Multi-Cookers: The kitchen gadget that's all the rage

Finally, after 11 years of lukewarm comfort and mediocre job security, I decided to take a chance in trying out in art, which I had always loved. From one point of view, I’ve succeeded, because I am making a living doing this. But even if I didn’t, the bottom line is that at least I have tried. If we try really hard and things don’t work out the way we want them to, we can move on.  I moved with two suitcases to New York from Tokyo and started over with my life. I enrolled myself as a freshman in my 30s, among my 17 and 18-year-old classmates, at School of Visual Arts, started studying art for the first time. Four years later, I received an MFA in Illustration, then started slowly working as a freelance illustrator

Speed reading claims discredited by new report

The Shortest Answer is Doing the ThingIf reading at megaspeeds is not feasible, does that mean reading can’t be improved? Not at all.The serious way to improve reading—how well we comprehend a text and, yes, speed and efficiency—is this (apologies, Michael Pollan):Read. Reading skill depends on knowledge acquired from reading. Skilled readers know more about language, including many words and structures that occur in print but not in speech. They also have greater “background knowledge,” familiarity with the structure and content of what is being read. We acquire this information in the act of reading itself—not by training our eyes to rotate in opposite directions, playing brain exercise games, or breathing diaphragmatically. Just reading.As much as possible. Every time we read we update our knowledge of language. At a conscious level we read a text for its content: because it is a story or a textbook or a joke. At a subconscious level our brains automatically register information about the structure of language; the next chapter is all about this. Developing this elaborate linguistic network requires exposure to a large sample of texts.Mostly new stuff. Knowledge of language expands through exposure to structures we do not already know. That may mean encountering unfamiliar words or familiar words used in novel ways. It may mean reading P. D. James, E. L. James, and Henry James because their use of language is so varied. A large sample of texts in varied styles and genres will work, including some time spent just outside one’s textual comfort zone.Reading expands one’s knowledge of language and the world in ways that increase reading skill, making it easier and more enjoyable to read. Increases in reading skill make it easier to consume the texts that feed this learning machinery. It is not the eyes but what we know about language, print, and the world— knowledge that is easy to increase by reading—that determines reading skill. Where this expertise leads, the eyes will follow.

When did you start working on it and how long did it take to make? It took nearly four years from the first draft to final cut. The first script was complete in early 2014, which we then adapted into a picture storybook as a proof of concept. We received funding almost a year later and we hit the ground running full-time (into eternity).

The actual fundamentals can be somewhat fluid because what one person considers a fundamental subject, another may consider ancillary to the fundamentals.

SIGGRAPH: Share your top three technology tools. CC: I hate technology! But if you’re trying to make something pretty in this medium, there’s no avoiding it

SIGGRAPH: What is the best advice you would give someone starting out in animation? CC: Draw. Carry a sketchbook (or a tablet) and draw (or paint!) every chance you get. Make observations from the world around you, from photo or video reference, from artists you admire. Most importantly, don’t just observe, but put those observations down on paper in visual form. Make a habit of it. The things you learn that way will stay with you forever. And that knowledge will be useful no matter what medium you end up working in.

A: Anything else you’d like to say or tell the new comers and/or the community? L: Mmh, I know how it feels to be limited by your own lack of skills and today’s tools are taking away a little bit of that barrier. And the more the software helps you to get rid of the technical problems of representation, the more creative you can be. While the tool is the same, it’s very fun to see that everybody has its own take to how to use Quill. It wasn’t at first, but now I see more and more people having their own style. It’s so refreshing. I follow the group and what is going on with a lot of attention.

L: It happened to us a couple of times to come up with these kinds of ideas where the audience really understands what we meant and feels as strongly as we did. We want to communicate feelings that we feel ourselves. Whatever the tool is, we wish to convey what we think is great. It sounds a little bit cliché but if you’re out just for the pretty picture, I think it’s a waste of time.

A: Hello Lip, please tell us a bit more about you. What is your background? Did you study visual arts?   L: Not really [laughs]. My parents forced me to have a very classical education. I studied Latin and ancient Greek in high school. But when I was 18, I realized that I enjoy to visualize my ideas and thoughts. So I went to the University and studied advertising. I was heading toward more of a copywriting agency type of occupation until I felt the need to carry my ideas until completion. I was tired of giving them away too soon because I found my stories never really turned out the way they should be. Since the softwares got easier and more accessible, I managed to find the right moment to jump in and learn the technical skills to do it on my own.

Where did you study and what were some of your first jobs? I actually have a degree in Economics from Colorado College. This was pursued at the behest of my father and after bartending for a year in London after I graduated, I went to the Vancouver Film School and took their course in Multimedia. My first jobs were all menial labor: I worked sorting packages at a Greyhound station, cleaning recycled bottles at a brewery and erected party tents. After VFS, I moved to New York and freelanced as a web designer/flash animator for a bit before I helped found heavy.com with two of the guys I had been freelancing for. That lasted for about five years before I started Buck with my partners in 2003.

Whether smiles or frowns work best may depend on what experts call “involvement” with charities – how much someone cares about charitable missions in general, how often they volunteer or participate in fundraising events and whether they regularly donate to nonprofits. Because these people already help people in need, they would like to know their donations make a difference. Sad images remind potential donors of hardships. That may make solving those problems seem insurmountable for people who are already involved with charities, thereby discouraging them from donating. Happy pictures should work better for these people because they affirm the significance of individual action and showcase the positive impact one person’s generosity can make. People who aren’t very involved with charities, on the other hand, are less easily swayed to support a given mission or to believe in its urgency. Because sad images highlight problems and the extent of unmet needs, unhappy faces should do a better job of eliciting donations from these potential donors.

From 12 years onward you learn differently

But the bottom line seems to be that we now have a better idea why rewards work better than punishment with pre-adolescent children. So if it is an explanation you need for why you should reward good behavior more than punish bad behavior, at least with pre-adolescent children, now you have one. The task that still remains, of course, is regulating one's own irritability, frustration and thus behavior in the face of annoying child behavior so that we can ignore it.

What’s interesting looking back is that the path of his career could have been very different. He graduated in 2008, right as the global financial crisis unravelled. As he approached graduation, he had three open job offers, but by the time he’d received his certificate all three had disappeared. So he decided to strike out on his own with his solo studio. “These jobs were as ‘design manager’ or as ‘creative technologist’ at big companies,” he explains. “Extremely narrow jobs – they can be really rewarding but I can’t imagine I’d have been able to do as many things as I’ve been able to do on my own. Maybe I was lucky that those three job offers disappeared!”

The Modern Stoicism movement traces its roots to Victor Frankl’s (Sahakian 1979) logotherapy, as well as to early versions of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, for instance in the work of Albert Ellis (Robertson 2010). But Stoicism is a philosophy, not a therapy, and it is in the works of philosophers such as William Irvine (2008), John Sellars (2003), and Lawrence Becker (1997) that we find articulations of 21st century Stoicism, though the more self-help oriented contribution by CBT therapist Donald Robertson (2013) is also worthy of note. All of these authors attempt to distance the philosophical meaning of "Stoic"—even in a modern setting—from the common English word "stoic," indicating someone who goes through life with a stiff upper lip, so to speak. While there are commonalities between "Stoic" and "stoic," for instance the emphasis on endurance, the latter is a diminutive version of the former, and the two should accordingly be kept distinct.

This was a time when I was starting to think about what my career was going to be. I’d failed to make it as a musician. I’d had lots of appointments with A&R people. After two seconds, they’d say, It’s not going to happen, man. So I thought I’d have a go at a radio play.  Then, almost by accident, I came across a little advertisement for a creative-writing M.A. taught by Malcolm Bradbury at the University of East Anglia. Today it’s a famous course, but in those days it was a laughable idea, alarmingly American. I discovered subsequently that it hadn’t run the previous year because not enough people had applied. Somebody told me Ian McEwan had done it a decade before. I thought he was the most exciting young writer around at that point. But the primary attraction was that I could go back to university for a year, fully funded by the government, and at the end I would only have to submit a thirty-page work of fiction. I sent the radio play to Malcolm Bradbury along with my application.  I was slightly taken aback when I was accepted, because it suddenly became real. I thought, these writers are going to scrutinize my work and it’s going to be humiliating. Somebody told me about a cottage for rent in the middle of nowhere in Cornwall that had previously been used as a rehabilitation place for drug addicts. I called up and said, I need a place for one month because I’ve got to teach myself to write. And that’s what I did that summer of 1979. It was the first time I really thought about the structure of a short story. I spent ages figuring out things like viewpoint, how you tell the story, and so on. At the end I had two stories to show, so I felt more secure.

