More embarrassing celebrity parent?

Being the child of a celebrity is hard enough without your famous parent publicly embarrassing you. Hip-hop music mogul Diddy was arrested this week after allegedly assaulting his son's football coach at UCLA b/c the coach was screaming at him during practice.

Recently on the James Corden show, soccer star David Beckham told all of America about how he chaperoned his 16-year old son Brooklyn’s first date while Brooklyn sat in the audience looking mortified! Which celebrity parent was more embarrassing?

 

Are “Ocumetics Bionic Lens” the solution to all our blurry-visioned problems?

Dr. Garth Webb, an optometrist from British Columbia, says that he has invented the “Ocumetics Bionic Lens,” a corrective lens that gives you a vision three times better than 20/20. Apparently, the painless, 8 minute procedure of implanting the small button-sized lens in one’s eye is enough to correct your eyesight to beyond 20/20 vision and allow you to live your life without contacts or glasses. Is this the safer alternative to Lasik laser eye surgery that we’ve been waiting for?

Is Elon Musk’s vision for school the next big idea for education?

Is it time to introduce some changes to the education system? Elon Musk seems to think so, having created a small school called Ad Astra (To The Stars) for his children and a small group of children whose parents work for SpaceX (Musk’s company). The school has done away with grade levels and, according to Musk, “[caters] the education to match [the children’s] aptitudes and abilities.” The school strives to teach problem solving by teaching the problem rather than the tools, which is an approach different from that of most American schools. Do you like this new structure for schools?

Would eradicating tips and raising wages improve restaurant working conditions?

Working as restaurant staff is one of the lowest-paying jobs in America. According to Ozy, tipped workers earn a minimum wage of $2.13. Chefs are often expected to show up two hours before their shift to prep, resulting in two unpaid hours spent working. A few restaurants like Camino have started to try to improve working conditions. By removing tips, they are available to raise the pay and give their staff merit-based hourly wages. These wages are a safety net and do not decrease during slow hours the way tips do. Do you think this is the way to fix the restaurant industry?

Do you like the new direction Spotify is taking?

Spotify has announced that it is no longer going to be just a music streaming service. It will be adding video, podcast, and fitness and is on its way to becoming users' one-stop resource to everything. New functions include playing music with a beat that matches your running pace and playlists tailored to what the user does everyday. Do you like these new developments?

Is Hillary Clinton being transparent enough?

On Thursday, the Clinton Foundation reported an extra $26.4 million they had received that were previously undisclosed. As the money was initially labeled as “revenue” because it was used to pay the Clintons for their speeches, the Foundation did not include it in the list of its public listings of its contributors, the Washington Post reports. This potentially conflicts with the 2008 ethics agreement holding the Foundation to revealing its donors and funding sources that might present conflicts of interest with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

The State Department has also released the first round of Hillary Clinton’s emails when she held the position of Secretary of State. These emails are Benghazi-related and, according to the State Department, "do not change the essential facts or our understanding of the events before, during, or after the attacks,” In light of these new updates, do you think that Hillary Clinton is conducting her campaign with enough transparency?

Is giving housing first a revolutionary approach to ending homelessness?

As of May 19th, the mayor of Medicine Hat, Alberta, has ended homelessness in his city (for now). Apparently, the key to ending homelessness is exactly that: a key - to their own place. This is a “housing first” approach to ending homelessness, in which officials give a homeless person housing within 10 days of discovering their homeless situation. Support services such as addressing mental or addiction problems then follow suit. Of course, ending homelessness is not so easy, with issues such as money insecurity to consider. But, do you think that the mayor is onto something with his “housing first” approach? Read more about this interesting policy here: http://tinyurl.com/kd74ppg

Which fantasy-to-reality invention is going to make the world a better place?

The year of 2015 has brought us gesture-controlled computing and real life hoverboards. The Myo Armband measures your muscle movement and translates it into real life arm movements which then can be used in anything from giving a presentation to controlling a bluetooth toy. Catalin Alexandra Duru has created a hoverboard which he rode to achieve the Guinness World Records Title for the Farthest Journey by Hoverboard. We wonder, although both of these are fantasies that have become realities, which fantasy do you think is more likely to make the world a better place?

Are Spotify, Snapchat, and YouTube onto something?

Spotify has recently updated itself with functions far beyond music streaming: it now plays music to the tempo of your running, provides podcasts, and plays videos. Snapchat introduced its “Discover” function months ago that features content from its various partners as well as “Snapcash,” and according to Re/code, is also investing in shopping app Spring. YouTube now lets you shop while you watch its videos, providing a list of products featured in the ad you’re watching which, when clicked on, directs you to the product page. This all-in-one direction that all these apps are taking makes us wonder - is this the new “big idea” for products? Do you think these apps are right to aim for a wide breadth of functions that address all aspects of our daily needs?