Please Download the What3Words app

What3words: the app that can save your life

Police have urged everyone to download a smartphone app they say has already saved several lives.

What3words essentially points to a very specific location. Its developers divided the world into 57 trillion squares, each measuring 3m by 3m (10ft by 10ft) and each having a unique, randomly assigned three-word address. It turned out that 40,000 words was enough to map the whole world.

Why do we need such specific locations? Postcodes sometimes cover large areas in very rural locations - ambulances, fire services and delivery services and trades people may have difficulty finding you. Your sat-nav can quickly go out-of-date if you are moving onto a new housing estate. You may be walking or hiking or climbing in a remote area and get into difficulty.

35 Welsh and English emergency services have signed up for its service and they'd like more people to get the app.

If people do not have the app, the emergency services can send a text message containing a web link to their phones. But this requires a signal (85% of the country is said to have a4G connection). The app does not need a phone signal to tell someone their location, however.

Mongolia has adopted what3words for its postal service, while Lonely Planet's guide for the country gives three-word addresses for its points of interest. Mercedes Benz has included the system in its cars and what3words is now being used in 35 languages.

Some examples are the door of 10 Downing Street (slurs.this.shark), while the area across the road where the press congregate has its own address (stage.pushy.nuns)

Source: BBC News website, What3words: the app that can save your life, 15 Aug. 2019 ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-49319760 )

Babies Brains

A fascinating documentary study on babies from birth to two years old.

• Babies are born with 50 trillion nerve connections in their brains. Over time, some little used connections will be pruned and extra connections made through activity.
• At 1 week old, babies respond to faces much more than objects. Activity is found in part of our 'social brain'.
• From 4 months to 1 year, babies love and need one-to-one attention. Long-term social deprivation is harmful.
• At 12 months or even at 7 months, babies will choose the good 'helpful' puppet.

• Parents respond quickly to babies' cries. The sound pattern arouses the parent's amygdala.
• Bonding through laughter decreases stress and boosts immune system. Peekaboo was more likely to cause laughter, followed by stuffing mouth with flannel, ripping up paper, cup on head and last, animals making strange noises. Laughing helps social connection. Babies laugh more with older siblings and find dogs twice as funny as cats.

• Babies temperament shows early - whether they are excitable, calm, cautious.
• Personal preferences about people. Race is easy for babies to distinguish, and who they see around them gives familiarity. They recognise and look for fairness in a person's behaviour, but will prefer to play with someone of the same race. Good therefore to expose them to wide range of people and environments.
• In the 1990s, young children chose gender specific roles (male and female dolls and a range of activities, e.g., washing, housework, rocking the baby, washing the car). In contrast in 2018, toddlers around 2 yrs old chose both genders for all activities apart from washing the car.
• Once babies are walking and more stable physically (around 19 months), they display preferences for specific activities - dancing, lego and building, football, drawing, phones.
• Around 75% of babies use mobile phones daily. Studies show a possible negative impact on sleep and attention, but a positive impact on fine motor control (phone users are better at building a tower from blocks).

• Talking - when do babies learn rules of conversation? Five babies 12 to 14 months watched robot/person demonstration of alternate babbling. Babies then copied 'answering' when the robot 'talked' to them.
• Using 'parentese' helps babies learn speech, as it heightens pitch, lengthens words and stresses rhythm. Babies brains synchronise with the rhythm of speech.
• Where there are multiple languages spoken at home, babies easily learn all they hear. They can detect all possible phonemes (individual sounds that make up words) even when these are very close in sound, where adults cannot, unless they know the sounds in the language(s) they use. However this ability only lasts a short while (between 6 and 8 months) and is gone by the age of twelve months, as brain connections are reinforced or deactivated.
• At 18 months they are communicating verbally with carers as they are more important. At this stage also there is an explosion of words, which speeds up between 18 and 24 months.
• They start to use social words (hiya, thank you). Regional differences in frequency of words in use (thank you, sorry).
• Hearing lots of words means better language ability later and bigger vocabulary later, and so do better at school.

