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Computer Efficiency but No Understanding
Sometimes you just can’t get through to them; sometimes you just can’t make yourself understood. Whatever you say, however you express it, you don’t get an acceptable response. It can be very annoying and exasperating. If the computer says no, then no, it will stay. Computers do not respond to reasonableness, appeal or charm. They…
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Managing Society by Television
We know the power and influence of television: it can create celebrities, initiate and drive fashions, establish what is important in the news, and set the agenda for debate. Having a presence in most people’s homes, it has a direct channel into our lives. Unsurprisingly, this has been recognised, and television is now used more…
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Children’s Parties at Home – Top Tips
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Valuing the Cliché
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Heart Ablation Opens the Mind
I have just had an unexpected but incredible insight into the alternate possibilities that my brain might be capable of or that others might naturally possess. I recently had to have a heart ablation. This procedure is performed to correct an irregular heartbeat. It involves burning or freezing some of the heart tissue to help…
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The Slow, the O-So Slow Rise of Vegetarianism
As a dietary choice, vegetarianism has been around for years. I actually became a vegetarian in the mid-1980s. At that time, vegetarians weren’t that common. It would have been considered a strange and unusual practice. In fact, vegetarians were probably considered a little bit odd. In those days, there were no vegetarian options on the…
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Stand Out Beauty Attracts Attention
Most of the time, you hardly notice other people. You will just walk past them in the street. Even for the dedicated people-watcher, the vast majority of those surveyed are quickly overlooked and soon forgotten. Plain, ordinary and common make them uninteresting and unremarkable. But every so often, you will see someone who captures your…
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Healthy Eating – How do you Measure the Goodness?
We may well be familiar with the expression that you can’t compare apples with oranges, but can you compare bananas with bananas? Certainly, apples are very different from oranges, making any comparison difficult. But bananas are – seemingly – very similar to one another, so can you compare them in terms of their health benefits,…
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Taxation by Stealth – How to Hide the Burden?
Governments are often criticised for raising taxes by stealth – perhaps by not adjusting thresholds in line with inflation or by hiding tax changes in the small print of a budget – but the problem is much more fundamental than that. The whole system by which the government seeks to raise revenues is actually built…
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The Essence of Teaching Good Behaviour
All good parents and teachers know that it is easier to train someone to do something than to train them not to do something. This is because it is much simpler to encourage and incentivise positive behaviour than it is to discourage unwanted behaviour. Getting desirable behaviour is readily achievable through positive reinforcement. If you…
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What’s in a Job Title?
Over the last few years, there has been a trend to give people fancier job titles. The job role will not have changed; only the job title will change. Salespeople have become Sales Executives. Cleaners have become Cleaning Operatives. Receptionists have become Front Desk Executives. Sandwich makers have become Sandwich Artists. The reason is that…
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Stress – It’s Our Greatest Danger
Until very recently, it was thought that smoking, alcohol, obesity and poor lifestyle were the main causes for people to develop a heart condition. It turns out that they are merely contributory factors. The main trigger for heart attacks, strokes and death, it seems, is stress. In the last few years, it has been shown…
Thoughtful Thoughts
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