The Closer
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ADELE
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According to my itinerary, I’ll be flying home from Costa Rica today, hopefully pleasantly exhausted from a great adventure. I’m writing this from home before leaving, setting it up to be posted on 2/25, and much as I am looking forward to the trip, I am also looking forward to returning.
It’s fun to go on the adventure, of course, but one of the reasons I seek new adventures is to savor them afterward. I can’t spend all of my time going on adventures, after all. I do have a job, and although I like it, I can’t say it’s really an adventure.
Students have long opted to go abroad for a semester or a year as part of their undergraduate educational experience. But now their schools are going overseas, too, as this NYT article explains: “Universities Rush to Set Up Outposts Abroad.”
In a kind of educational gold rush, American universities are competing to set up outposts in countries with limited higher education opportunities. American universities — not to mention Australian and British ones, which also offer instruction in English, the lingua franca of academia — are starting, or expanding, hundreds of programs and partnerships in booming markets like China, India and Singapore.
It’s not going to be a simple matter to accomplish. But I like the idea of exporting US higher education. We’ve already made an indelible mark on so many other cultures through our commercial influence — not to mention military presence — and our system of higher education offers what I’d like to think of as the best view of our culture. It’s a side of of “us” that we can all be proud of, and the effects of spreading “American” education around the world could turn out to be far more positive and meaningful in the long run than anything else we’ve done.
I know I’m biased, as a former teacher, but I believe learning is almost always a good thing.
I’m thinking it’s a good thing I kicked my fixation on drinking Caffeine-Free Diet Coke. I used to drink at least one can of it a day, in part just for something to break up the afternoon while I worked. Then I bought a mini coffee maker and started making decaf coffee, instead, and my consumption of diet soda dropped way down. I hardly ever have it anymore.
So, the news widely reported about diet sodas significantly increasing one’s health risks was disturbing, but at least I’ve already taken steps to avoid it: “Symptoms: Metabolic Syndrome Is Tied to Diet Soda.”
Researchers have found a correlation between drinking diet soda and metabolic syndrome — the collection of risk factors for cardiovascular disease and diabetes that include abdominal obesity, high cholesterol and blood glucose levels, and elevated blood pressure.
Not a good thing, for sure. And by “significant” increase in risk, we’re not talking scientific mumbo-jumbo, but big numbers that anyone can grasp: Read the rest of this entry »
Our question today is one of the most fundamental we face in our lives — just what constitutes happiness and how do we go about achieving it. It is a question that has been pondered since the very beginning, and as far as we’ve come in understanding of the nuts and bolts that underpin happiness, right down to the neurological processes that govern it, we may be no closer to a complete answer. And, so, it is left to the philosophers, poets and each and everyone of us through our own reflections to make sense of what is happiness.
More interesting to me than the written portion of the post is the embedded video. Big Think is an intellectual version of YouTube, and I like the answer to the happiness question in this video clip “of Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert’s, who studies the science of happiness.”
I thought you could see just about anything on YouTube, but now that Google’s deep pockets are behind it, the site has to be more careful about little things like copyright infringement and other complaints. Suing Google could be very lucrative. Wired reported the story, “Humorless Metalheads Shut Down Popular YouTuber.”
Three humorless guitar heroes who were lampooned in a series of YouTube “shredding” videos have had the clips pulled offline after citing copyright infringement.
Here’s a clip that is still on YouTube, from the Jimmy Kimmel show.
If you’ve been around the call center industry any length of time (say, 5 minutes), you’ve heard the buzz about “agent empowerment.” It’s a hip-sounding phrase, and if you’re a call center representative it has a nice ring to it. If you’re a call center manager, however, it may sound more vague and perhaps threatening to you (“I’m supposed to be the one with the power, right?”).
Of course, if you’re a call center manager, the chances are you’re a “people person,” anyway — since that’s an essential quality for success in the people-intensive call center environment — so you may already be touchy-feely and confident enough to appreciate the idea of empowering your employees. Don’t be scared: it will be good for you!