• Babies gain a sense of self at around 21 months when they recognise themselves in a mirror.
• Understanding that other people can feel differently from oneself. Presented with broccoli and crisps, babies typically chose crisps. Shown an adult obviously preferring the broccoli, from about 18 months will give the adults preference to the adult.
• Empathy is thought to develop in stages. First awareness of distress, later wanting to help. Thought this did not occur until 2 years. A 17 month old instant awareness of distress but doesn't know what to do. At 18 months goes to mum 'asking for help'. At 2 years tries to comfort crying baby doll with bottle.
• Self control skills predict better concentration at school, and better at exams.

• Crawling is a baby's first taste of independence. However they have no depth perception and new crawlers will go straight across a clear plastic bridge over a sheer drop. But within a few weeks they have learnt about the risk and will not cross even to reach mother.
• When infants begin to walk their perception of the world changes from the restricted vision of the floor to seeing much more around them, especially people. They also start to carry things and become more independent.
• By age 2 they are wanting to do things themselves and often start nursery at this age. Since parents are not there to help, they must learn to play and co-operate with others. In an experiment where 2 children must each pull a lever at the same time to release a toy after a single demonstration by an adult, they can do this at 2 years. 

• Memory. Shown an interesting toy, and then cover it. Young babies lose interest, but by 10 months will pull off the cloth to find the toy. This follows the 8th month growth spurt in the frontal lobes. This ability is also the cause of separation anxiety.
• At 2 years start to keep memory of what is seen and adding information given by adult. Shown a furry rabbit toy named Lucy, then taken to another activity. The adult then tells them the rabbit has got wet and shows them a dry rabbit and a wet one, otherwise identical. Asked to say which is Lucy, one child selected the wet rabbit at 19 months, and 3 out of 5 did so at age 2.
• Tantrums are caused by frustration and best ended by distraction. Babies eventually learn to distract themselves.

Source: Babies Brains 3-part documentary on BBC2, 2018

The Story of Immigration to Britain

Bloody foreigners: the story of immigration to Britain by Robert Winder. Abacus, 2005.

Immigrants tend to be entrepreneurial risk-takers and rule-flouters, with a keen sense of individual liberty. Migration can also be forced, either directly (war, famine, political) or indirectly (poverty).

The first settlers of the UK, some 25,000 years ago, probably came from the south. Later waves of settlement followed from the Rhine basin; from southern Europe (dark colouring); and the Celts (fair skin and red hair) from east of the Alps. (Those with dark 'Celtic' colouring are actually likely to be Mediterranean in origin). The Romans forced the local tribes (including the Brythonic, from which we get the term Britons) to the edges of the country in Cornwall (and overseas to Brittany), Scotland and Wales. The Roman army had few Italians; the majority of the troops were Gauls, Hungarians, Germans and some North Africans.

The next invasions were from Northern Germanic tribes - Jutes from northern Denmark, Angles from central Denmark and Saxons from northern Germany, and Vikings. The Celtic language all but vanished and Latin was little used. The Norman (themselves Danish in origin) invasion formed the basis of the English aristocracy. Since this time there have been many migrants over the centuries.

In the 12th century came Dutch textile workers; also Jewish money lenders, though tensions eventually led to their expulsion in 1290. In the 13th century the migrants were Italian financiers, German, Dutch, Italian and French traders and craftsmen. The first gypsies were recorded in c. 1480.

The next centuries saw religion influencing migration. The French Huguenots fled persecution, especially from 1685; the French textile and allied trades suffered from the loss of skills. Then Dutch and Germans brought printing and paper making and artists. At the Restoration of the Monarchy, German and Prussian scholars were joined by Jews fleeing persecution in Europe. When Willam III took the throne, Dutch migrants followed.

In 1709, the Poor Palatines (farmers) came from Germany, fleeing persecution from the new (Catholic) Elector; some intended to go further and try their luck in America. The Hanoverian period saw the arrival of Germans, Dutch, Italians and some Jews from north and eastern Europe. The formation of the East India Company resulted in small numbers of Indians being brought back as servants and seamen, as did the slave trade with African servants. The Acts of Emancipation took down the barriers to immigration (1829 Roman Catholics and 1853 Jews).

In Europe, Britain had a reputation for being a good (if grudging) friend to the displaced. The 19th century saw 'clever' refugees from the failed continental revolutions of 1848: Italy, France, Hungary, Poland and Russia. Victoria's marriage to Albert saw further German migration. Italians first came as street urchins (organised by gang-masters), builders and allied trades; later Italian migrants sold ice-cream and fish and chips. The Irish came as seasonal workers and manual labourers, especially at the time of the Potato famine in the 1840's (Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 1707 to 1922).

