To optimize your intelligence your brain needs to be charged. The ear’s role in this essential work is huge. Music can boost your brainpower but it is important to select the right kind. Intelligence is broad. Most would agree that academic, artistic, sporting and interpersonal acumen are all aspects of intelligence. Most would also equate […]
If you walk around texting this shocking video might stop you
Published on 5 May 2015 by the Lausanne Police in Switzerland, this video is designed to shock. In 2013 in Switzerland, 1,100 people were seriously injured or killed because they weren’t paying attention. Distraction was the cause of 25% of serious accidents. Many of those hurt or killed were pedestrians, often distracted by their smartphones, […]
Swiss immigration vote: no impact on top university enrollments
According to Tribune de Geneve, the Swiss vote on 9 February 2014 is not hurting enrollments at top universities in Switzerland as some had predicted. The two prestigious Swiss science universities, Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zurich, had record enrollments in 2014. Up by 1.8%, 28,537 students and doctoral […]
CERN gets its own Accident and Emergency
On 4 May 2015, the Geneva University Hospital (HUG) and CERN opened an Accident and Emergency centre at CERN in Meyrin, Geneva. The centre is managed by HUG which is supplying all of the staff. CERN welcomes around 9,000 people every year and this centre will be better placed to help them when urgent medical […]
Kids, holidays, sickness and Internet cures
Things unavoidable: death, taxes … and the children coming down with some horrible illness, just before we go away on holiday. We’ve had so many holidays blighted by Child Plague: The December of the Eyes: New Year’s Eve 2009, Plettenberg Bay. A gorgeous day. We load the children into our little rental car and make […]
A critical look at Orange’s new brand name
Creating a good brand name from scratch is no mean feat. You’ll need to find a name that’s memorable, ownable and unique. It needs to convey what the underlying product or service experience is all about. It must stand the test of time. It has to work across a babel of languages – without, of […]
Swiss People’s Party (UDC) leaders found guilty of racism
According to RTS, the secretary general of the Swiss People’s Party (UDC), Martin Baltisser and his substitute Silvia Bar, were found guilty of racism at Bern’s regional tribunal on 30 April 2015. The affair started when posters carrying the slogan: “Kosovars stab Swiss!” in German were posted as part of a campaign to stop mass […]
Swiss bishop (kind of) backs down over gay marriage
In 2014 a Swiss bishop caused a stir when he demanded the resignation of a priest who had married two gay women. Wendelin Buchli, the Catholic priest in the village of Burglen in the canton of Uri, Switzerland was ordered to quit in February 2015 by Vitus Huonder, the highly conservative bishop of Chur, a […]
Le Corbusier – should he still be on Swiss 10 franc note?
Born in 1887 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, naturalized in France in 1930 and considered by many to be the father of modern architecture, Le Corbusier (a nickname used from 1920) has been presented as a fascist anti Semite in two recent books. One by Xavier de Jarcy entitled: Le Corbusier, a French fascism (Le Corbusier, […]
Nepal earthquake: don’t forget those in the countryside
The Nepal earthquake was devastating. Up to 80 percent of buildings are believed to have collapsed. Many dead and injured will be in remote areas of the countryside. Julien Bettler of the Lausanne based Himalayan NGO Norlha reminds the world not to forget the people in the countryside and talks of the crucial importance of […]