A hard sell for the ad men

Advertising agencies squeezed by tech giants

Technology has upended the world’s advertising giants

The way we choose what to buy, like the way we choose how to vote, will never be logical. Trying to make it so has created an environment in which our basest impulses are relentlessly stimulated and amplified. The philosopher Gilles Deleuze once remarked, “It is not the slumber of reason that engenders monsters, but vigilant and insomniac rationality.” If ever there was a creation of insomniac rationality it is the 21st-century advertising business. Its monsters roam the planet.

“Knowing that the seller has faith in their product is a hugely valuable piece of information,” he says. “In luxury goods, for instance, the ad says almost nothing; the cost of the ad almost everything.” Biologists regard the peacock’s tail as an expensive and so unfakeable signal of fitness – a sexual status symbol.

“Flowers are ads. Peacocks’ tails are ads.” Rory Sutherland, vice-chairman of Ogilvy & Mather, and the ad industry’s most vigorous defender, is in full flow over lunch at his agency’s offices in Blackfriars. “One reason I’m not predicting the death of advertising any time soon is that you can see how important it is in nature. A flower is basically a weed with an advertising budget.”

As a student, you have to be very good at the craft

Mitchell said, “You have to do what you want to do. Don’t make a film so you can get into Pixar or DreamWorks.”

Pete Doctor, the director of Up, said that he went into school thinking that he needed to learn how to draw and left school believing that acting and storytelling were more important.

They found that an hour after being released in a room at a relative humidity of 23% or less, 70-77% of viral particles retained their infectious capacity, but when humidity was increased to about 43%, only 14% of the virus particles were capable of infecting cells. Most of this inactivation occurred within the first fifteen minutes of the viral particles being released in the high-humidity condition. The study concludes that maintaining indoor relative humidity at levels greater than 40% can significantly reduce the infectious capacity of aerosolized flu virus.

A review of the health effects of relative humidity in indoor environments suggests that relative humidity can affect the incidence of respiratory infections and allergies. Experimental studies on airborne-transmitted infectious bacteria and viruses have shown that the survival or infectivity of these organisms is minimized by exposure to relative humidities between 40 and 70%. Nine epidemiological studies examined the relationship between the number of respiratory infections or absenteeism and the relative humidity of the office, residence, or school. The incidence of absenteeism or respiratory infections was found to be lower among people working or living in environments with mid-range versus low or high relative humidities. The indoor size of allergenic mite and fungal populations is directly dependent upon the relative humidity. Mite populations are minimized when the relative humidity is below 50% and reach a maximum size at 80% relative humidity. Most species of fungi cannot grow unless the relative humidity exceeds 60%. Relative humidity also affects the rate of offgassing of formaldehyde from indoor building materials, the rate of formation of acids and salts from sulfur and nitrogen dioxide, and the rate of formation of ozone. The influence of relative humidity on the abundance of allergens, pathogens, and noxious chemicals suggests that indoor relative humidity levels should be considered as a factor of indoor air quality. The majority of adverse health effects caused by relative humidity would be minimized by maintaining indoor levels between 40 and 60%. This would require humidification during winter in areas with cold winter climates. Humidification should preferably use evaporative or steam humidifiers, as cool mist humidifiers can disseminate aerosols contaminated with allergens.

Leading book genres in the U.S. 2015, by gender

“Some of us just like that stuff,” she said. “We like suspense, we like to be scared, we like to have visceral reaction in the theater. Maybe I’m starved for adrenaline, but for me watching a horror movie is very pleasurable. So making one was kind of a dream.”

Ambient (outdoor) air quality and health

Despite their challenges, China and India are winning more important roles on the global stage. However, according to management professors Nandani Lynton of CEIBS in Shanghai and Jitendra V. Singh of the Wharton School, India is outperforming China in the number of senior executives at leading multinational corporations. In this opinion piece, they identify five possible explanations for this disparity. China is already addressing some of them, such as gaps in the use of English. Others, like China’s inability to work with outsiders, are less susceptible to change. Depending on which factors prove most important, India may have the advantage for some time to come, but it may not take long for China to catch up.

How to PlayWe don’t need to play every second of the day to enjoy play’s benefits. In his book, Brown calls play a catalyst. A little bit of play, he writes, can go a long way toward boosting our productivity and happiness. So how can you add play into your life? Here are a few tips from the experts:Change how you think about play. Remember that play is important for all aspects of our lives, including creativity and relationships. Give yourself permission to play every day. For instance, play can mean talking to your dog. “I[‘d] ask my dog Charlie, regularly, his opinion of the presidential candidates. He respond[ed] with a lifted ear and an upturning vocalization that goes ‘haruum?’” Eberle said.Play can be reading aloud to your partner, he said. “Some playful writers are made to be read aloud: Dylan Thomas, Art Buchwald, Carl Hiaasen, S.J. Perelman, Richard Feynman, Frank McCourt.”Take a play history. In his book Brown includes a primer to help readers reconnect with play. He suggests readers mine their past for play memories. What did you do as a child that excited you? Did you engage in those activities alone or with others? Or both? How can you recreate that today?Surround yourself with playful people. Both Brown and White stressed the importance of selecting friends who are playful – and of playing with your loved ones.Play with little ones. Playing with kids helps us experience the magic of play through their perspective. White and Brown both talked about playing around with their grandkids.Any time you think play is a waste, remember that it offers some serious benefits for both you and others. As Brown says in his book, “Play is the purest expression of love.”

Brown called play a “state of being,” “purposeless, fun and pleasurable.” For the most part, the focus is on the actual experience, not on accomplishing a goal, he said.

In some cases, though, great amounts of time playing video games (or doing any other single thing) can be evidence of something missing in a person's life. In some cases people engage in an activity not just because of their enjoyment of it, but also because it is an escape from something painful in their lives or is the only route available to them to satisfy basic psychological needs. This can occur for adults as well as children. The activity that seems to become obsessive might be video gaming, or it might be something else. For instance, some adults devote far more time to their careers than they otherwise might, because that allows them to avoid an unpleasant family environment. Some kids say they play video games at least partly as a means of escape, and some say they do so because it is the only realm of activity in which they feel free.[5] In an age in which children are often not allowed to play freely outdoors, and in which they are more or less constantly directed by adults, the virtual world of video games is for some the only realm where they are allowed to roam free and explore. If they were allowed more autonomy in the real world, many of them would spend less time at video games. As illustration of this idea, British gaming researcher Richard Wood gives some case examples.[6] One case is that of Martin, an 11-year-old boy whose mother became concerned about the huge amounts of time he was devoting to World of Warcraft and therefore forbade him from playing it or other video games, which made things only worse for Martin. It turned out, according to Wood, that Martin was an only child who was being bullied at school and hated going there, and who was afraid of going outside at home because of repeated bullying. The online video game was his only source of free expression and his only satisfying contact with other people. When this was taken away from him, he was understandably distraught. Another example is that of Helen, a 32-year-old MD who worked in a temporary research position and spent most of her spare time playing the MMORPG Final Fantasy alone in her apartment. It turned out that Helen had recently experienced a bad breakup with a long-term partner, was unhappy with her job, and was severely depressed. Playing Final Fantasy was not cause of her depression, but was her way of coping with it during this difficult time in her life. The online game provided social connections and pleasure at a time when nothing else did. In a study of more than 1300 adult video gamers (age 18 to 43), Andrew Przybylski and his colleagues at the University of Rochester found that a small percentage of them, who played many hours per day, described themselves as obsessively engaged--they felt that they didn't just "want" to play, but "needed" to play.[7] These players, when they stopped a session of playing, did not feel refreshed and energized as other players did, but felt tense and unhappy. The extensive questionnaires used in this study also revealed that these "obsessed" player were, in general, those whose basic psychological needs--their needs for freedom, competence, and social relationships--were not being met in real life. So, if your child or another loved one seems obsessed about video games and unhappy outside of the games, don't jump to the conclusion that the games are cause of the unhappiness. Instead, talk with your loved one and try to find out what might be missing or wrong in other aspects of his or her life and whether or not you can help to solve that problem.

