Every school needs a Daisy Turnbull Brown. That's the view of the Productivity Commission, which has recommended every school appoint a designated wellbeing leader. Ms Turnbull Brown is the director of wellbeing at St Catherine's, an Anglican girls' school in Waverley, Sydney. She welcomes the focus on wellbeing and "positive psychology" - sometimes described as the science of human flourishing. https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/students-might-roll-their-eyes-but-this-is-why-your-school-needs-a-wellbeing-leader-20191115-p53aw2.html

Voice assistants aren't new, but could they become a vital member of your family and life? Amazon's Alexa plans to move from passive to proactive interactions - that is, pre-empt your request and needs rather than wait for your prompt. How will it anticipate your every whim & need and orchestrate your life? It will need to be omnipresent and get to know you better than ever before (and possibly better than you know yourself). This raises lots of possibilities to improve life, but what of our insatiable appetite for data and the power we derive from it? https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614676/amazon-alexa-will-run-your-life-data-privacy

Long ignored beyond the developing world, bamboo (a grass, not a tree) has the compressive strength of concrete and the tensile strength of steel. Unlike those materials, it sequesters carbon as it grows instead of emitting it while it’s made. It replenishes rapidly, shooting up by as much as three feet per week. It’s hollow and lightweight. There’s no wood that can compete with that. Mexican architecture firm CO-LAB recently designed Luum Temple, a bamboo pavilion in Tulum, Mexico. https://www.autodesk.com/redshift/bamboo-construction/