- Written by Robert McCaffrey Editorial director, Global Cement Magazine
I think that it all began with those cutesy ads for the Apple iPod - the ones with a funky-looking youth in silhouette, wearing a very obvious pair of white 'ear-bud' ear-phones. They glorified personal choice, while at the same time closing the user off from interaction with other people. Listening to music while walking or running somehow eradicates part of the humanity of the wearer - they become 'apart.' I know - I've said 'Keep going' or 'well done' to any number of competitors in running races and been completely ignored because they were in their own little world. Not least of the anti-social effects of the iPod and its ilk is the pernicious tinny noise that they leak into the ears of other people (and the insidious devaluation of the pleasures of the noises of the real world - for example the wonder of bird song - and of the ultimate non-noise: silence).
- Written by Robert McCaffrey Editorial director, Global Cement Magazine
I have two daughters, Elizabeth (currently 15) and Jemima (13). Elizabeth gleefully tells me that next year she will turn 17 and will be able to start to learn how to drive. How did that happen? It seems like only yesterday that I was bathing her in the sink of our kitchen in our tiny house, and Jemima was still only a glimmer in my eye. They've grown up so fast. Too fast.
- Written by Robert McCaffrey Editorial director, Global Cement Magazine
A lost decade sounds like a throwback to the drug-addled 1970s, when rockers lost their minds and their memories through over-indulgence in drugs, booze and hookers. Some say that if you can remember the 1960s, then you weren't really there. However, the proverbial 'lost decade' of this month's Last Word is less about LSD and 'free love,' and is more about the less sexy concepts of deflation, productivity gaps and economics.
- Written by Robert McCaffrey Editorial director, Global Cement Magazine
Have you been to America? Maybe you live there. It's an amazing place. I have plenty of family there - in Washington DC, Marcellus (NY), Houston, St Louis, San Antonio, Quantico and Los Angeles and have also visited the IEEE cement industry conference in many places too (Rapid City, South Dakota, was one of my favourites). I've also travelled all the way down the East Coast, and from LA to Winnipeg in Canada, visiting National Parks along the way. It's a big place - like 50 countries - whose size was brought home to me when my identical twin brother and I took the 36-hour Greyhound bus trip from Houston to LA and it took 19 hours to cross from one side of Texas to the other.
- Written by Robert McCaffrey Editorial director, Global Cement Magazine
My younger daughter Jemima (a teenager at last) has recently completed a homework assignment on hydroelectric power in Brazil (as you do). It's actually on YouTube.1 I was able to supply her with a snippet of information that I had recently gleaned, that parts of Brazil are suffering from severe drought, with some reservoirs at only 5% of their capacity. In fact, the drought has been so bad that some of the Carnival parades that take place in Brazil at this time of year have been scaled back (such as the most famous, in Rio de Janeiro) or cancelled altogether, with towns saying that they couldn't spare the water to clean the streets after the parades.