To counteract the stereotype, Langlois points out that video gaming is hard fun, not easy fun. In his words: "This hard fun would not be possible if gamers were truly lazy or apathetic. And the level of detail that many gamers pay attention to is staggering, whether it be leveling a profession to 525 in WoW, unlocking every achievement in Halo 3, or mapping out every detail in the EVE universe. This is not apathy, this is meticulousness." So, Langlois helps gamers by helping them feel good about their gaming rather than bad about it. There is no reason why a dedicated video gamer should feel any worse about his or her hobby than a dedicated chess player or skier. Still, of course, some people let their dedication to video gaming--or to chess, or to skiing, or to anything else--interfere with other aspects of their life, and that can be a problem. Lots of us need to learn time management, especially as we reach adulthood, in order to do what we want to do and still fulfill our obligations to others. My loved ones sometimes remind me that it's not fair for me to spend all of my time reading and writing or going off alone bicycling or skiing. But, let's not stigmatize any of this by calling it an addiction. Let's just call it a time management problem and figure out constructive ways to deal with it.

Video-game designers have also mastered another trick to encourage more play: requiring an unpredictable number of actions in order to earn a reward. Giving one at regular intervals means that a player, having received a reward, will be less motivated to play on knowing that another is a long time coming. In Diablo, Dr Hilgard explains, a player may find a powerful weapon either after the very next monster that is slain, or not until a thousand monsters later. This schedule fosters more frequent engagement. Therefore the structure of reward patterns in different games may cause certain ones to be more addictive (particularly to gamers who are motivated by the prospect of completing goals and accumulating rare items).

Another risk factor is found in players with strong social motivation. Some games involve social obligations, where players have to work together. This can mean a player feels obliged to play along as the rest of the group wants to play. Farmville strives to ensure participation at regular intervals by making gamers dependent on each other for daily allotments of fantasy resources, says Joseph Hilgard, at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and colleagues in a recent paper in Frontiers in Psychology. Putting together role play and social use in one game should yield a highly compelling game. World of Warcraft, a massive multiplayer online role-playing game, fits this description and is, anecdotally, pretty addictive. 

Players are motivated by the extent to which different games fulfill their basic psychological needs; but some factors, more than others, are found in addiction. One risk factor is found in players who are trying to "escape" through fantasy immersion or role play. Indeed, their game use may be a symptom of some other underlying problem, say social phobia or depression. Playing can then generate a vicious cycle that is hard to treat if the game is a way of self-medicating. For example, a child who is unpopular in school, or being bullied, may be important and powerful in a video game. Real life may struggle to compete. 

Human psychology tells us that players should enjoy a game that satisfies the need for control, bestows a sense of one's progress, and fosters relationships with friends and others encountered. Yet gamers differ in their individual needs. Each person has their own "player personality" and this variation has spawned a vast industry designed to meet different motivations. Some may want to release aggression (Call of Duty), escape reality (World of Warcraft) or oversee building projects (Minecraft). Others are more motivated by in-game rewards, or have a high "loss aversion" and so find a challenging game unfair or frustrating (while others find it thrilling). A game like Flappy Birds, will most appeal to those who are attracted by repetitive actions, difficulty and have a low loss aversion. Those who have a high loss aversion, however, will find it infuriating. 

While the study didn’t examine why empathy may be declining, the authors draw on prior research to speculate that culprits could include the corresponding rise in narcissism among young people, the growing prevalence of personal technology and media use in everyday life, shrinking family size (dealing with siblings may teach empathy), and stronger pressures on young people to succeed academically and professionally.

reading may be linked to empathy. In a study published earlier this year psychologist Raymond A. Mar of York University in Toronto and others demonstrated that the number of stories preschoolers read predicts their ability to understand the emotions of others. Mar has also shown that adults who read less fiction report themselves to be less empathic.

Động thái một loạt ông lớn như Vingroup, Viettel, FPT, VNPT, Phenikaa… công bố các dự án thúc đẩy đầu tư cho khoa học, công nghệ trùng hợp với sự kiện 100 nhân tài trẻ nước ngoài trở về tham gia Chương trình Kết nối mạng lưới đổi mới sáng tạo Việt Nam 2018 đã thổi bùng niềm tin về một công cuộc vĩ đại đánh thức các tiềm lực mới cho phát triển kinh tế.

Even in central Ho Chi Minh City, top-end properties are priced US$3,000 to US$5,000 per square metre, well below Bangkok where equivalent properties can cost up to US$7,000 to US$9,000 per square metre, and 5 per cent the price of Hong Kong. Annual rental yield for some high-end apartments in major cities at currently at 7 to 8 per cent, which is 1.5 to 2.5 per cent higher than those in Hong Kong, Bangkok and Singapore, according to Vina Capital.

The researchers anticipated that four aspects of mindfulness would predict higher self-esteem: Labeling internal experiences with words, which might prevent people from getting consumed by self-critical thoughts and emotions; Bringing a non-judgmental attitude toward thoughts and emotions, which could help individuals have a neutral, accepting attitude toward the self; Sustaining attention on the present moment, which could help people avoid becoming caught up in self-critical thoughts that relate to events from the past or future; Letting thoughts and emotions enter and leave awareness without reacting to them.

Think about it this way: How much better might it feel to take a breath after making a mistake, rather than berating ourselves?“All you have to do is think of going to a friend,” Dr. Neff said. “If you said, ‘I’m feeling fat and lazy and I’m not succeeding at my job,’ and your friend said, ‘Yeah, you’re a loser. Just give up now. You’re disgusting,’ how motivating would that be?”This is the linchpin of being kinder to ourselves: Practice what it feels like to treat yourself as you might treat a friend. In order to trade in self-abuse for self-compassion, it has to be a regular habit.AdvertisementSo the next time you’re on the verge of falling into a shame spiral, think of how you’d pull your friend back from falling in, and turn that effort inward. If it feels funny the first time, give it second, third and fourth tries.And if you forget on the fifth, remember: Four tries is a lot better than zero.

But it’s step three, according to Dr. Brewer, that is most important if you want to make the shift sustainable in the long term: Make a deliberate, conscious effort to recognize the difference between how you feel when caught up in self-criticism, and how you feel when you can let go of it.“That’s where you start to hack the reward-based learning system,” Dr. Brewer said.

The second step to self-compassion is to meet your criticism with kindness. If your inner critic says, “You’re lazy and worthless,” respond with a reminder: “You’re doing your best” or “We all make mistakes.”

3 steps to self-compassionFirst: Make the choice that you’ll at least try a new approach to thinking about yourself. Commit to treating yourself more kindly — call it letting go of self-judgment, going easier on yourself, practicing self-compassion or whatever resonates most. To strengthen the muscle, Dr. Brewer suggests “any type of practice that helps us stay in the moment and notice what it feels like to get caught up. See how painful that is compared to being kind to ourselves.”

core to self-compassion is to avoid getting caught up in our mistakes and obsessing about them until we degrade ourselves, and rather strive to let go of them so we can move onto the next productive action from a place of acceptance and clarity

researchers found that “self-compassion led to greater personal improvement, in part, through heightened acceptance,” and that focusing on self-compassion “spurs positive adjustment in the face of regrets.”

The solution? It’s called self-compassion: the practice of being kind and understanding to ourselves when confronted with a personal flaw or failure

Evolutionary psychologists have studied our natural “negativity bias,” which is that instinct in us all that makes negative experiences seem more significant than they really are. In other words: We’ve evolved to give more weight to our flaws, mistakes and shortcomings than our successes.

