GoldieBlox: Engineering toys for girls

GoldieBlox is an engineering toy developed for girls by Debbie Sterling. Kept in “girlish” colors and materials, it comes with a storybook telling of heroine Goldie and her friends, and how Goldie gets them through their adventures by engineering solutions. The story is accompanied by a platform where the children can reconstruct her building designs.  […]

Ha-Joon Chang

Ha-Joon Chang, Professor of Political Economy of Development at the University of Cambridge, explains economics very clearly and simply. In his book, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism, he argues these 23 tenets: There is really no such thing as a free market. Companies should not be run in the interest of their […]

Anita Roddick: Commerce with a Conscience

“Start with quality and truth”. Dame Anita Roddick (1942 – 2007), founder of The Body Shop, was an activist and a businesswoman. Her cosmetics company helped establish ethical consumerism, being one of the first to prohibit the use of animals and to promote fair trade. She gave this talk (just under 50 minutes) at the […]

If not us, then who? If not now, then when?

Naderev Saño, the Philippines’ lead negotiator, gives a brilliant, emotional 3 minute speech at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Doha, on 6 November 2012. It is enormously difficult to keep your chin up as a negotiator in such a slow and tedious process. But do you always have to keep your chin up? Can’t […]

Presenting science to your peers

I gave a morning workshop yesterday on scientific presentations to students of Geoscience and updated my approach a little. It now includes the concept of creating storytelling cycles of tension and resolution (situation, complication, resolution, example), as explained by presentation guru Andrew Abela, whose book, Advanced Presentations by Design, I have just ordered. Also see […]