Carlos Gonzalez: the doctor who wants parents to break the rules. Various mothers I know go slightly silly at the mention of Dr Carlos Gonzalez, a Spanish paediatrician ("He's gorgeous! " "His voice is amazing! "). More sensibly, his bestselling book My Child Won't Eat has calmed down thousands of parents since it came out 10 years ago. This was a man who said it didn't matter if your child ate vegetables or not – although, of course, they shouldn't eat junk either.
I first interviewed Gonzalez, over the phone, a few years ago. We were talking about children's eating habits and how parents can get exasperated. So I was looking forward to meeting the doctor in the flesh to talk about his new book, Kiss Me! "I never expected any of them to sell so much," says Gonzalez, thin as a breadstick, all grey hair and immaculately ironed shirt, pointing at both his books. He explains that Kiss Me is about "all the forbidden things you're not meant to do as a parent, like pick up your baby, co-sleep with your baby, let your baby feed itself, etc.
Technology: Print me a Stradivarius. BMW Change Accelerators. How to Nip Procrastination in the Bud Once and for All. Ironically, procrastination is a problem that we all seem to put off dealing with. Many people will keep putting off their obligations for as long as they can, even if they are fully aware that their lives would be so much easier, if only they were able to do everything they want to do on time. Procrastination is something that affects people of all ages. Many college students put off studying for an exam or writing a paper for as long as they can, and then they have to pull a ridiculous all-nighter to compensate. Office workers set aside boring paperwork and avoid it until their bosses demand it at the end of the month, making them spend extra hours in the office for no good reason.
This type of behavior is not only unhealthy, but it also negatively affects the quality of your work in most cases. Procrastination plagues us all, and in today’s world it is especially pronounced. Here’s what you must do if you want to nip your procrastinating ways in the bud, once and for good. Get Organized. The buidling blocks of economic growth: Complexity matters. The Atlas of Economic Complexity. The Future of Self-Improvement, Part I: Grit Is More Important Than Talent. In the late ’60s, Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel performed a now-iconic experiment called the Marshmallow Test, which analyzed the ability of four year olds to exhibit “delayed gratification.” Here’s what happened: Each child was brought into the room and sat down at a table with a delicious treat on it (maybe a marshmallow, maybe a donut).
The scientists told the children that they could have a treat now, or, if they waited 15 minutes, they could have two treats. All of the children wanted to wait. (Who doesn’t want more treats?) When the researchers subsequently checked in on these same children in high school, it turned out that those with more self-control — that is, those who held out for 15 minutes — were better behaved, less prone to addiction, and scored higher on the SAT. It’s not difficult to see how self-control would be predictive of success in certain spheres. Very often when we talk about the skill of ‘productivity’ what we are really talking about is ‘self-control.’ The Future of Self-Improvement, Part II: The Dilemma of Coaching Yourself.
What separates those who accomplish outstanding feats from those who don’t? According to author and researcher Joshua Foer, it’s the dedication and willpower to doggedly push beyond the “OK Plateau.” When most of us learn a new skill, we work to get just “good enough” and then we go on autopilot. We hit what Foer calls the “OK Plateau,” where we have gained sufficient skills for our needs; at which point, we stop pushing ourselves. But experts – those who excel beyond all others in their fields – do it differently. Foer identified four principles that he saw the experts using to remain alert and to keep learning: 1. 2. 3. 4. In essence, those who excel beyond the pack are pushing themselves continually so that they are never on autopilot. An excellent example of these “expert qualities” in action is Rhodes scholar, New York Knicks star basketball player, Olympic gold medalist, former New Jersey senator and presidential candidate, and bestselling author Bill Bradley.
What’s Your Take? The Seven Lifestyle Changes That Can Add a Decade to Your Life. Simple lifestyle changes can add a decade or more healthy years to the average lifespan, Canadian study shows. Health prevention strategies to help Canadians achieve their optimal health potential could add a decade or more of healthy years to the average lifespan and save the economy billions of dollars as a result of reduced cardiovascular disease, says noted cardiologist Dr. Clyde Yancy. Dr. Yancy, who will deliver the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada Lecture at the opening ceremonies of the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress in Vancouver on October 23, will tell delegates that people who follow seven simple steps to a healthy life can expect to live an additional 40 to 50 years after the age of 50. "Achieving these seven simple lifestyle factors gives people a 90 per cent chance of living to the age of 90 or 100, free of not only heart disease and stroke but from a number of other chronic illnesses including cancer," says Dr.
