To The Daily Telegraph “The head of the Royal Philharmonic is making a serious error by believing that abolishing the term “classical music” will suddenly attract thousands of young people into our concert halls. The leadership of the RPO seem to be suffering from a crisis of confidence in their art form – brought on …
Owing to the release of dopamine, listening to music makes you feel good. This much is known. Studies suggest that the brain’s natural opioids also play a part. This might help explain why music can act as an analgesic, and explains its use by some hospitals to help relieve pain after surgery. Some types of …
Two recent shocking reports into jails in Nottingham and Liverpool show that conditions remain Dickensian – inmates crammed into filthy, freezing cells; cockroaches; rats; extensive violence. Whether you measure it by the high levels of re-offending or the number of suicides, it’s clear the system is failing; yet we keep locking more and more people …
Continue reading ‘Prisons again: British prisons are a disgrace, too.’ »
According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2,220,300 adults were incarcerated in US federal and state prisons, and county jails in 2013 – about 1 in 110 of the U.S. resident population. Additionally, 4,751,400 adults in 2013 (1 in 51) were on probation or on parole. For-profit companies were responsible for approximately 7 percent …
Should the British voting age be reduced to 16? Labour, the Lib Dems, the Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru all believe so, and recently sought unsuccessfully to vote through a private members’ bill in Parliament to that effect. The arguments made for this idea are specious. Letting 16-year-olds vote, it is claimed, would invigorate our …
Are your hidden biases soon to be revealed? A computer program claims to be able to unmask them by scrutinising people’s body language for signs of prejudice. Algorithms can already accurately read people’s emotions from their facial expressions or speech patterns. So a team of researchers in Italy wondered if they could be used to …
Today (Tuesday), the New York state senate has two by-elections. Should the Democrats win, New York state will be under unified Democrat control; the governor’s mansion and lower house are already blue, but the senate is still mostly Republican. One of the senate races is a safe-Democrat Bronx seat. So the only election that matters …
Continue reading ‘Why Westchester County should vote Democrat.’ »
A new phenomenon is disturbing my usual peace of mind. I refer to the habit that has recently caught on whereby visitors to our neighborhood, either from Maryland or Virginia, park on our block and sit there in the car, engrossed in their cellphones or computers, sometimes for an hour or more at a time. …
New York should prepare for 15-metre storm surges by 2300. Much worse is yet to come. Climate change will bring good news and really bad news for New York City. The good news is that hurricanes might be more likely to miss the city over the next three centuries. This means the future risk of …
“If you want a classic formulation from our new Gilded Age, here it is, as described recently in the Guardian: “A head-on assault on teachers for their long summer vacations would ‘sound tone-deaf when there are dozens of videos and social media posts going viral from teachers about their second jobs [and] having to rely …
“We are all,atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.” (Richard Dawkins)
Most treatments for low back pain simply do not work, an international team of scientists writing in The Lancet has warned. The condition is now the world’s leading cause of disability: an estimated 540 million people are affected and that number is growing as populations age. But back pain is not properly understood, the scientists …
To the New Statesman I can confirm Peter Wilby’s observation that old age creeps up unnoticed from my reaction on being offered a seat on the Tube by a stranger for the first time. The overwhelming emotions are those of surprise, indignation and insult, with gratitude a long way behind. Some years later, I still …
Here are some thoughts, called “The Decent Life”, from the philosopher Emperor, whose beliefs were Epicurean: Honour and revere the gods, treat human beings as they deserve, be tolerant with others and strict with yourself. Remember, nothing belongs to you but your flesh and blood – nothing else is under your control. 5.33 Make sure …
Continue reading ‘Some thoughts from Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Epicurean’ »
CRISPR, the cheap and easy technique for making precise changes to DNA, has researchers around the world racing to trial its use in treating a host of human diseases. But this race is not confined to the lab. Last month, Josiah Zayner, a biochemist who once worked for NASA, became the first person to edit …
Continue reading ‘Is do-it-yourself gene editing wise and ethical?’ »
