Will the McMansion ever die?
The McMansion with a giant SUV parked in the driveway were pretty much the epitome of middle class excess during the housing bubble. Then gas prices spiked, the crash came, and both houses and cars shrank a bit as Americans turned thrifty.
Continue reading… “Are McMansions making a comeback?”
Thomas Edison
Larry Page, CEO and co-founder of Google, wants to be more like Thomas Edison than Nikola Tesla. “If you invent something, that doesn’t necessarily help anybody,” he recently told Fortune. “You’ve got to actually get it into the world; you’ve got to produce, make money doing it so you can fund it.” Edison did that with practical incandescent light, the phonograph, the movie camera, and hundreds of other inventions. Tesla had his grandiose successes, too, but a shrewd businessman he was not. “He couldn’t commercialize anything,” Page added. “He could barely fund his own research.”
Continue reading… “Google X’s vision of the future”
Chris Anderson of 3D Robotics
Chris Anderson is building drones in an industrial park on the outskirts of Tijuana. The former editor-in-chief of Wired magazine readily acknowledges that just a few years ago, he knew almost nothing about the aerospace industry. But after building a small plane out of Lego parts with his kids, and realizing that even children’s toys now come packed with advanced sensors and controls, Mr. Anderson decided to start a company called 3D Robotics Inc. and manufacture his own aerial vehicles.
Continue reading… “3D printing is creating a ‘new class of entrepreneurs’”
David Brooks, in a recent column for the New York Times said that the U.S. has one clear advantage over Chinese competition: branding. He notes that U.S. firms are powered by “eccentric failed novelists” (presumably from agencies and consulting firms that are gifted at brand positioning and execution) and “visionary founders” (think Steve Jobs) who have created exceptional brands.
Continue reading… “Why Chinese firms have weak branding”
Cosmetic surgery
When people who were instructed to think about their own mortality they were more receptive to the idea of having cosmetic surgery than those who weren’t (3.57 versus 2.96 on a seven-point scale). This suggests that fear of death is a motivator behind patients’ decisions to have tummy tucks, says Kim-Pong Tam of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Continue reading… “Plastic surgery motivated by the fear of death”
Americans don’t exactly agree with everyone on the pronunciations of words. A major part of what makes American English so interesting as a dialect are the regional accents.
Continue reading… “How Americans speak English totally different from each other”
The study finds correlation between higher illness absences and lower ventilation rates in California elementary schools.
A new study by scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has confirmed that opening windows to let in fresh air might be good for you. Analyzing extensive data on ventilation rates collected from more than 150 classrooms in California over two years, the researchers found that bringing classroom ventilation rates up to the state-mandated standard may reduce student absences due to illness by approximately 3.4 percent.
Continue reading… “Study finds more fresh air in classrooms means fewer absences”
For most married men and women today, marriage looks pretty good.
Liza Mundy paints a dismal portrait of heterosexual marriage. In the bleak rendering, contemporary marriage comes across as unequal, unfair, and unhappy to today’s wives. Wives are burdened with an unequal and unfair “second shift” of housework and childcare, husbands enjoy “free time” while their wives toil away at home, lingering gender inequalities in family life leave many wives banging “their heads on their desks in despair,” and one poor woman cannot even have a second child because she does “everything” and her husband does nothing. Mundy also suggests that recent declines in women’s happiness can be laid at the feet of “lingering inequity in male-female marriage.”
Continue reading… “The 3 biggest myths about marriage today”
The majority of staff who own a smartphone or tablet used them at work.
Employees continue to use their own smartphones and tablets at work without the approval of the company’s IT department. Just over half (56.8%) of 4,371 employees worldwide were using personal devices at work, according to a survey by analyst house Ovum.
Continue reading… “A third of smartphone owners go BYOD without IT department’s knowledge”
Job quality is worsening around the globe, even where the unemployment rate is falling.
The “World of Work” annual report has been released by the UN’s International Labor Organization, and boy the results are depressing.
Continue reading… “Wealthy countries are creating more jobs by creating worse jobs”
So what is the future of marriage?
In 1996 a symposium titled “Can Government Save the Family?” was published by the Hoover Institution. A who’s-who list of culture warriors—including Dan Quayle, James Dobson, John Engler, John Ashcroft, and David Blankenhorn—were asked, “What can government do, if anything, to make sure that the overwhelming majority of American children grow up with a mother and father?”
Continue reading… “Living in a world where marriage is on the decline”
Micropublishing is one of the most significant publishing trends of 2013.
Marco Arment announced last week that he sold The Magazine to the minimalist iOS publication’s executive editor, Glenn Fleishman. Arment said he had accidentally built a business he was ill-suited to running. “Glenn’s doing almost everything already, so I’m effectively a figurehead,” he said.
Continue reading… “The micropublishing explosion”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.