Mahmudiyah rape and killings

2009 Fort Hood shooting

Major Nidal Malik Hasan: Soldiers' psychiatrist who heard frontline stories

In Interview, Top Indonesian Muslim Scholar Says Stop Pretending That Orthodox Islam and Violence Aren't Linked

The root cause of extremism among British Muslims is alienation

What’s The Difference Between OCD And Perfectionism?

Series / Britain's Best Sitcom

BFI TV 100

A Guide To Mosquito Repellents, From DEET To ... Gin And Tonic?

It would be deeply unphilosophical to select a favourite living philosopher without questioning the philosophical assumptions underpinning the task. The emphasis on great individuals reflects an emphasis on innovation, an idea that rationality is best exercised in the solitary thinking of lone minds, and an ideal of autonomy in which we should think not just for ourselves but by ourselves. These are not uniquely western ideas and values but they are more pronounced here than elsewhere in the world. “Authorship of a philosophy resides not in individuals but in groups” For example, although Confucius is revered in China, he is of secondary importance to the school of thought he helped develop. This is Rujia, or the school of the ru (ru is a scholar or learned man, and jia is literally house or family). Confucianism was a term coined by 16th century Jesuit missionaries, superimposing the western value on founding figures on the indigenous tradition. But Confucius saw himself as a preserver of ancient wisdom, not as a creator of a new philosophy. In this way of thinking, authorship of a philosophy resides not in individuals but in groups. Philosophising is a quintessentially collective enterprise. In that spirit, I would nominate the East-West Philosophy Center in Hawai’i as my favourite “philosopher.” It is a unique locus for comparative philosophy, a hub for a community of scholars that extends beyond its formal members. In its orbit are exceptional thinkers like the Confucian philosopher Roger Ames and the Japan specialist Tom Kasulis. Thinkers like these do not receive as much credit as is due in part because non-western philosophy is undervalued but also because they can be dismissed as mere interpreters rather than original thinkers. In fact, all philosophers work in traditions and some of the most creative work has always emerged as a sympathetic response to existing ideas. What is exciting about the work of the likes of Ames and Kasulis is that it breathes new life into old ideas by bringing disparate traditions into dialogue with each other. In contrast, those that plough their lonely furrows risk creeping into stagnation and irrelevance.

WHERE TO FIND FLOWFlow tends to occur when a person faces a clear set of goals that require appropriate responses. It is easy to enter flow in games such as chess, tennis, or poker, because they have goals and rules that make it possible for the player to act without questioning what should be done, and how. For the duration of the game the player lives in a self-contained universe where everything is black and white. The same clarity of goals is present if you perform a religious ritual, play a musical piece, weave a rug, write a computer program, climb a mountain, or perform surgery. In contrast to normal life, these "flow activities" allow a person to focus on goals that are clear and compatible, and provide immediate feedback.article continues after advertisementgoogletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1404853927369-9'); });Flow also happens when a person's skills are fully involved in overcoming a challenge that is just about manageable, so it acts as a magnet for learning new skills and increasing challenges. If challenges are too low, one gets back to flow by increasing them. If challenges are too great, one can return to the flow state by learning new skills.How often do people experience flow? If you ask a sample of typical Americans, "Do you ever get involved in something so deeply that nothing else seems to matter and you lose track of time?" roughly one in five will say that this happens to them as much as several times a day, whereas about 15 percent will say that this never happens to them. These frequencies seem to he quite stable and universal. For instance, in a recent survey of 6,469 Germans, the same question was answered in the following way: Often, 23 percent; Sometimes, 40 percent; Rarely, 25 percent; Never or Don't Know, 12 percent.A more precise way to study flow is the Experience Sampling Method, or ESM, which I developed at the University of Chicago in the early 1970s. This method provides a virtual filmstrip of a person's daily activities and experiences. At the signal of a pager or watch, which goes off at random times within each two-hour segment of the day, a person writes down in a booklet where she is, what she is doing, what she is thinking about, and whom she is with, then she rates her state of consciousness on various numerical scales. At our Chicago laboratory, we have collected over the years a total of 70,000 pages from about 2,300 respondents. Investigators in other parts of the world have more than tripled these figures.article continues after advertisementgoogletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1456244145486-0'); });The ESM has found that flow generally occurs when a person is doing his or her favorite activity--gardening, listening to music, bowling, cooking a good meal. It also occurs when driving, talking to friends, and surprisingly often at work. Very rarely do people report flow in passive leisure activities, such as watching television or relaxing.Almost any activity can produce flow provided the relevant elements are present, so it is possible to improve the quality of life by making sure that the conditions of flow are a constant part of everyday life.FLOW AT WORKAlthough adults tend to be less happy than average while working, and their motivation is considerably below normal, ESM studies find more occasions of flow on the job than in free time. This finding is not that surprising: Work is much more like a game than most other things we do during the day. It usually has clear goals and rules of performance. It provides feedback either in the form of knowing that one has finished a job well done, in terms of measurable sales or through an evaluation by one's supervisor. A job tends to encourage concentration and prevent distractions, and ideally, its difficulties match the worker's skills.Nevertheless, if we had the chance most of us would like to work less. One reason is the historical disrepute of work, which each of us learn as we grow up.Yet we can't blame family, society, or history if our work is meaningless, dull, or stressful. Admittedly, there are few options when we realize that our job is useless or actually harmful. Perhaps the only choice is to quit as quickly as possible, even at the cost of severe financial hardship. In terms of the bottom line of one's life, it is always better to do something one feels good about than something that may make us materially comfortable but emotionally miserable. Such decisions are notoriously difficult and require great honesty with oneself.article continues after advertisementgoogletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1468856734952-0'); });Short of making such a dramatic switch, there are many ways to make one's job produce flow. A supermarket clerk who pays genuine attention to customers, a physician concerned about the total well-being of patients, or a news reporter who considers truth at least as important as sensational interest when writing a story, can transform a routine job into one that makes a difference. Turning a dull jot into one that satisfies our need for novelty and achievement involves paying close attention to each step involved, and then asking: Is this step necessary? Can it be done better, faster, more efficiently? What additional steps could make my contribution more valuable? If, instead of spending a lot of effort trying to cut corners, one spent the same amount of attention trying to find ways to accomplish more on the job, one would enjoy working--more and probably be more successful. When approached without too many cultural prejudices and with a determination to make it personally meaningful, even the most mundane job can produce flow.The same type of approach is needed for solving the problem of stress at work. First, establish priorities among the demands that crowd into consciousness. Successful people often make lists or flowcharts of all the things they have to do, and quickly decide which tasks they can delegate or forget, and which ones they have to tackle personally, and in what order. The next step is to match one's skills with whatever challenges have been identified. There will be tasks we feel incompetent to deal with. Can you learn the skills required in time? Can you get help? Can the task be transformed, or broken into simpler parts? Usually the answer to one of these questions will provide a solution;that transforms a potentially stressful situation into a flow experience.

China in Vogue, But Vietnam Still Hun Sen’s Lifeline

Dễ dàng thấy là, “Top 10” BV có những cái tên không khó đoán. Chẳng hạn như về đa khoa, BV Nhân dân 115 đang sắp lên hạng đặc biệt (ngang với BV Chợ Rẫy), hoàn toàn xứng đáng xếp số 1. Về sản khoa, cả phía Nam không BV nào qua mặt được Hùng Vương và Từ Dũ. Về nhi khoa, chả ai qua được Nhi Đồng 1

But it’s the second part of that definition that has proven the most helpful for me: ‘recognising that one’s own experience is part of the common human experience’. It’s the idea of taking a zoomed-out look at yourself, and realising that you are more similar to others than you are different, even (maybe especially) considering how ridiculous you often are. As Neff herself said in an interview with The Atlantic in 2016: ‘[W]hen we fail, it’s not “poor me,” it’s “well, everyone fails.” Everyone struggles. This is what it means to be human.’In fact, it’s this part of the definition of self-compassion that makes me question whether it should be called self-compassion at all. Neff’s concept isn’t really about adoring yourself, or not entirely, anyway; this piece of it isn’t actually about you. Rather, it’s about the importance of recalling that you are but one small part of an interconnected whole.

