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This interesting piece by a tech entrepreneur highlights how lessons learned from the Stoics -- including Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca -- have made him a better person and a better businessman. For instance:
"As Epictetus said, “All things everywhere are perishable.” The Stoics ask us to look at all the things we take for granted, from our health to the relationships we value, and visualize what our life would be like without them. ... [T]hough it can sound morbid, it can be thought of as a reverse gratitude practice. ... [A]s entrepreneurs in the tech world, we must also brace for flux and change — elements of our industry that are essential and universal but also uncomfortable. We can’t always predict the market or the latest hiccups in our business model, but we can learn to enjoy the journey. ... According to Seneca, “Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.” A key tenet of my business focus is how we treat each other. The Stoics recognized that other people -- like investors, co-workers and competitors -- are usually the most common element to disrupt our happiness. But they also believed we were designed to live among other people and interact with them in a mutually advantageous manner. The Stoics ask us to acknowledge our duty to one another." www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/12/26/can-philosophy-influence-business-heres-what-the-stoics-have-taught-me/#101e55721537
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This map looks at the dominant language in which business is conducted in Africa, by country. [While this largely reflects historical patterns of colonization, as students in my "Your Future World: Human Geography 2050" learn, it is not unusual to find that a country's most widely spoken language(s) may differ from the language of that country's business (and higher education) community.]
preview.redd.it/pqu5kcyr4c421.png?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=e3a980937f44b21a6fa77fdefc967d5ae262c2d9 Global population is expected to grow another 2+ billion by 2050, and the world's cities are expected to absorb all of that future growth. This 79-question multiple-choice quiz invites users to identify a sampling of world cities by location. (Unless it's been fixed, Question 48 is wrong, though.) Want to learn more? Look up the cities that are the incorrect choices.
offbeat.topix.com/quiz/18524/qidx48 Yesterday's fatal train accident on a line connecting Denmark's two major islands reminds us of Denmark's complicated geography. Denmark consists of the peninsula of Jutland (jutting into the North Sea) and more than 1,400 islands, 74 of which are inhabited. In fact, the country's capital and biggest city, Copenhagen, is not in Jutland -- it is on the eastern island of Zealand (Sjaelland, in Danish). The second biggest city, Aarhus, is on Jutland, and the third biggest city, Odense, is on the central island of Funen. (The train accident was between Zealand and Funen.) Denmark also administers Greenland and the Faroe Islands, the latter of which are north of Great Britain. www.freeworldmaps.net/europe/denmark/denmark-physical-map.jpg
As we begin 2019, one of the issues at the fore of world affairs is climate change: not just what is happening and which countries will do what about it but also where it is happening and what is likely to occur as a result. This article from Foreign Policy considers the threats to the current world order posed by climate change:
"What does sovereignty mean when global risks are so unequal? How will countries with a finite life expectancy conceive of politics? And what is the world’s responsibility when the first nations begin to disappear under water? The answers will likely add up to a revolution in global order. ... "The most vulnerable island states tend to be small. ... Their small scale also means that they are powerless to affect what happens. No renewable energy policy they might adopt will make any difference. It will be the consumption and production of fossil fuel by the great population centers of the West and Asia and the fossil fuel economies of the giant producers—the United States, Saudi Arabia, Russia—that will decide their fate. "The big states have their own economic and political reasons for their reticence. The governments in Brazil and the United States that are boycotting climate change diplomacy are democratically elected. But the violence they are threatening to smaller states is radical. ... "There is little discussion today of compensating for the impending widespread loss of sovereignty. This development will also affect the basic structure of international relations. Sovereign permanence is a basic assumption of our present global order. Internationally, the assumption that nations have infinite time horizons is the foundation of all ideas of a stable and lasting international community, which structures all international cooperation. Domestically, in any given country, this assumption structures all policy discussions by distinguishing states from the individuals who are their citizens; in extremis, it’s the legitimacy of the state’s permanence that entitles governments to call on their citizens to make the ultimate sacrifice. In mundane terms, it is what gives states their ability to sustain enormous debts on an essentially permanent basis. These basic unquestioned features of our political order are now in jeopardy. ... "The world must decide how to treat sovereign states when their time horizon becomes limited. What kind of investment can be justified in a state whose life span is numbered in decades? When does lending money for reconstruction after the latest devastating hurricane no longer make sense? These are already questions for sovereign debt markets and ratings agencies. But they will also become basic political questions for the entire international community. And if there is no reinvestment and reconstruction, what then? How will the political systems of ... states react when it becomes evident that they have been doomed to extinction by decisions taken by more powerful and far larger actors in the rest of the world?" foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/20/rising-tides-will-sink-global-order-climate-change As students in my "Hands-On Geography" classes learn, physical geography includes a number of often-overlooked topics, including ocean and wind currents, climate, precipitation patterns, plate tectonics, and more. In this vein, researchers recently found, rather astonishingly, that half of the world's precipitation falls in just 12 days! www.sciencenews.org/article/half-global-annual-rain-falls-just-12-days
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Blog sharing news about geography, philosophy, world affairs, and outside-the-box learning
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