The 20th century saw a Jewish exodus from Poland, Russia, the Baltic and Eastern Europe. There was a drift of Chinese seamen and African and Caribbean students, plus doctors, lawyers, scholars and entrepreneurs from India. More Jews came in the 1930's as the Nazi party gained power; some went on the the USA. After WW2, some Poles stayed on, while West Indians came for better prospects (and to fill labour shortages). Indians, especially Anglo-Indians, arrived after the India/Pakistan partition in 1948. Hungarians fled the Soviet takeover (1956) and Cypriots fled the Greek/Turkish partition. Other groups were actually or virtually expelled from their home countries: Asians from Kenya (1967) and Uganda (1971), Chinese via Hong Kong (1960's) and Vietnam (1970's). More recent immigrants have been refugees from war-torn areas and economic migrants from Eastern Europe.

Germany and Italy are both federations of once competing sovereignties, while the US is a mix of recent immigrants; Europe is currently promoting the federal model not separate nations. In contrast, in other places ethnic pride has been at the forefront and resulted in enmity: India v Pakistan; Isreal v Palestine; Cyprus; Sri Lanka; Hutu v Tutsi in Rwanda. This should raise warning signs over the current separatist feelings in Scotland and Wales.

Children of migrants are more outgoing than their parents but the next generation occasionally revive rather than abandon the convictions of their grandparents. It seems that the original immigrants need to die before their descendants can accept themselves (or be accepted) as British. Most earlier migrants were keen to blend in, but some recent migrants are not so keen: examples are fundamentalist Muslims who wish to retain Islamic culture and laws, and the northern Punjab Muslims who are reluctant to sever ties with their homeland and family-based culture.

The 2001 Census showed that 7.9% of the population had an ethnic origin, but of these more than half were born in the UK. Immigrants do tend to cluster in certain areas, such as large cities, but are often uncommon in more rural communities. The Census also showed that the population of Scotland had declined by 2% as people moved to London. Headlines on immigration issues rarely note that nearly as many people emigrate each year.

Policies to govern immigration often backfire. Restrictions on short-term economic migrants and human rights acceptance of re-uniting families led to more young men settling and then bringing in wives and children. Since there is a clear correlation in recent British history that when unemployment rises, immigration falls, there could be an argument for self-regulation. Migrants do tend to have larger families; 'British' families remain at an average of 2.4 children. There has been more acceptance of, and actual rates of, 'cross-breeding' in the UK than in other cultures.

RW noted that Irish Aran jumperes were a marketing invention by a German entrepreneur in the 1930's. He chose Aran as the name of a new knitwear range after seeing a documentary on the island. When Irish wool proved unsuccessful, they were made in the Scottish Hebrides.

My note: Kilts were originally loose-fitting, full body and short-skirted garments, similar to Roman togas, that can be traced back to ancient times. Worn exclusively by male warriors in the Scottish highlands, they were made of a checked wool fabric that came to be known as tartan. (Tartan is an old Spanish word that originally described a type of cloth, irrespective of whether it was patterned.) At this time, clans or tribes did not claim specific patterns or colours as their own. However, in 1739, the British military began to organize Highlanders into regiments that wore specific tartans as part of their uniforms. Soon after Sir Walter Scott's novel Waverley (pub. 1814) became famous, a commission in London created an official register of clan tartans. Many clan leaders sent samples of whatever they had in the attic. Other tartans came from fabric manufacturers such as Wilson & Son of Bannockburn, who more or less invented designs for customers. Most of today's clan tartans were invented by weavers and revisionist authors using fabricated 'historic' sources in the early 19th century.

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Best Time to Take Vitamins and Supplements

While people often take vitamins and supplements at a time that is convenient to them, it may not be when and how the nutrients work best with your body. So here is a quick checklist.

Anytime

• Fish oils: best taken with a meal to aid absorption.
• Vitamin K: best taken with vitamin D, calcium and vitamin C.
• Vitamin C: best taken in split doses throughout the day. Start in the morning and take the remainder later in the day.

Morning

• B vitamins: take them with breakfast for a boost and to start the day well.
• Co-enzyme Q10: ideally taken with breakfast or lunch and avoid taking before you go to bed.
• Iron: best taken in the morning after breakfast. Avoid taking with tea or coffee.

