright, clean modern look of Boots in England, …
The word biophilia means being drawn to Nature, attracted to the wild places of the world when we are anxious or depressed: a quiet walk over the chalk downs by the Sussex coast of England, a bluebell wood in Somerset, the beauty of the Bay of Naples, seen from Sorrento, a white sand beach in …
Saying “thank you” is becoming a thing of the past (in the UK at least). According to a new study, four in ten people prefer not to use the phrase because it is too formal, while 13% consider it “old-fashioned”. Preferred phrases include “cheers”, “cool”, “nice one”, “wicked” and “boom”. (boom? really?) None of which …
