Lifestyle topics
Facebook now has the world’s largest open-plan office, complete with a nine-acre rooftop picnic area; Google is seeking planning permission for an even grander campus than its existing Googleplex; and Apple’s $5bn “mothership” is two-thirds the size of the Pentagon. By coincidence, the tech-heavy Nasdaq index recently hit 5,000 for the first time since March …
Mediocrity is no mere character flaw, but a deep tendency of the universe, to be ceaselessly fought, but with little hope of final victory. People and organisations hit plateaus not because they couldn’t do better, but because a plateau is tolerable, even comfortable place. Even the disciplined go-getter, who never stops, ends up doing unimportant …
Continue reading ‘Being promoted to your own level of incompetence’ »
To The Daily Telegraph “A grammatical plague that has serious implications for political discourse in the media is the use of the conjunction “so” at the beginning of an answer to an interviewer’s straight question. This usage is illogical, as it implies the interviewee is continuing a chain of argument from a previously stated position (the …
To the Financial Times While it is heartwarming to see the concern of Simon Walker of the Institute of Directors for other countries struggling to rebuild their economies, perhaps he may like to address a problem closer to home. The UK has twice as many managers (which includes directors) in proportion to total employment as …
Schools in Finland are to phase out the teaching of joined-up handwriting, “on the grounds that being nifty at a keyboard is more important” in the modern age. “This is desperately short-sighted. Touch-typing is certainly a skill that should be taught to all children, but that’s no reason to abandon cursive handwriting. It’s like giving …