Midday

• Iodine: cannot be stored in the body, so a regular intake is needed. Best taken at midday.

Afternoon

• Zinc: take in the afternoon with food as it can cause nausea if taken on an empty stomach.
• Vitamin D: best taken with a meal. Some studies show a negative effect on sleep, so take earlier in the afternoon.

Evening / Night

• Calcium: many suggest taking calcium in the evening because it is best used at night.
• Magnesium: Studies have shown that magnesium is a relaxant so take in the evening before you go to bed.

Source: Healthspan.

The Village Effect

The Village Effect: why face-to-face contact matters by Susan Pinker

Atlantic Books, London, 2015      978-1-84887-8-594

Ch.1 Swimming through the school of hard knocks. Increasing evidence that a rich network of face-to-face relationships helps us fight disease. Good social contact (not hostility) instructs the body to secrete more endogenous opiates, which act as painkillers, and fewer hormones such as adrenaline, noradrenaline and corticosteroids, which can have a bad effect on our tissues and our physical resilience.

How social contact helps: Access to timely information valuable to you (people you know who refer you to the best medical care, clinical trials and experimental drugs). Material assistance (transport to appointments / treatments, baby-sitting and child care, meal preparation. Mood and health boosting effect of having loved ones nearby.

Studies show that: Socially isolated women have an elevated risk of dying of cancer. Socially isolated men who already had cancer were more likely to die prematurely. Socially isolated female lab rats developed 84 times as many breast (and bigger) tumours as female rats living in groups.

Social isolation alters the expression of genes in every cell of the body, and confuses the body’s usual reactions to disease and stress. However, individuals vary in the amount and type of social contact they need to avoid feeling lonely. Support from female friends releases oxytocin, which has both analgesic and euphoric effects.

There is no connection between mood (being positive) and breast cancer outcomes. Studies that ask people to identify stressful events that could be linked to the onset of cancer are affected by the fact that human memory is highly selective; someone with a cancer diagnosis is more likely to remember stressful events.

Ch. 2 It takes a village to raise a centenarian. Almost everywhere in the world men die on average of 5 to 7 years before women do, and there are 6 female centenarians to every male centenarian. But in one area of Sardinia (and in other ‘Blue Zone’ mountainous regions), 10 times as many men live past the age of 100 as men living elsewhere. Although belonging to community is a key factor, extreme longevity runs in families in the area. Geographic and genetic isolation may select for social cohesion – most people will be family to some degree. The genetic component appears to be transmitted via the maternal line.

The global phenomenon of widowed people dying soon after their spouses is lessened when someone who is grieving is surrounded by lots of other widowed people, especially if they are women.

Some supposed long-lived areas are false – claims about family members are exaggerated, records often don’t exist or are unreliable. In Japan, men who moved to cities for work in the boom years died alone, but families assumed they were still alive.

However, in tightly knit villages, the powerful sense of cohesion is counterbalanced by an equally powerful distrust of outsiders (including residents of neighbouring towns.

Oxytocin and vasopressin, which are secreted into the bloodstream when we form and maintain meaningful relationships, help wound healing and damp down stress.

Health and longevity is promoted by conscientiousness and hard work, combined with a large, active network of family, friends and community ties. It seems to be important to be part of a community through several activities and relationships, not just one.

Ch. 3 A thousand invisible threads. Most psychologists agree that the protective effects of religion are primarily social. Acts of altruism – mutual aid. Coordinated social rituals (praying, chanting, singing, swaying) all together in the same room feels good.

Mirror neurones are motor cells that fire when someone else moves. They don’t help you imagine what someone else feels, they take you through the action. This is why we flinch when we someone is about to be smacked, and why yawning, scratching and coughing are contagious. We also unconsciously mirror the actions of someone we are talking to.

Fertility is contagious between siblings – starting with a sister’s pregnancy, siblings follow suit (the birth of a child to a brother has no effect). The strongest effect is on siblings who live close to each other.

Ch. 4 Who’s coming to dinner? Socialising with friends can help you fight of loneliness and chronic illness, but can also (especially with certain people) trash your self-control and make you fatter. While not the only factor in weight gain, if your best friend or sister was overweight, you’d be more likely to put on weight too. Obesity contagion can move from person to person but peters out after three social links; it is most likely with face-to-face contact with someone you have a tight emotional bond. We match our eating to what our friends are consuming (women more likely to do this); we eat more when face-to-face with people in our circle and less when eating alone or with strangers.