“Beijing typically finds a local partner, makes that local partner accept investment plans that are detrimental to their country in the long term, and then uses the debts to either acquire the project altogether or to acquire political leverage in that country.”

GPIF has selected FTSE Blossom Japan index, a new index compiled by FTSE Russell for the Japanese pension fund, as well as MSCI Japan ESG Select Leaders index and MSCI Japan Empowering Women index.

The outperformance of ESG strategies is beyond doubt. In emerging markets, the trend is particularly pronounced: the MSCI Emerging Markets Leaders index, which includes 417 companies that score highly on ESG, has been outstripping the dominant MSCI Emerging Markets benchmark since the 2008-09 financial crisis, with the outperformance gap reaching a record in June this year.

The BYD investment story is a small part of a much bigger trend. Investors are finding that if they are good to the planet and to people, they also end up, on average, benefiting themselves. There is mounting evidence that funds which observe environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards in their strategies tend to outperform those that don’t by a significant margin.

Ethical investing and ESG, although they are related, are different concepts. Ethical funds avoid harmful sectors; ESG, a more holistic investment approach, integrates ESG principles into portfolio decisions.

Asian American white-collar professionals are the least likely group to be promoted from individual contributor roles into management — less likely than any other race, including blacks and Hispanics. And our analysis found that white professionals are about twice as likely to be promoted into management as their Asian American counterparts.

Asian Americans are well-represented in law — they’re more than 10% of the graduates of the top 30 law schools — yet “have the highest attrition rates and lowest ratio of partners to associates among all [racial] groups.” A similar finding with New York banks was reported in Bloomberg Businessweek last year. As one example, Goldman Sachs reported that 27% of its U.S. professional workforce was Asian American, but only 11% of its U.S. executives and senior managers, and none of its executive officers, were. The list of industries goes on. The Ascend Foundation, a pan-Asian organization that published our 2017 paper, was established by a group of pan-Asian accounting partners. They had found that while over 20% of the associates in many of the larger accounting firms were Asian American, very few were being promoted to the partner level. And this is not just a problem in private industry: While Asian Americans were 9.8% of the federal professional workforce in 2016, they are only 4.4% of the workforce at the highest federal level.

Uống xong vài ly rượu chát, Tiến mới trầm giọng, tâm tình: “Ở bển (bên ấy) em là kỹ sư điện tử. Lương mỗi tháng ông chủ trả hơn 3.000 đô la. Em lấy vợ và ở nhà cổ (cô ấy) luôn nên tiền bạc đều do vợ nắm giữ. Không biết những người sống ở Mỹ về Việt Namhọ nói với các anh thế nào. Riêng em cùng đám bạn Việt Nam ở bển, kể cả đứa ở nhà vợ hay mướn nhà ở riêng cũng giống nhau vậy thôi. Chuyện hò hẹn bè bạn ở nhà hàng có lẽ là điều không tưởng. Ở bển, vợ quản lý chặt lắm. Đụng một tý là mấy bả (bà ấy) dọa gọi cảnh sát. Mà luật pháp ở bển lại bênh vực phụ nữ. Cứ như vậy, rượu vào lời ra. Minh Tiến không còn nhút nhát hay sợ sệt vợ con quá mức nữa. Bản chất Nam Bộ trong con người Tiến trỗi dậy. Mặt Tiến mỗi lúc thêm đỏ phừng phừng. Lần đầu tiên anh chàng cao giọng: “Các anh nói đúng. Đường đường mình cũng là kỹ sư chứ có phải lao công cho mẹ con nó đâu (ý Tiến muốn nói mẹ con Quỳnh Anh – TG) các anh cũng đều có vợ con, gia đình, song chẳng ai chịu cảnh lép vế như em cả. Lần này về bển, học tập các anh “lành làm gáo, vỡ làm muôi”, em không phải sợ ai hết…”. Trời! Minh Tiến cao giọng, nghe “đã” làm sao! Có lẽ từ ngày có vợ đến hôm nay, Tiến mới được tự do hùng hồn thế.

17. SAY NO TO SPEC WORK Speculative work, or spec work, is a request by a potential client for uncompensated creative and design work at the inception of a project. Avoid this like the plague—it’s a devaluation of the entire design process and marginalizes our efforts as a whole. AIGA.org has great resources for dealing with spec work, including a sample letter that you can personalize and send to clients explaining why their request is unappreciated (see No. 19).

9. BUILD YOUR BOOK One piece of advice I give young designers looking to fill out their portfolios is to find the best local arts organization with the worst visual brand identity or website and make a trade. They get some great design work, and you get creative control and real-world projects in your book that other potential clients will recognize.

6. LEARN TO SAY ‘NO’ Some of your best design business decisions will ultimately be saying “no” to clients or projects. Unfortunately, it usually takes a few disasters to gain the experience to know when to walk away from an impending train wreck. Carefully measure the upsides of any project—creative control of your design work, long-term relationship-building and gross billing—versus the potential downsides—the devaluation of the creative process, being treated like a “vendor” and ongoing scope creep (where the volume of what you’re expected to deliver keeps expanding, while the schedule and budget don’t).

“The most important inspirations and influences in your life and career will come from places other than the design world. Get away from the design scene and cultivate other interests, skills, and experiences. Those are the things that will give you passion and distinguish you.”

“Almost any situation gets better when you ask yourself this: How can I be most useful right now? — Most useful to your employer, to your client, to the people you care for in your personal life, even to your future self. Asking ‘How can I be most useful right now?’ will get you past too little ambition, past too much ambition, past many interpersonal conflicts, boredom, frustration, and creative block. Sometimes the answer is ‘I can be most useful to everybody — including me — by leaving,’ but usually it’ll lead you to creating better work!”

“What did I know? I knew that relationships were critical in design. I knew that hard work was required. I knew that I needed inspiration beyond graphic design. “What did I not know? I didn’t know that time is forgiving. Saul Bass told me that success is defined by a series of successful projects over an extended period of time. I didn’t listen. I was convinced that every project was my last chance to succeed. Alternatively, each failure signaled the end of my career. Saul was right. Some projects were as ugly as something the cat coughed up, but the next one was better. And some projects were incredibly successful, and then the next one came along and it was left behind. The world isn’t black and white.”

“There’s a lyric from the song, Ooh La La by The Faces that says, ‘I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger.’ I think of this any time someone asks me what advice I would give young people just starting out. On the one hand, there are a thousand things that I’ve learned over the years that would have made my early professional life easier; things I know now. On the other hand, the great joy of life is learning and growing and making one’s own mistakes. I’d feel robbed if— when I was younger— someone had taken that away from me. “So my advice is to remember that success is a map of failures; Explore with courage. Draw the contours with grace.”

“Make sure to balance work and life. Without balance you may experience early career burn out or create undue emotional strain on yourself and the ones you love. “Connect with nature. Get out of your head and into your body. Nature reminds us to listen, think, and feel in ways that feed our intuition. “Travel. It enriches your life on every level. But there’s more to it because it takes us out of the context of what we know. It challenges us to exercise muscles that we don’t normally use. “There’s so much to learn from immersion in the unfamiliar. The benefit is a heightened sense of empathy and compassion — along with a sprinkling of humility. Chance invites spontaneity and play, which fuel creativity. Being open to chance — wherever you are — is a fearless act.”

“Work for things, and with people, you believe are good. Good work and good people attract more good. “Work outdoors. If you’re stuck, go outside and watch squirrels or take a walk. Take paper and a pen. “Give your own work devotion.”

“Talent is essential for success as a creative professional, but you also need mastery of current methodology and tools, excellent people skills, and business savvy to make your career sustainable over the long haul.”

“Never stop learning. Embrace what interests you and stay on top of it. Everything you need to know is a never-ending pursuit. It doesn’t stop when you are handed a degree or when you accept your first job. Keep taking classes. Find ways to mingle with other designers who do what you do. Actively research and discover what is out there and who is doing it really well. Ignite discussions with them. Share your passions with your colleagues, friends, spouse. Keep acting as your own teacher and play, practice, experiment and share. Above all else, stay curious and authentic.”

