• “THE DATA REVOLUTION IS CHANGING BUSINESSES IN PROFOUND AND UNALTERABLE WAYS, and the emergence of data ‘analytics’ requires a healthy data ‘culture’…with a goal of achieving deep business engagement, creating employee pull, and cultivating a sense of purpose, so that data can support operations instead of the other way around… The most important objective is to find the critical business problems and then decide on data-management efforts toward solving them… The end goal is to help make better decisions more often – starting sometimes by simply attempting to remove friction from the existing process.” This area is a core aspect of Strategic Planning, which DCG have decades of experience in facilitating. We now offer courtesy consultation to Executives and Boards; let us help your business profitability and stability. [McKINSEY QTRLY – Sep 18]
  • OVER-REACTING TO WORDS OR ACTIONS OF OTHERS is a human trait known as ‘Transference Reaction’ – when we attribute characteristics to people we don’t know well “automatically and without thinking… when they perform roles similar to those originally carried out by important people of our early years (such as family, teachers, doctors, celebrities and authority figures in general)… This happens because the human brain is wired for ‘pattern recognition’ and tries to make sense of what it sees/hears by fitting into familiar shapes, with previous experiences used as a shortcut for understanding and interpreting new information, effectively tricking us into assuming that a person will behave similarly to a previously experienced other.” Creating awareness of this, by reflecting on patterns of our behavior that have caused problems or resulted in poor judgement can help avoid those results and certain reduce the stress they can lead to. [HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW – Sep 6, 18]
  • ‘DEEPFLAKE’ TECHNOLOGY, THE SWAPPING OF ONE PERSON’S FACE OR BODY TO ANOTHER, has now been simplified to a point where anyone could soon be seen as a dancer, high-diver, porn-star, or basically any type of performer. The newest machine-learning technique, developed at UC-Berkeley, by utilizing high-quality online videos or with as little as 20-minutes of direct video (shot on many modern smartphones) can now ‘”map any series of movements onto a simple stick figure which encodes body position but not appearance, then train a machine-vision system to create an image of the target person in the same poses… This technique, where anyone can appear to dance, run or shoot like someone else,” could turn out to be a meaningful disruptor to Entertainment, Fashion, Marketing and numerous other industries. [MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW – Sep 3, 18]
  •  PSYCHOLOGISTS & RESEARCHERS NOW ATTRIBUTE A GENERALLY HIGHER LEVEL OF HAPPINESS TO SENIORS over Middle-Agers in their 40s & 50s when pressures are greatest, suggesting that “in some ways, youth & middle years are really sort of a training period for the unanticipated pleasure of being an older adult… Life satisfaction appears to follow a U-shaped course, with twin peaks in childhood, when the world is one great theme park, and in older age, when Seniors have been on all the rides a thousand times and are perfectly content just to watch.” Their greater happiness level is attributed to (1) having developed the ability to “normalize crises (good and bad)” after experiencing so many which did eventually pass; (2) having become “Masters of Terror Management Theory,” reconciled to the reality that death will eventually come, so why waste energy worrying about when; and (3) having attained “wisdom, which allows them to see the obvious, or to use common sense without second-guessing themselves or the outcomes.” [TIME – Sep 17, 18]
  •  “DAILY USE OF e-CIGARETTES CAN NEARLY DOUBLE THE ODDS OF A HEART ATTACK; when combined with dual use of conventional cigarettes (the most common use pattern among vapers), risk raises five-fold, compared to non-smokers.” A study of nearly 70,000 people by UC-San Francisco researchers concluded that the powerful dose of nicotine which vaping delivers more than offsets its benefit from lower levels of carcinogens, and that toxins link directly to risk from both cardiovascular and non-cancer lung diseases. [SCIENCE DAILY – Aug 22, 18]

Political Correctness Update: Latest snowflake concessions include (1) Colorado-Boulder’s decision to change 5,500 library catalog subject headings from ‘illegal alien’ to “more ethical versus ‘problematic’ phrases, in order to foster diversity and inclusion”– like ‘noncitizen’ and ‘undocumented immigrant.’ (2) A University of Maryland support group called ‘White Awake’ which now offers a ‘safe space’ for students who “may sometimes feel uncomfortable and confused before, during or after interactions with racial students and ethnic minorities…to learn more about themselves and how they can fit into a diverse world.”