In 2015, a group of researchers of the University of Wisconsin-Madison formulated their own theory on why, somewhere, people are more inclined to smile. The answer is to be found in immigration and multiculturalism. The United States and Canada have a diverse population, composed by 83 and 63 different national or ethnic groups each. Non verbal communication played a central role in socializing and building trustful relationships among communities. This is not needed in more uniform countries…
Tips hide a wage problem
Tips are a cultural habit, or so we are told. They are mandatory and conspicuous in the United States, offensive in Japan, a half way in Europe, where they are well accepted but waiters don’t rely on them. Actually, the difference is not only about traditions, it’s mostly contractual…
Media does not tell the reality
About how media magnifies the news… take one article at random subsequently to the year 1998. Something has changed in the news: there is more gossip and nothing really to talk about. But misinformation didn’t begin with the poor internet that everyone blames…
Kleptocracy, the inverse Robin Hood politics
Kleptocracy, from the Greek words “thief” and “government”, is a term created in the XIX century in reference to the Spanish politic of that time. It became particularly popular in the second half of the successive century thanks to Mobutu Sese Seko, dictator of Zaire…
Santa Muerte, a misinterpreted icon
Hood and crown, sickle in one hand and a globe in the other one – or an hourglass as variant. And an infinity of tunics of different shapes and colors above all. Santa Muerte, half Virgin Mary half grim reaper, half Christian and half heathen: she recently became an icon, famous all over the world, because of the erroneous association with Mexican narcos. Her worshippers swing between 5 and 10 millions, there are 1500 altars only in Mexico City and this cult has deep historic and socio-cultural roots…
Against all odds
Football (or soccer for those who live in the U.S.) is loved and treated like a religion by many fans because is not an exact science. So, even if it’s not likely, sometimes happens that the underdog takes the trophy home, against all odds. There are many Cinderella stories, like Denmark 1992, Greece 2004, Iraq 2007…
Open space, “closed” attitude
Open space offices were created as common working areas where ideas can circulate easier than in classic places with cubicles. Or so we thought. But the real and the ideal don’t always coincide and facts lead to an unexpected direction…
Keep calm and… “the future is stil unwritten…”
If only we could look beyond this daily sense of induced panic, according to the journalist and writer Steven Kotler, we will glimpse four forces of change that are “acting together and will make possible what was previously unthinkable: Abundance for all… try to imagine what awaits us in the future”.
Keep calm and… the present is not that bad
Don’t you feel, sometimes, to live in a completely different reality confronted with the world you see portrayed on TV, surfing the internet, flipping through newspapers…?
Water wars
More than oil, feedstock, raw material, religion, ideology, nationalism. Wars, gradually, aim at the control of the most precious resource: water…