“Early on, if anyone had been able to tell me exactly the right thing, I would have dismissed it as preposterous because the world has just changed too much in unforeseen ways. “However, here’s my advice: get a second degree in something totally different— neuroscience, medicine, linguistics, or whatever feels right. “Design is what all humans do when they have intent and act upon it. Good design skills are most powerful when applied where they intersect with another discipline or two, or three. It is no longer enough to be a specialist only in design. Make your niche at those points of intersection, where future innovation will bloom.”

“Be interested in something besides design. It is invigorating to work with a designer that is passionate about what they do, but I am finding myself in too many conversations with designers that only know their field and nothing else. Read anything that you can. Know the classics for reference purposes, understand mythology, know how a steam engine works, how to change a bobbin, calculate compound interest, and why the North Star doesn’t move. “Yes, great design skills, knowledge, and draftsmanship are fundamental. It’s what you know beyond that world that allows you to conceive of a solution your fellow designers are oblivious to. Load your chamber with everything you can so when it’s your turn to take a shot, you have something to fire at the challenge besides surface.”

In website design, it was important to combine the interests of different stakeholders: marketing, branding, visual design, and usability. Marketing and branding people needed to enter the interactive world where usability was important. Usability people needed to take marketing, branding, and aesthetic needs into account when designing websites. User experience provided a platform to cover the interests of all stakeholders: making web sites easy to use, valuable, and effective for visitors. This is why several early user experience publications focus on website user experience

Resetting expectations. As corporate leaders become aware of the power of design, many view design thinking as a solution to all their woes. Designers, enjoying their new level of strategic influence, often reinforce that impression. When I worked with the entertainment company, I was part of that problem, primarily because my livelihood depended on selling design consulting. But design doesn’t solve all problems. It helps people and organizations cut through complexity. It’s great for innovation. It works extremely well for imagining the future. But it’s not the right set of tools for optimizing, streamlining, or otherwise operating a stable business. Additionally, even if expectations are set appropriately, they must be aligned around a realistic timeline—culture changes slowly in large organizations. An organizational focus on design offers unique opportunities for humanizing technology and for developing emotionally resonant products and services. Adopting this perspective isn’t easy. But doing so helps create a workplace where people want to be, one that responds quickly to changing business dynamics and empowers individual contributors. And because design is empathetic, it implicitly drives a more thoughtful, human approach to business.

Embracing risk. Transformative innovation is inherently risky. It involves inferences and leaps of faith; if something hasn’t been done before, there’s no way to guarantee its outcome. The philosopher Charles Peirce said that insights come to us “like a flash”—in an epiphany—making them difficult to rationalize or defend. Leaders need to create a culture that allows people to take chances and move forward without a complete, logical understanding of a problem. Our partners at the entertainment company were empowered to hire a design consultancy, and the organization recognized that the undertaking was no sure thing.

Several years ago, I consulted for a large entertainment company that had tucked design away in a select group of “creatives.” The company was excited about introducing technology into its theme parks and recognized that a successful visitor experience would hinge on good design. And so it became apparent that the entire organization needed to embrace design as a core competence. This shift is never an easy one. Like many organizations with entrenched cultures that have been successful for many years, the company faced several hurdles.

IBM and GE are hardly alone. Every established company that has moved from products to services, from hardware to software, or from physical to digital products needs to focus anew on user experience. Every established company that intends to globalize its business must invent processes that can adjust to different cultural contexts. And every established company that chooses to compete on innovation rather than efficiency must be able to define problems artfully and experiment its way to solutions.

Design thinking is an essential tool for simplifying and humanizing.

“There’s no longer any real distinction between business strategy and the design of the user experience,” said Bridget van Kralingen, the senior vice president of IBM Global Business Services, in a statement to the press. In November 2013 IBM opened a design studio in Austin, Texas—part of the company’s $100 million investment in building a massive design organization

the iterative process works at GE: “GE is moving away from a model of exhaustive product requirements. Teams learn what to do in the process of doing it, iterating, and pivoting.” Employees in every aspect of the business must realize that they can take social risks—putting forth half-baked ideas, for instance—without losing face or experiencing punitive repercussions.

Tolerate failure. A design culture is nurturing. It doesn’t encourage failure, but the iterative nature of the design process recognizes that it’s rare to get things right the first time. Apple is celebrated for its successes, but a little digging uncovers the Newton tablet, the Pippin gaming system, and the Copland operating system—products that didn’t fare so well. (Pippin and Copland were discontinued after only two years.) The company leverages failure as learning, viewing it as part of the cost of innovation.

In design-centric organizations, you’ll typically see prototypes of new ideas, new products, and new services scattered throughout offices and meeting rooms. Whereas diagrams such as customer journey maps explore the problem space, prototypes explore the solution space. They may be digital, physical, or diagrammatic, but in all cases they are a way to communicate ideas. The habit of publicly displaying rough prototypes hints at an open-minded culture, one that values exploration and experimentation over rule following.

Lastly, as a designer, the UX / UI world is not your only avenue to designer career path fulfillment. I've seen career paths for designers go in a thousand creative directions. And in a career that may last 30+ years, be open to changing industries or career focus to ensure long-term relevance. Art Director in an Ad Agency? Make that switch to UX. Copywriter still writing direct mail? Go take a content strategy course. Alan Ball, the screenwriter of the film American Beauty was working as a graphic designer at Adweek when the idea for the film hit him.  A classmate of mine from design school later went on to become an iron chef. The point is to keep an open mind, be open to where life takes you and don't get tunnel vision on what you *think* you should be doing. Designer Career paths are long, and can take you in a lot of surprising, interesting directions, if you're open to it. One of my favorite quotes is "if you want to hear god laugh, tell him your plans."

Qũy ETF SSIAMVNX50 do 4 thành viên sáng lập, gồm Công ty Chứng khoán Sài Gòn (SSI), Công ty chứng khoán Bảo Việt (BVSC), Công ty chứng khoán Ngân hàng Ngoại thương Việt Nam (VCBS) và Công ty chứng khoán VNDirect (VNDS). Theo bà Lê Lệ Hằng, Tổng giám đốc SSIAM, cho đến thời điểm này, nguồn vốn của quỹ ETF SSIAMVNX50  đều từ trong nước và chủ trương của Qũy cũng hướng đến dòng vốn nội địa.

Trong 2 tháng đầu năm, quỹ V.N.M đã huy động được 53.37 triệu USD, quỹ ETF nội thậm chí còn "khủng" hơn khi huy động thành công gần 100 triệu USD (2.266 tỷ đồng). Dòng tiền từ các quỹ đã làm điểm tựa cho thị trường trong thời gian này. Kết thúc tháng 2/2018 chỉ số VN index tăng 13,6% lên 1121,54 điểm.

hạn mức sau khi nâng lên 75 triệu đồng, theo số liệu từ Bảo hiểm Tiền gửi Việt Nam, đã đảm bảo bảo vệ được nhiều người gửi tiền nhỏ, thiếu thông tin về hoạt động ngân hàng (chiếm hơn 80% người gửi tiền)

SIPC is an insurance that provides brokerage customers up to $500,000 coverage for cash and securities held by the firm (although coverage of cash is limited to $250,000).

“I think a lot of expat men — especially in China and Southeast Asia — have a pretty messed up view of women,” a male photographer based in southern China says. He requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak with press. “I think some of them get away with being one way at home, but when they find themselves in these places where sex is so easily available — especially if you’re a white dude and some local women see status in that — some men abuse it.”

Such actions, and entitlement, reflect a sense of privilege and a penchant for sexual aggression that threatens to distort the stories told about Asia, and that too often leaves the telling in the hands of the same men preying on their colleagues. I have seen correspondents I know to be serial offenders in private take the lead role in reporting on the sufferings of Asian women, or boast of their bravery in covering human rights. In too many stories, Asian men are treated as the sole meaningful actors, while Asian women are reduced to sex objects or victims. And this bad behavior — and the bad coverage that follows — is a pattern that repeats across Asia, from Tokyo to Phnom Penh.

