If you want me to work in an office, I demand to commute in a flying car
Marissa Mayer seems to have missed two key things. The first is that everyone is different, and a canny employer should embrace those differences. The other is that it shouldn’t matter where we work any more – in an office, in bed, in a shed in the back garden, or on a beach – since many employees expect to be available in any or all of the above in any case.
We’ve sacrificed enough of ourselves to productivity and efficiency. I’m not going back to an office until I can get there in a flying car.
Nurse, can I get fries with that?
Patients in British hospitals would be better off eating a Big Mac than three in four of the meals they are served on the ward, according to one recent study.
But Irish patients may not be faring much better.
The Coombe hospital said it would “review its standards” after photos of a meal featuring a flaccid sausage roll and some burnt potato wedges were posted on Twitter.
Meanwhile, leaked tender documents published earlier this week have revealed that chicken nuggets, cod goujons containing 50 per cent fish, potato waffles, and pies with 10 per cent meat are to be served up to patients in a range of hospitals in the west and northwest.
Even those with only the most fleeting knowledge of nutrition know that processed foods and foods high in salt and saturated fats have been linked to a range of coronary illnesses and cancer.
To serve them up in the hospitals where patients are being treated for exactly these conditions defies all logic.
Trolls are opinion shapers
Are you reading this online, and scrolling down the page to post a comment on what you’ve just read? You might want to read this first.
A fascinating study published by the US Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication has attempted to measure the impact of negative online comments on other readers.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin showed a group of 1,183 people an identical story about a new development in technology. Half the people saw the story accompanied by “civil” reader comments; the other half were shown it alongside “rude” comments.
The researchers found that misery does indeed like company – the people who saw the version with the rude comments were both more polarised in their views, and more likely to have their opinions swayed by what the other posters were saying.
Writing about their findings on what they called “the nasty effect” in the New York Times last weekend, Dominique Brossard and Dietram A Scheufele said that: “Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make study participants think the downside of the reported technology was greater than they’d previously thought.”
Trolls: 1; Reason: 0.
