- Written by Peter Edwards Editor, Global Cement Magazine
'The Good Life’ was a 1970s British sit-com with a simple premise.1 Fed up with his meaningless job designing plastic toys for the insides of cereal packets, Tom Good decides to quit on his 40th Birthday. Escaping the rat-race, he and his wife Barbara turn their suburban home into a small-holding in an attempt to become self-reliant. They only have themselves, the weather, their land, animals and whatever machinery they can cobble together. Of course, being a sit-com, they also have to navigate the rapidly-changing social landscape of 1970s Britain while knee high in pig manure. ‘Comedy’ then ensues, much of it derived from the ongoing love-hate relationship between the Goods and their materialistic neighbours Jerry and Margo.
- Written by Robert McCaffrey Editorial Director, Global Cement Magazine
There are already many forms of artificial intelligence (AI) in the world today. Weak or narrow AI is a kind of machine-based expertise that is focused on a single or very narrow range of tasks. This is already very widely available. Siri and Alexa might be thought of as weak AI, although they are already sophisticated compared to achievements only a decade ago1: they combine speech recognition and natural language processing to ‘understand’ what you are asking them. They then have a set of capabilities that they can act upon (such as making a call, setting an alarm or ordering flowers for Mother’s Day on the internet, but not something in the real world such as making a cup of tea).
- Written by Robert McCaffrey Editorial Director, Global Cement Magazine
Greenwash is the term used when an organisation ‘talks the talk’ on being green, but doesn’t then ‘walk the walk,’ to take action on being green. I decided to look at the latest Sustainability Report of HeidelbergCement1 to see if the company is ‘walking the walk.’
- Written by Robert McCaffrey Editorial Director, Global Cement Magazine
I make no apologies for writing this column on a subject that has nothing to do with cement, concrete, gypsum, insulation or any other building material: Occasionally, I do go ‘off-topic.’ Sometimes, it’s useful to stand back so that you can see the bigger picture. In fact, we should probably all do it more often.
- Written by Robert McCaffrey Editorial Director, Global Cement Magazine
Company annual reports can sometimes be a turgid read, but every now and again they may include an exciting flash of something interesting, almost like seeing the flash of a metallic-blue kingfisher darting along a non-descript and over-grown ditch. However, the recent LafargeHolcim (LH) Annual Report 2017 was a very interesting read throughout, and nowhere more so than in the section on ‘Risk management,’ especially after its recent and ongoing travails in regards to the operation of its cement plant in Syria (see Page 69, Global Cement Magazine - June 2018).
