Foreign Perspectives

Lots of guys never even think about what kind of tie they’re wearing but it doesn’t need to be like that as there’s a massive selection of silk ties.

As always, the selection online is much greater than you’d find in even the specialist tie shops and, of course, the prices are lower (sometimes lower than many of the ordinary ties).

So splash out for Christmas guys!

Popularity: 4% [?]

Open education is becoming an increasingly popular thing for various universities around the world to produce these days.

The quality of what’s on offer varies enormously of course. Normal redbrick universities will put on anything from small samplers through to pretty much entire courses in the case of Yale. Ironically, the sample from the more open universities is at the other end of the scale with, for example, the Open University offering very small segments of a wide range of courses in contrast to Yales complete versions of a small number of courses.

Why the difference?

For Yale, the course samples on offer are something of an advertisement for the university and creates quite a bit of good PR too as segments of some of the courses currently on offer have been used by a range of educational establishments to liven up their own course presentations. The situation with the Open University is quite different. They’re not so much advertising the university as the courses themselves thus whilst in the Yale selection you’ll find the complete introductory pschology course (which is absolutely fascinating), from the Open University you’ll find just four units from their equivalent course.

The “problem” with all of these offerings is that they’re quite addictive and it’s tempting to seriously consider signing up for the full thing. Now, that “full thing” is $35,000 a year in Yale (that’s for 8 to 10 courses similar to those that you’ll see online ie around $4,000 a course) or around $4.500 for the full credit course in the Open University (assuming that you’re paying the full price, $2,000 if you live in the UK and get the subsidity). Interestingly, it’s actually cheaper to do the course in America which is contrary to what most people would expect.

Popularity: 7% [?]

If you looked at the basic type of furniture in living rooms in the 1960s and compared it to those in the 1990s you’d not have seen a whole lot of difference.

Sure, the styles had changed in that the 1960 era wooden coffee table might be a glass one (courtesy of improvements in toughened glass over those years) but you’d still have a couple of settees/chairs and a big cabinet to set the TV on in the corner.

That’s changed a lot in the last 10-15 years though. Nowadays you’re much more likely to find a TV wall mount rather than a cabinet to hold the TV (or home entertainment centre as they’re increasingly becoming). Likewise, many more people will consider cinema style seating to fit in with what’s truly become a home cinema system in terms of sheer screen size and sound quality and indeed you can even get popcorn machines if you want to really go overboard with it.

What’ll it be like 20 years from now though?

Popularity: 4% [?]