To help everyone understand the truth behind the buzz about agent empowerment, ICMI assigned our crack research team (that would be Greg Levin) to investigate. You can read the report for free if you’re an ICMI Member, or download it for $24.95 if you’re not so privileged. Here’s what you can expect: Read the rest of this entry »
Have you heard about the Transportation Security Agency’s (TSA) new blog? It got lots of press, and lots of ridicule. Many claim it is just a public relations (PR) stunt for an agency that’s as lowly-admired as the IRS. Some held out hope that the TSA would actually listen to the comments people posted on the blog. But the hopeful ones are in the minority, from what I could see.
I heard about the 43 Things website a long time ago, and my first reaction was that it was odd. The idea is that you create a public list on their website of things that you intend to do. Any kinds of things at all. And by doing so, you become part of the 43 Things social network, which is where it gets rather interesting.
The funny thing is, not quite a year ago I decided to try it out. I made my own list (only 8 things, as I recall — 43 is just a random number). And, feeling secure in the anonymity of the Internet, they were highly personal, deeply important goals, fundamental things that I wanted to change about myself and in my life. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve had encounters with migraine headaches, but luckily for me, only very rarely. Members of my family have suffered much more often with migraines, and I can tell you it’s an awfully helpless and frustrating feeling when you see your child curled up in so much pain.
So I’ve had experience with these wicked headaches, and I’ve researched them extensively, both on my own and via the doctors I’ve taken my daughter to for treatment. It is, truly, a mysterious ailment that is far from well understood. Folk remedies abound, in part I’m sure from the desperation of migraine sufferers to find relief, and in part because the causes of migraines can be so incredibly varied, and vastly different for different people.
I am a migraineur. I use the noun with care, because after a lifetime of headaches, I have come to think of migraines as a part of me, not as some force or plague that infects my body. Chronic headaches are my fate, and I have adopted a position of philosophical resignation.
When this post appears, I will be out of the country and I will have left my laptop behind. Yet, through the power of editing the timestamp on this posting, I have written it before leaving and allowed it to magically appear while I am away.
So, there will be fewer posts for a while, as I don’t know how many I’m going to have time to write in advance like this. But I’ll try to make at least one each day appear, and then when I get back from my vacation I’ll write about the adventures I’ve had.
So, I’m not here right now . . . but to quote Arnold, “I’ll be back!”
According to my itinerary, I’ll be flying home from Costa Rica today, hopefully pleasantly exhausted from a great adventure. I’m writing this from home before leaving, setting it up to be posted on 2/25, and much as I am looking forward to the trip, I am also looking forward to returning.
Students have long opted to go abroad for a semester or a year as part of their undergraduate educational experience. But now their schools are going overseas, too, as this NYT article explains: “
I’m thinking it’s a good thing I kicked my fixation on drinking Caffeine-Free Diet Coke. I used to drink at least one can of it a day, in part just for something to break up the afternoon while I worked. Then I bought a mini coffee maker and started making decaf coffee, instead, and my consumption of diet soda dropped way down. I hardly ever have it anymore.
There’s a post in the 
Have you heard about the Transportation Security Agency’s (TSA) new blog? It got lots of press, and lots of ridicule. Many claim it is just a public relations (PR) stunt for an agency that’s as lowly-admired as the IRS. Some held out hope that the TSA would actually listen to the comments people posted on the blog. But the hopeful ones are in the minority, from what I could see.
I heard about the 
I’ve had encounters with migraine headaches, but luckily for me, only very rarely. Members of my family have suffered much more often with migraines, and I can tell you it’s an awfully helpless and frustrating feeling when you see your child curled up in so much pain.
When this post appears, I will be out of the country and I will have left my laptop behind. Yet, through the power of editing the timestamp on this posting, I have written it before leaving and allowed it to magically appear while I am away.