Yancy, a professor of medicine and chief of cardiology at the Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. Canadians can achieve optimal health, says Dr. FRANCO BERARDI BIFO – Paradosso del presente e diritto all’insolvenza. Inefficacia delle forme di lotta in assenza di solidarietà Il movimento di protesta si è diffuso durante l’anno 2011, e ha cercato di opporsi all’attacco finanziario contro la società. Ma le dimostrazioni pacifiche non sono riuscite a cambiare il programma di azione della Banca centrale europea, dato che i parlamenti nazionali sono ostaggi delle regole di Maastricht, degli automatismi finanziari che funzionano come costituzione materiale dell’Unione.
La dimostrazione pacifica è efficace nel contesto della democrazia, ma la democrazia è finita dal momento che automatismi tecno finanziari hanno preso il posto della decisione politica. Se occorreva una prova definitiva del carattere illusorio di ogni discorso sull’alternativa democratica, l’esperienza di governo di Barack Obama ce l’ha fornita. La violenza è esplosa allora in alcuni momenti. La soggettività sociale sembra debole e frammentaria, di fronte all’assalto finanziario. Diritto all’insolvenza Il paradosso Franco Berardi Bifo. A Formula for Economic Calamity. The Evolution Of The Blogger: Which Type Of Blogger Are You? [Infographic]
Blogging has roots all the way back to the early 1990s, when forum members would keep accounts of their day-to-day activities and in 1994 the first real blog, Justin’s Links, hit the web. Blogging has come a long way since the ‘90s, with over 156 million public blogs in existence as of February 2011. Everyone is blogging, from moms to techies to artists and politicians, and a fun infographic from Flowtown examines the blogging ecosystem.
‘The Evolution of the Blogger’ was actually created last December but it has seen a random burst of viral activity this month so we thought it was worth sharing with you. The infographic is designed as a flowchart, flowing through the history of the blog and exploring how all of the different “types” of bloggers have come to be. We begin with the early categories of bloggers—the Emo Blogger (that favored LiveJournal), the Angry Blogger (that used the web as an outlet), and the obsessive blogger (that wrote about a single area or topic). Education | The six radical secrets of a more productive classroom. New school of thought ... the traditional ‘‘hands-up’’ method of answering questions allows many students to just opt out of taking part.
Hands up who knows one of the most common, time-honoured and, it is now being argued, detrimental teaching methods used in schools? That's right, person bobbing up and down excitedly, waving your digits in the air: it's the hands-up habit itself. Apparently, it is the same minority of top pupils, usually sitting at the front, who raise their hands to answer questions, while most switch off and opt out.
According to education expert Professor Dylan Wiliam, this ingrained, almost sacrosanct, classroom habit is widening the achievement gap in our schools. ''Only a quarter of pupils consistently put their hands up,'' Wiliam says. Teach ... Some sort of randomisation process was required, Wiliam decided long ago, and his unorthodox solution was to write the pupils' names down on lollipop sticks, the teacher then pulling them at random from a pot. Why Do Some People Learn Faster? | Wired Science
The physicist Niels Bohr once defined an expert as “a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” Bohr’s quip summarizes one of the essential lessons of learning, which is that people learn how to get it right by getting it wrong again and again. Education isn’t magic. Education is the wisdom wrung from failure. A new study, forthcoming in Psychological Science, and led by Jason Moser at Michigan State University, expands on this important concept.
The question at the heart of the paper is simple: Why are some people so much more effective at learning from their mistakes? After all, everybody screws up. The important part is what happens next. The Moser experiment is premised on the fact that there are two distinct reactions to mistakes, both of which can be reliably detected using electroenchephalography, or EEG.
It turned out that those subjects with a growth mindset were significantly better at learning from their mistakes. Image: mujalifah/Flickr.