The only effective commercial weight loss approach is Weight Watchers – keeping track of food intake, attending weekly meetings, praise for any loss – the social support is crucial, as it is with groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous. How much you drink is also influenced by your social group.

Many societies use social ostracism to punish; this effectively disables some aspects of cognitive functioning; younger people are more affected than older people.

Improved skills in reading, writing, arithmetic, academic level, etc, are linked to eating family dinners. The more meals you eat with your child, the larger their vocabulary and the higher their grades. Boys with a gene variant that predicts violent behaviour seem protected from displaying aggression by sitting down to eat with their families. Discussion of a child’s experiences links family meals to later better achievement. Shared meals help children to pick up subtleties of language and social interaction.

12 year old girls who regularly eat with their families at the beginning of middle school had half the odds of other kids their age of drinking, smoking or using marijuana at 17, and were less likely to develop eating disorders. Those who don’t eat regularly with their family were almost twice as likely to attempt suicide.

Ch. 5 Body chemistry. Scholars have linked breast feeding (especially the first 6 months) to reduced rates of diarrhoea, meningitis, urinary infections, sudden infant death syndrome, necrotizing enterocolitis, ear infections and respiratory tract infections. It is also associated with boosted intelligence, fewer behavioural problems in childhood and eventually upward social mobility.

Breast feeding seems to make most babies healthier and smarter, regardless of social class. While feeding, you talk to the baby face-to-face, smile at them, sing to them. Babies brains are designed to interact with people. New evidence indicates that indifferent or abusive parenting, or a screen substituted for social contact, can alter the young child’s brain circuitry and lead to school failure or heart disease. Kangaroo care (where the baby has skin to skin contact): babies feel less pain with medical procedures if they have skin-to-skin care afterwards. Holding babies reduced signs of post-partum depression in new mothers. Maternal TLC (tender, loving care) increases a baby’s resilience.

Interacting with a new baby substantially increases the grey matter in a woman’s pre-frontal cortex, parietal lobes and the mid-brain, including areas linked to memory, emotion, reward and coordinated movement. The mother’s sense of smell is rewired during pregnancy; she becomes attuned to the smell of her infant and other aromas may smell awful (it may be this that drives pregnancy food cravings and aversions). We are biologically prepared to react with tender feelings to the large heads, eyes and ears of infants. This also improves certain abilities – seeing something ‘cute’ helps people focus.

The Dutch Hunger Winter (Nov. 1944 to May 1945) adversely affected babies in the womb in that period, and this affect seems to be transmitted to their children and grandchildren.

Ch. 6 Digital natives. Parents in a US program (where they were given children’s books) read to their children 10 times as often as other parents, and boosted their children’s languages skills (understanding and speaking). Children who are heavy media users get lower grades. The children of British teenagers are far less educated and twice as likely to be poor as the children of older mothers. The teenage mothers interact less with their babies and toddlers.

In lower class homes there tends to be a much starker boundary between the adult world and the children’s world; children are left to organize their own playtime, and spending less time with adults and more with screens. Babies born to poor families ‘watch’ up to 3½ hrs of TV a day before the age of two – this level of viewing seems to be associated with a higher rate of language delay in toddlers.

For children, social cues highlight what and when to learn. Even young infants are pre-disposed to people watch and are motivated to copy the actions they see others do. Watching TV displaces face-t-face interaction, which is a requirement of early language development.

Online networks are fantasy worlds of idealised digital personae, selfies and status updates which make public conflicts and social exclusions. Girls who use social media a lot are more likely to feel excluded an unhappy. Part of the brain that registers pain also becomes activated when people feel socially excluded. We all give off subtle signals that allow us to ‘read’ someone else’s mind; these are primarily non-verbal and are missing from digital personae. Children whose mothers discussed other people’s feelings and intentions grew up to be more empathic that their peers.

Ch. 7. Teens and screens. Developing and grooming a loyal circle of friends is a major adolescent milestone. Mobile phones have replaced phone calls and face-to-face contact as the process though texting gives instant access but no social clues.

