What to Know About the World Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently wrote a blog column outlining the three most important facts that people should know about our world today. It turns out that there were actually quite a number of facts, but they were related to three basic categories of human existence. First the bad […]
Shrinking Motherhood We recently celebrated Mother’s Day in the U.S., but demographics tell us that mothers make up a smaller percentage of the population than at any time in at least the last quarter century. Today, only about 26% of Americans are women who currently have or have had children, and only 15% of Americans […]
The Most Popular Baby Name Awards Go To… The U.S. Social Security Administration has released its annual list of the most popular baby names in America, and the winners are… Emma for girls and Liam for boys. Down the list, in order for girls, are Olivia, Ava, Isabella, Sophia, Mia, Charlotte, Amelia, Evelyn and Abigail. […]
The Amazon Model Two companies—Amazon and Apple—are in a tight race to become the first company to have a total market value greater than $1 trillion—that is, the value of all their outstanding stock would exceed that enormous figure. Apple is the higher-profile candidate, but the smart money seems to be on Amazon. Why? When […]
More Good Job Numbers By now, we should be pretty well accustomed to getting good news from the employment reports issued every month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The latest report, released last Friday, announced (yawn) the 92nd consecutive month of positive job creation in the American economy—seven and two-thirds years of steadily falling […]
Smartphone Addiction? Have you ever wondered how often the average person interacts with his or her mobile device? As it turns out, the mobile research firm Dscout, Inc. has the answer. According to its statistics, the average person taps, pokes, pinches or swipes his/her personal phone an astonishing 2,617 times a day. It adds up […]
A Better Place A recent global survey of more than 18,000 adults in nine countries asked a simple question: “All things considered, do you think the world is getting better or worse, or neither getting better nor worse?” As you can see from the graphic, the most optimistic country, regarding the future, is Sweden, and […]
Better Conversation-Starters Sometimes our social interactions seem to happen by default, and we don’t get much out of them. Consider the stock greeting: “How are you?” What information are you likely to get when you ask this tired question? Tired answers, like: “Busy,” “fine,” “okay,” or “good.” And what did you learn from that? How […]
Electronic Personhood Did you hear that the European Parliament has proposed to grant “personhood” status to intelligent machines (aka robots)? If you don’t believe it, here’s the exact language: “At the least, the most sophisticated autonomous robots could be established as having the status of electronic persons responsible for making good any damage they may […]
The REAL Causes of Death Most of us are afraid of the wrong things. When we worry about being killed, what often comes to mind is a terrorist attack, natural disaster, homicide, an airline crash—or, perhaps, the result of a drug overdose or some idiot’s car running a traffic light. But a comprehensive study of […]
