If – and I realise this is a big ‘if’ – you’ve recently succumbed to the primeval urge to buy a chainsaw, you’ll be familiar with the catalogue of YouTube videos offering sage advice on how to deploy said tool without cutting your face in half or losing a leg. Among the many recommended items of PPE is a garment I remember from my childhood days watching cowboy films.
(more…)

Imagine being in charge of a commercial airline when the jet engine was invented. Would you concern yourself with how this new, superpowered contraption works? Or would you focus on all the possibilities that it offers for your airline?

Business leaders struggling with the mind-blowing concept of quantum computing would be well advised to take the same approach. Never mind how this complicated stuff works, just think what it could do for your business! (more…)

Do you ever wonder why people live in Norway? I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the country per se, it’s just that if I’d been an early homo sapiens migrating out of Africa, looking for somewhere nice to live, I reckon I’d have stopped somewhere around the Côte d’Azur, or maybe Tuscany or southern Spain. Fertile enough to give me all the grapes and olives I could eat, yet warm enough not to necessitate insulating my cave with several layers of mastodon hide in order to survive the winter. (more…)

Even before Covid, remote working had become a regular part of life for the majority of the world’s workforce. Now, it’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t have frequent online meetings as part of their working week. (more…)

With the US Election upon us, and me being pushed for time, it seems fitting to hand the floor to New York Brian again this week. After all, it might be the last time we ever hear from him.

Regardless of your political affiliation, the candidates for US President put on quite the show in Cleveland recently. Perhaps it will come to be known as the ‘Why oh why oh in Ohio’. As taglines go, it’s not quite on the level of the ‘Thrilla in Manila’, but I didn’t have much to work with. (more…)

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, is nothing if not realistic. In his endeavour to keep the Facebook family forever striving to break new ground and avoid resting on their laurels, he is quoted as having said, “If we don’t create the thing that kills Facebook, someone else will.” (more…)

Whether or not you subscribe to the dystopian vision of machines replacing the entire human workforce, and however far away you think that might be, employers can befriend artificial intelligence right now to enhance their human workforce. (more…)

I’m feeling thwarted. I was going to make this week’s word News and it was going to go like this: corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, Boris Johnson, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, Donald Trump, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus, corona virus.
(more…)

Do you ever stop and wonder about the provenance of certain facts? Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire? Says who? It’s a well known fact that bananas are a rich source of potassium. But how do we know that? It’s not something you can tell with the naked eye. (more…)

Ever wondered what’s going on with the word ‘exploit’? I mean, one minute it’s a great thing, such as crossing the Alps on an elephant or discovering Australia; the next it’s a terrible thing, like forcing people into slavery, sending them down mines or stealing their land.
(more…)