The pre-frontal cortex of the brain is where planning, problem-solving and decision making take place, but develops later than other cortical areas of the brain. Development of the visual cortex peaks at 6 months and winds down by age 5, but the pre-frontal cortex development goes on till late adolescence or early adulthood.

Online harassment (cyber bullying) is increasingly common, especially during transitions (e.g. changing school) and girls and gays are the most frequent targets. Throughout evolutionary history, large groups were risky for women and something to be avoided. In polygynous marriages, the odds of premature death for children are 7 to 11 times higher than in monogamous marriages as women will favour their own children, not cooperate as a whole group. Females prefer smaller social groups than males.

Relying on social media for important news updates can be chancy; a message about someone’s death can get lost in all the other messages, or not seen in time if you only check newsfeeds ever few days. Teenagers who already feel lonely communicate with strangers online but then feel lonelier than before.

Kids’ self-esteem seems to rise when they own a laptop but there is no sign that their reading or writing skills improve. Computers displace other activities such as homework and face-to-face social contact. They are used to surf the net, play video games and download films, music and porn rather than homework aids.

Face-to-face contact with a skilled teacher, even for 1 year in a child’s life, has more impact than any laptop program, predicting a smaller likelihood of a girl getting pregnant as a teenager, boosting the odds of attending college, earning more than other students, living in a better neighbourhood and saving more for retirement.

Ch. 8 Going to the chapel. Nearly 3/4 of all couples in the industrialized world meet through social encounters.

Compared to co-habiting, married people enjoy stronger, more stable relationships and better physical and physiological health, and are far less likely to be alcoholics or depressed, and live happier, longer lives. Couples who live together are happier than people who are single or divorced. If a couple plan on marriage when they move in together, cohabitation presents no risks to the relationship and therefore their happiness, but if cohabiting ‘just happens’, couples are more likely to split than married couples.

Spouses in good marriages damp down each other’s stress levels. Unmarried women are more likely to die young than if married; single or divorced men are 250% more likely to die prematurely than married men at any age. Being married significantly reduces your chances of being hospitalized, needing surgery, dying in hospital after surgery or within 15 yrs of a coronary bypass procedure; developing pneumonia, rheumatoid arthritis, gum disease, a viral infection, dementia, clinical depression, a serious cardiac event, a serious cardiac event or a variety of cancers; going to jail, being murdered, dying in a car accident, or taking your own life. A 2008 study showed happily married adults had lower night time blood pressure, so a lower risk of a catastrophic cardiac event. Another study showed happily married women had fewer sleep problems.

Unhappy relationships give rise to physiological issues. Women experience this in their vascular and immune systems, and emotional memory later on can activate the same damaging neural networks as experiencing the conflict did in the first place. Men keep their problems to themselves instead of being able to confide in their wives.

On the death of their wives, men are at a heightened risk of sudden death or suicide because of extreme loneliness. Women, who have more social support, are not.

Religion brings like-minded people together, binding them with songs, prayers, stories and acts of kindness that make them feel good about themselves and the people around them. Religious rituals lean heavily on the ‘honest’ signals that establish mutual trust. Religious practice also works at group level, helping people to stick together and solve internal conflicts.

Online dating: four out of five people misrepresent themselves on dating sites. We are not good at describing what attracts us – when you meet someone you’re attracted to you don’t have the insight to describe it. The ability to face adversity together, and to have fun as intimate friends, is more important in the long run than being matched on the personality qualities on dating sites. Perceiving yourselves as sharing common values and traits is what matters in a relationship.

Ch. 9 When money really talks. Some fraudsters use their social skills to build relationships with those they defraud. Fraud is sometimes planned ahead, but sometimes arises through opportunity. Initial investors innocently recommend schemes to friends. We are more vulnerable to in-group scammers we meet in person than to faceless Nigerian princes who want our bank details.

Beauty pays; a slightly feminine, baby-faced appearance, with arched inner eyebrows, prominent cheekbones, and cheerful behaviour increases the impression of trustworthiness. A more dominant, masculine-looking face, with lower inner eyebrows and cheekbones engenders fear and the impulse to keep one’s distance.

After we’ve made a snap judgement, we don’t usually change our minds but selectively pay attention to whatever confirms what we’ve already decided.

Pyramid schemes run into problems once 150 people are involved. Dunbar’s number (150) is the limit to many examples of human communities. Sharing a coffee break with other workers makes people more productive and boosts employee satisfaction.

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