This corporate scale-up is not purely a US phenomenon. Rumor has it that Barclays is now the biggest employer of design talent in London, and Singtel has built out a massive floor for its design team in Singapore. __But no one has been more aggressive in building design into their core capabilities than IBM, which is on track to grow their design team to 1,000 people, making them by most measures the largest design firm in the world. __According to one friend they had 50 designers start the same week this summer. There are rumors that IBM offered a job to every single CMU grad this year in the interaction design program.

But advertising and design are fundamentally different businesses: in the world of advertising, user experiences are typically a loss leader to sell media buying services that are much more reliable and higher margin. Design, by contrast, is studio-driven, not account-driven—and does not benefit from the reliable, recurring revenue streams of ad spends. Ideas are not a loss-leader, they are the core value for design. __This difference may not be visible to corporate buyers, but it is quite meaningful to creative talent, the lifeblood of both industries. If you walk into a meeting in which you are pitched fully-formed concepts as part of the sales process, you are probably not talking to a design firm. __

Most of the lessons and techniques you need will be picked up as you practice. Try to draw something from life every day. If you’re new it’ll be pretty bad. But take time to study your work and examine why it’s bad. Great artists eventually learn to teach themselves through self-analysis.

Realism is about seeing accurately and copying without judgement. This involves a lot of looking and measuring to triple and quadruple check your work for mistakes. It can be tedious, especially if you don’t want to create realist art. But the more you practice rendering the better you’ll get. Try not to concern yourself too much with either method at first. The best thing for a beginner is to just draw. As you improve you’ll run into more specific roadblocks and should deal with them as they arise.

How does someone practice both of these techniques? Well the constructionist route is taught well by Proko and Vilppu. The realist route is primarily the domain of ateliers and classical schools, but you can teach yourself with a lot of life drawing and patience.

Offering consultation services to clients is no longer optional in a world where websites can be generated by Squarespace and other white label services.

The model of future successful brand agencies is a hybrid approach of digital and brand, neither one prioritized over the other.

While none of these are a traditional logo, each of them represents a touch point between a human and a brand. Just like a logo, these types of interactions represent the tip of the iceberg of a brand. These days, a brand mark does not need to be visual–touch, interaction, or sound can equally be a brand mark.

At a time when brand experiences are often based upon touch, sound, and voice, how can a branding process that starts out from a purely visual perspective ever possibly succeed?

On the stage, a very adept and confident speaker jokingly mentioned a web-related joke that feels decades old (which she was sarcastically referring to as being decades old) and the whole room fell about laughing; it was the first time they had heard this reference. It was in that moment I realised the web industry had changed as we knew it. I looked at the other speakers and they too, had a similar look of realisation on their faces.

One source speculated that Australia is the test market for wider consolidation across the WPP portfolio, but questioned: “Will it only end when there are no brands left?” “What will WPP look like in two years? No one in senior leadership can answer that.” WPP as a holding company is facing serious challenges and boss Martin Sorrell has been upfront about the financial pressures it’s under from clients who are decreasing their marketing budget. As a result, WPP seems to be working hard to claw its way back to the top of the advertising food chain.

It comprises teams specialising in seven key production disciplines including: design, photography, TV and post, web design and build, dynamic digital campaigns, social content, digital and print production and management.

As production increasingly becomes a more important and profitable component in the creative advertising equation, WPP wants to come as close as possible to providing everything for its clients—with Hogarth serving as the proverbial kitchen sink for both Ogilvy and Grey.

Some basic foundations are clearly important. Wages are still low and demographics are favorable. About half the population is below the age of 35, and Vietnam has a large and growing workforce. The country is also politically stable and geographically close to major global supply chains. But this is not necessarily what sets Vietnam apart. Instead, we would argue that Vietnam managed to capitalize on its strong foundations through good policies. Vietnam has achieved its success the hard way. First, it has embraced trade liberalization with gusto. Second, it has complemented external liberalization with domestic reforms through deregulation and lowering the cost of doing business. Finally, Vietnam has invested heavily in human and physical capital, predominantly through public investments. These lessons—global integration, domestic liberalization, and investing in people and infrastructure—while not new, need reiteration in the wake of rising economic nationalism and anti-globalization sentiments.

This success is a symptom of a broader trend that defies global norms. While global trade has stagnated, Vietnam’s trade has soared to 190 percent of GDP in 2017 from 70 percent in 2007. While premature de-industrialization sweeps through the world economy, Vietnam’s manufacturing sector has steadily expanded, adding an estimated 1.5 million new manufacturing jobs between 2014 and 2016 alone.

In the short term, digital design will move beyond screens to physical surfaces and augmented or artificial environments, and designers will occupy more positions where they are directing or consulting on larger and more complex systems of experience. Design is already less visual and more collaborative, and will continue along that trend. It’s not enough, though, to look five or ten years in the future. Will there be a Machine-Learning designer in 2050? Maybe. But in forty years, it’s just as likely that jobs will no longer exist, or at least not in a way that we would recognize them.

Fashion can change overnight. It takes a decade or two to change architecture, because it takes so long to become an architect. You have to go through a rigorous training program. The Cultural Revolution arrested the development of architecture in China.  It has taken this long for it to start coming back. The architecture schools are starting to become confident enough that they are starting to encourage students to draw their inspiration from their own environment and culture.   Until now, they have pretty much been borrowing from the West.  Finally, the professors that weren’t happy about the Cultural Revolution are dying or retiring, and younger, less cynical professors are coming forward and saying, “Being a Chinese architect is good. “ Wang Shu won the Prizker Prize not because he was the world’s great architect, but because he was one of the first in his generation of Chinese architects to be original and be Chinese at the same time, and not borrow from the West.  That will happen more and more.

When was Japan on fire in late '80s to early '90s, every famous architect in the world was in Japan. Every major hotel lobby would be filled with famous architects.  Today, there’s nobody there. The Japanese architects have taken control of their own country.  Now, the only people going work in Japan are Japanese architects. I have to believe that one day, the only people doing architecture in China will be Chinese architects

Is China's Architectural Ambition Leaving Its Own Talent Behind?

Japanese people tend to require more information before reaching a purchasing decision. So for printed brochures, it is standard practice for Japanese companies to create one text-heavy version for the Japanese domestic market, and another “rest of the world” version that gets localized into multiple languages for markets worldwide. Often the Japanese domestic version goes into more detail and mentions this or that technology as part of a product’s appeal. The non-Japan version focuses more on user benefits, oftentimes not even mentioning the technology that makes those benefits possible. Western thinking is, consumers want to acquire an experience, not a technology. Japanese thinking is, those promises feel more real when somehow linked to technology.

He has since tested his hypothesis in India, which also shows a clear divide in wheat and rice growing regions, with similar results. Almost all the people he questioned are not directly involved in farming, of course – but the historical traditions of their regions are still shaping their thinking. “There’s some inertia in the culture.”

The divide did not seem to correlate with measures of wealth or modernisation, but he noticed that one difference could be the kind of staple crop grown in the region: rice in most southern areas, and wheat in the north. “It splits almost neatly along the Yangtze River,” says Talhelm.Growing rice requires far greater cooperation: it is labour-intensive and requires complex irrigation systems spanning many different farms. Wheat farming, by contrast, takes about half the amount of work and depends on rainfall rather than irrigation, meaning that farmers don’t need to collaborate with their neighbours and can focus on tending their own crops. 

When questioned about their attitudes and behaviours, people in more individualistic, Western societies tend to value personal success over group achievement, which in turn is also associated with the need for greater self-esteem and the pursuit of personal happiness. But this thirst for self-validation also manifests in overconfidence, with many experiments showing that Weird participants are likely to overestimate their abilities. When asked about their competence, for instance, 94% of American professors claimed they were “better than average”.This tendency for self-inflation appears to be almost completely absent in a range of studies across East Asia; in fact, in some cases the participants were more likely to underestimate their abilities than to inflate their sense of self-worth. People living in individualistic societies may also put more emphasis on personal choice and freedom.

But why did the different thinking styles emerge in the first place? The obvious explanation would be that they simply reflect the prevailing philosophies that have come to prominence in each region over time. Nisbett points out that Western philosophers emphasised freedom and independence, whereas Eastern traditions like Taoism tended to focus on concepts of unity. Confucius, for instance, emphasised the “obligations that obtained between emperor and subject, parent and child, husband and wife, older brother and younger brother, and between friend and friend”. These diverse ways of viewing the world are embedded in the culture’s literature, education, and political institutions, so it is perhaps of little surprise that those ideas have been internalised, influencing some very basic psychological processes.

