- Written by Peter Edwards Editor, Global Cement Magazine
In its report The Inequality Virus,1 the charity Oxfam highlighted one of the most startling figures of the Covid-19 pandemic so far: US$500bn. This is the amount by which the world’s 10 richest men added to their wealth from April to December 2020. Read that again: Added to their wealth! In an effort to put a scale against this figure for us non-billionaires, Oxfam says this amount would be enough to vaccinate everyone on the planet against Covid-19 and to ensure that nobody ended up worse off due to the outbreak.
- Written by Peter Edwards Editor, Global Cement Magazine
One of the many facets of the recently-imposed third UK lockdown has been a return to home-schooling for my eldest daughter. She is now approaching six, which means a longer attention span and greater comprehension than in previous lockdowns. The school subjects have increased in depth and breadth to fit, meaning she is now knee-deep in something approaching proper maths, while other tasks prompt the investigation of materials (science) and discussion of whether things around us are natural or made by people (geography).
- Written by Peter Edwards Editor, Global Cement Magazine
The Covid-19 pandemic upended most people’s normal routines around the world in 2020. Many column inches have been devoted to ‘the new normal.’ What will ‘normal’ look like in a week, a month, or a year? When government rules change every other week, the question is an ever-shifting goalpost. Comments can age rapidly and make the author look silly, even a few days later.
- Written by Peter Edwards Editor, Global Cement Magazine
I have recently finished reading Just my Type, a book about typefaces by Simon Garfield. Its striking cover uses no less than 10 typefaces in the title alone, one for each letter. There are 200 more inside, taking the reader from antiquity to the digital age.
- Written by Peter Edwards Editor, Global Cement Magazine
As an amateur magician, I am often intrigued by the world of psychology, an area where science and the arts combine to create some pretty weird effects. Magicians have honed the art of directing attention (misdirection) over the centuries, to the delight of audiences. Among the ‘mind glitches’ they exploit is ‘change blindness,’ where part of an image is changed but the observer doesn’t notice. A classic demonstration of this is to rapidly switch near-identical images with a split-second of blank screen between them. You’d think you’d see the change, but the blank screen trips you up. If you don’t know what to look for, you’ll probably miss it. There are hundreds of demonstrations online that show just how strong this effect is.1 Another type of change blindness is demonstrated by Richard Wiseman’s Amazing Colour Changing Card Trick2.
