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Showing posts from August, 2013

Teenage sleep deprivation... help kids pause games.

Just read a BBC report saying half of British teenagers aren't getting the 9 hours sleep they need . Not only does this affect their developing brains, it also means they under-perform at school. Also it would seem that many of the kids suspected of having clinical issues are actually suffering from nothing more than sleep deprivation. Here's an extract from the research: "People were being sent to me and were generally being diagnosed with Aspergers, and a lot were being diagnosed as ADHD," she said. "I felt the first thing we had to do was to work out a sleep programme for them so that they weren't sleep deprived. Once they weren't sleep deprived, some no longer had ADHD symptoms because the symptoms of hyperactivity and sleep deprivation are pretty similar. "I'm not saying they were all free of ADHD but it is a common mistake. Her pilot studies in three Scottish schools suggested 52% of teenagers were sleep deprived, and about 20% reporte

Don't Use My Taxes to Kill Syrians. Use Them to Educate Refugee Children

We (the UK and US) are about to start killing Syrians just like we killed Libyans, Iraqis and Afghans in the name of freedom and democracy... Only to end up with a bigger mess of warring tribes than we started with. We need to confront the reason they are killing each other, not perpetuate the hatred. Why do our press and politicians instantly jump to the conclusion that the only people who were likely to have used chemical weapons were the Syrian army? I believe it's because we still harbour the idea that if 'the people' rise up against their leaders, then we're witnessing democracy in action - and democracy equals freedom of choice... which we support. BUT when 'the people' are religious fundamentalists determined to enforce their brand of delusional beliefs and customs on their neighbourhood, should we really be supporting them? What's the difference between uprisings of these people in our own countries (London 7/7, 9/11, Boston Marathon etc), and u

There might be a gap in the market, but is there a market in the gap?

I love this saying. As a (volunteer) business advisor I have met hundreds of people who believe they have an idea for a business. Programmes like Dragon's Den and get-rich-quick examples of the likes of the Youtube and Instagram founders encourage people to believe that the way out of their poverty (or simply to change from being an employee to an employer) is to start their own business. I did it several times myself and this blog is littered with tales of how I slowly, and usually painfully, eventually learned how to do it moderately successfully . It also contains here and there , ideas about how we might help start-ups avoid the pitfalls that await many of them. The biggest mistake, in my view, is for a founder of a business to believe too strongly that they have a winner. This is counter-intuitive since passionate faith in your idea is usually the prerequisite advocated by every How-I-Made-My-Fortune book and entrepreneurial lecture or training course you'll find. These