Category: Ideas
What COVID Teaches Us About Big Tech
Apocalypse is a strange word. It comes from the Greek, and translates roughly to revelation, or an unveiling of things not previously known. When things fall apart, we tend to find out how they work. As children we break things to learn how to put them back together again. When the world falls apart we ...
Australia’s Bushfire Crisis
It is difficult to talk about the current bushfire crisis facing Australia with anything close to the objectivity required of a journalistic article. As my home, I have struggled to come to grips with the scope of the disaster that has occurred here. For a long time, we have had the benefit of sitting on ...
4 Ways to Innovate: Lessons from the Global Scholars Symposium
In June 2019, Rhodes House hosted the Global Scholars Symposium. The theme was Cultivating Innovation. Over the two-day event, speakers from all over the world talked about different ways to innovate. I left the event with a newfound appreciation for innovators, and several take-home messages. According to the dictionary, to innovate is to “make changes in ...
Fireworks Fly at Jeff Koons Event: Should An Artist Credit Their Assistants?
Fireworks flew in question time yesterday at an event celebrating the internationally acclaimed artist Jeff Koons. Visiting Oxford to promote his exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, Koons was questioned by the Emeritus Professor of Art History Martin Kemp, before receiving mostly hostile questions from the live audience. Koons is best known for his reproduction of ...
United Kingdom Considers New Laws: Age Restrictions for Facebook Likes, Snapstreaks
The recent call for age restrictions on likes and streaks on Facebook and Snapchat is long overdue, but does not go far enough. People of all ages should be protected from the psychological damage caused by likes, streaks and other online ‘reward’ mechanisms used by giant social media companies to make us all addicts. Likes, ...
Long Working Hours Are Making Australians: Unproductive, Mentally Ill, Physically Ill
Research indicates working more than 48 hours a week is associated with significant declines in productivity, more mistakes and more mental health problems. Yet the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons reckons working up to 65 hours a week “is appropriate for trainees to gain the knowledge and experience required”. It’s an attitude that explains why a 2017 audit found ...
Top UK universities remain unreachable for 70% of students
Eight top schools have as many Oxford and Cambridge admissions as the next 2894 UK schools combined, according to a new report by the Sutton Trust. The Trust suggests that little has changed regarding access to opportunity at Oxbridge since its last report in 2011. For nearly three quarters of school leavers across the UK, ...