Why Nordic countries top the happiness league

    Language Maps and Ethnicity Maps    

Vietnamese 15-year-olds do as well in maths and sciences as their German peers. Vietnam spends more on schools than most countries at a similar level of development, and focuses on the basics: boosting enrolment and training teachers. The investment is pivotal to making the most of trade opportunities. Factories may be more automated, but the machines still need operators. Workers must be literate, numerate and able to handle complex instructions. Vietnam is producing the right skills. Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia lag behind, despite being wealthier.

Most obviously, openness to the global economy pays off. Vietnam is lucky to be sitting on China’s doorstep as companies hunt for low-cost alternatives. But others in South-East Asia, equally well positioned, have done less. Vietnam dramatically simplified its trade rules in the 1990s. Trade now accounts for roughly 150% of GDP, more than any other country at its income level. The government barred officials from forcing foreigners to buy inputs domestically. Contrast that with local-content rules in Indonesia. Foreign firms have flocked to Vietnam and make about two-thirds of Vietnamese exports.

Allied to openness is flexibility. The government has encouraged competition among its 63 provinces. Ho Chi Minh City has forged ahead with industrial parks, Danang has gone high-tech and the north is scooping up manufacturers as they exit China. The result is a diversified economy able to withstand shocks, including a property bust in 2011.

Russia Isn’t the Only One Meddling in Elections. We Do It, Too.

Cultural differences can be wonderfully subtle.  Consider this distinction: "Do not do unto others as you would not have them do to you" (Chinese Confucian).  This prohibits harmful acts. "Do unto others as you would wish them to do to you" (Judeo-Christian).  This promotes helpfulness.

Another dimension of culture that is relevant to health is the tendency to trust others: this is the notion of "social capital". Perhaps surprisingly, people from individualistic cultures tend to trust strangers more highly than do people from collectivistic cultures. In surveys that ask questions on agreement with statements such as “Most people can be trusted”, Nordic societies score highest, although China is also very high. Several Latin American countries and East Europe score low.

The fact that not being able to discern exactly when the FPS began shows how the whole question of genre is about feel. It's about the point when a body of similar works has mapped out the boundaries of what they're interested in - what they are and what they aren't - and when there's no clear leader any more.

Most genres bubble up outside the mainstream industry, built by modders and tinkerers, amateurs and enthusiasts. In these 'folk games' it's sometimes hard to find a single originator or author, instead groups of people feeding from each other, freely copying, rearranging and rebuilding to develop and refine a core concept. The best ones find audiences and rapidly grow, even as they're still evolving

The point is that the general concept of the battle royale has grown almost naturally from wider culture, the evolving nature of online tech and modding scenes

That transformation, in which a new genre has originated, is a fascinating mirror of the wonderful way ideas merge and evolve, spread and multiply, skating through inspiration and invention, copying and stealing.

First, in terms of science, it now appears that his metaphysics has withstood the test of time. While traditional scholars largely dismiss his holistic ontology prior to the Critique, innovations in the environmental and physical sciences have validated Kant's claims as realistic insights in the workings of nature. His evolutionary theory of the universe is now seen as “the essence of modern models” in cosmology (Coles 2001: 240), and his natural philosophy is seen as the last milestone of western philosophy prior to its “comedown” to skepticism (Hawking 2003, 166). In light of climate change, it stands to reason that Kant's grasp on biospherical dynamics and sustainable policies may well spur a philosophical return to Kant in the near future.

Octavio Herrera also played baseball when he was Jake's age, and well remembers how it felt. "Nerves in your stomach, right?" he says. "Butterflies. I remember that as a kid, pitching in a game — 10 years old — so nervous and so scared." It may be uncomfortable at the time, he says, but "that's great to have in a situation where the stakes are really low — where, if you fail you're still going to get pizza and ice cream, and your parents are still going to tell you they love you." If kids can learn to fight their fear and work through it, he says, that steadiness comes in handy later in life — when the stakes are much higher. It's an ability Octavio says he relies on routinely, as a software entrepreneur who has created, bought and sold a number of companies.

And at the professional level, I want them to feel the ugly emotions that come with losing, but to also understand that losing a game truly isn’t the end of the world. We will work together to improve, and we will hopefully find a way to achieve success.

“Losing is only temporary and not all encompassing. You must simply study it, learn from it and try hard not to lose the same way again. Then you must have the self control to forget about it.”

Those who dwell…among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Whatever the vexation or concerns of their personal lives, their thoughts can find paths that lead to inner contentment and to renewed excitement in living. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.

Reawakening the sense of wonder does not simply help us appreciate the beauty of nature.  It can help heal a sense of alienation and loneliness.  Because when a person is truly present to more-than-human world, how could they ever really feel alone?  In working toward the recovery of a sense of wonder, we are cultivating an ability to see beyond ourselves, beyond the limits of the human bubble.  It is a humbling process; humility is a necessary ingredient to the experience of awe and wonder.  Via our humility, via our personal smallness, the larger world reveals itself to us more fully.

Production and post-production is, by many accounts, the most profitable element of the entire agency equation, and holding companies aim to boost those totals

as clients' marketing budgets decrease and agency profit margins feel the squeeze.

One boss allegedly followed a round of layoffs by warning employees that all production work needed to remain in-house if they wanted to keep their jobs, in part because production is the agency's only profitable department.

All major agency holding companies have launched their own production and postproduction units in recent years as part of what one agency veteran called "a revenue grab." In some cases, they have publicized this information, but the new divisions largely operate under the radar despite employing hundreds of people. "This isn't a threat to high-end production companies," said one source who has worked in that industry for years, "But it will wipe out the whole middle range of independent companies."

Chiang: There’s a passage in Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life where she’s telling her neighbor that she hates writing and would rather do anything else, and her neighbor says, “That’s like a guy who works in a factory all day, and hates it.” Writing is so difficult for me that I have often wondered whether I’m actually suited for it, and I’ve had experiences with the publishing industry that made me quit writing for years. But I keep coming back to it because, I suppose, writing is an essential part of who I am. As for advice to slow writers, I’d say that writing is not a race. This isn’t a situation where only the most prolific writers get an audience; publish your story when you’re ready, and it will find readers.

After winning the Forward prize, Vuong told the Guardian that he suspected dyslexia runs in his family, but felt it had positively affected his writing: “I think perhaps the disability helped me a bit, because I write very slowly and see words as objects. I’m always trying to look for words inside words. It’s so beautiful to me that the word laughter is inside slaughter.”

Vuong, who now lives in Massachusetts and works as an assistant professor in the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, only gained a taste for poetry in his 20s

Born in Saigon, Vuong spent a year in a refugee camp as a baby and migrated to America when he was two years old, where he was raised by his mother, grandmother and aunt. Two aspects of Vuong’s life – his sexuality and the absence of his father – recur in his work

The missing middle: A political economy of economic restructuring in Vietnam

Making things even more maddeningly complicated, seemingly similar foods can differ wildly in nutrition profile. A local, farm-fresh carrot will probably be less diluted in its nutrients than a mass-produced baby carrot that's been bagged in the grocery store. A hamburger at a fast-food restaurant will have different fat and salt content compared with one made at home. Even getting people to better report on every little thing they put into their bodies can't completely address this variation.

In a recent study published in the journal Cell, Israeli scientists tracked 800 people over a week, continuously monitoring their blood sugar levels to see how they responded to the same foods. Every person seemed to respond wildly differently, even to identical meals, "suggesting that universal dietary recommendations may have limited utility," the researchers wrote. "It's now clear that the impact of nutrition on health cannot be simply understood by assessing what people eat," said Rafael Perez-Escamilla, a professor of epidemiology and public health at Yale, "as this is strongly influenced by how the nutrients and other bioactive compounds derived from foods interact with the genes and the extensive gut microbiota that individuals have."

I asked 8 researchers why the science of nutrition is so messy. Here’s what they said.