It’s that time of the year again! While Google, Hulu, Youtube and others are playing virtual pranks on their users, let’s pause for a moment and look back into the marvelous history of April Fools’ pranks. Here is my unordered list of nominees for the top five April Fools’ hoaxes. Ever. (feel free to add…
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A Brief Introduction to Language Change
The abbreviations OMG, FYI, and LOL are now officially part of the Oxford dictionary. Does that mean you should write academic papers with titles like “OMG, Hamlet was bi-polar” or start every sentence in your job application with FYI? Maybe not. But it’s important to note that people sometimes get very emotional or opinionated about those…
Lifestyle
Online Education for Children via Skype
When I started teaching online, I was sceptical. I had been working many years in classrooms with blackboards, carrying books and scrawling remarks with red ink into the margins of exercise sheets. How could all that be possibly replaced by a computer? A lifeless machine? What I found is that it can’t be replaced, instead…
Online Business
The Rise and Fall of the Product Mindset: From Assembly Lines to the Service Age
In this article I want to share with you an idea that has been occupying me for a few days. Obviously, there’s much more to be said about this than can fit into one article. So we’ll have to do some serious time-jumping, here. Ready? Let’s roll! Rewind… There used to be a time, where…
Lifestyle
When Distraction is the Norm
Yesterday I read about a little program called Freedom that forces you to disconnect from the Internet. You set a timer to the desired amount of “offline time” and then you’re unable to connect until the timer runs out or you reboot your computer. (This is supposed to make cheating more difficult) A question that…
Lifestyle
Leadership, Business, and Animal Spirits
The Spiritual Core As readers of this blog may be aware, I am a person who has thoroughly read and studied Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. I even wrote a book explaining the terse passages at some length, with less arcane language, though I’d be kidding if I said it was successful; I just…
Discover Dino lernt Deutsch: the German story series for beginners that will help you learn German in no time.
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The Internet is not a Mass Medium. Or is it?
The term “mass medium” was coined in the early 20th century and referred to magazines, newspapers, radio & television broadcasts. I remember the times when watching an MTV music video on color television fried every teenager’s excitement-circuits, slouched in front of the silverscreen, sucking up the newest trends and fashions through the straw that was…
Lifestyle
Eat when Tired, Sleep when Hungry
Do you sometimes do things which aren’t on point? Do you sometimes do the opposite of what you feel you should? Do you sometimes wonder why it seems you want to do one thing and yet you do another? Don’t worry, we all do. There is a famous saying in Zen that goes “Eat when…
Other Languages
Introducing The Japanese Culture Blog
Japanese is a means to an end. No one sane studies Japanese for over a dozen years, becomes a professional translator, and learns all the complexity and nuance of this language because the language is fun. Yes, it is a great challenge, and it is very interesting, but that wasn’t the point. The language is…
Lifestyle
Minimalism: Spiritual Materialism in Disguise or: The New Religion of “Living with 100 things”
When I first heard the word Minimalist it was in context of Techno music. Also I’ve seen it as pertaining to interior design. But did you know that Minimalism is also a full-fledged lifestyle movement? So what do Minimalists do? They get rid of unnecessary stuff (clutter) in their life try to live their lives…
Lifestyle
Instruction is a River Into the Mind
In Japanese, the kanji (Chinese character, the hieroglyph-ish stuff) for “instruction” combines two components. The first component is “words”: that which pours out of a mouth. This is the component, or “radical,” on the left. The second component is the radical for “river.” In itself, this kanji, on its own, represents a channel carved into…
