There really are two Epicurean gardens in Greece, one in Athens and the other in Thessalonica. I quote: The “Garden of Thessaloniki” was launched in November 2007 as a voluntary, participatory, informal company of friends and fans of the teachings of Epicurus. Since then there have been countless meetings and open events, participations in national meetings …
Epicureanism: the chief beliefs, not necessarily in order of importance: equality of treatment and opportunity suggested by the actions of early Epicureans courtesy to all, rich and poor, child and mother politeness and consideration tolerance rejection of superstition, organised religion, man-made gods and “eternal suffering”. compassion for immigrants, the oppressed and the sick refusal to …
Multimillionaire Donny Deutsch on Medicare For All: “[My parents] worked really hard to put me in a position where I can buy the kind of insurance I want… If I can’t buy it for my children, we are going backwards. We’re fucking Denmark.” …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. To: Donny Deutsch From: Djaffar Shalchi, Danish millionaire and founder, Human …
Industry has always had a nasty habit of plundering the natural world “before science has understood its importance”, says Chris Packham. And that’s what’s happening right now on the ocean floor. We know more about the surface of Mars than about the deep seabed. On almost every mission “scientists discover new species”. Yet with almost …
“It may be a long-lived and much-cherished tradition, but cooking a Sunday roast can produce air pollution worse than that found in the world’s most toxic cities. Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder discovered that roasting meat and vegetables can result in dangerous airborne particles being released into your kitchen at levels more …
What is all this about, this life? Is it just a big income, a fancy house, and expensive vacations? Is it even about a good-looking girlfriend or spouse who makes other men envious? This seems to be a pervasive attitude, as the gap between rich and poor inexorably widens. Well, of course I would expect …
Xinjiang, China China has destroyed and built over scores of traditional burial grounds belonging to the Uighur people in the northwestern Xinjiang province, as part of what critics claim is a ruthless campaign to wipe out the history and cultural identity of the region’s indigenous Muslim population. Satellite images published last week showed flattened earth …
A slow walking pace in middle age could be a sign of accelerated ageing, scientists have found. Researchers analysed the walking speeds of more than 900 men and women from New Zealand, all of whom were 45 years old, and also gave them tests to determine their biological ages. Walking speeds – their maximum speed, …
British parents are becoming increasingly “abusive” towards teachers, a report by Ofsted has found. The schools watchdog said that teachers are coming under growing pressure from parents who expect instant responses to emails, complain when their children do not get top grades (regardless of effort), and defend their offspring’s poor behaviour instead of siding with …
Back in September the US government announced new detention rules that would radically scale back the protections for child migrants in America. Under the existing Flores agreement, undocumented children must be held in the “least restrictive settings” and released as soon as possible, ideally within 20 days. The agreement also entitles lawyers to monitor their …
Abortion rates in the developed world have been declining for 25 years and are at an historic low. There were 27 abortions per 1000 women between 2010 and 2014, down from 40 per 1000 between 1990 and 1994. The total number of abortions fell from 12 million to 7 million in 2014. Because of the …
Many arguments are made with minimal understanding, or based on false premises. Simply asking for more detail and forcing someone to take you through their thinking step by step can expose this. It’s not enough just to give evidence that something is false. To convince the other party, provide an alternative explanation to fill the …
Continue reading ‘Tip of the week… how to win an argument’ »
“I love the NHS because we pay for it with our taxes, and because the care we receive is the same whether we’ve paid a million pounds or nothing. If we want to save the NHS, we need to celebrate tax. We need to think of it not as money the Government steals from us, …
Continue reading ‘Thought for the day: the British National Health Service’ »
As factories in the West have been dismantled, and their work outsourced or replaced with automation, large parts of Western economies have been left with little to do. To be a good citizen in our culture, you need to be a productive citizen. Yet there is less than ever that actually needs to be produced. …
In his book, “The Meritocracy Trap” Prof Daniel Markovits argues in the book that the American economy has become grossly inequitable and misery- inducing precisely because of the success of the meritocracy, which has divided the economy into the haves and have- nots in an unprecedented, legacy students, manner. The meritocracy really do “earn” their …
The federal deficit for fiscal 2019 reached close to $1 trillion ($984 billion) for the first time since 2012, according to final Treasury Department figures released Friday. This is more than $200 billion, or 20 percent, higher than last year. The deficit has only surpassed $1 trillion four times in the nation’s history, recently during the four-year …
The five biggest oil and gas companies – BP, Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Total – and their industry groups have spent at least €251m (£217m) lobbying the EU over climate policies since 2010. Researchers say the figure represents the tip of the iceberg, as in some years companies made no declarations of spending in the …
Continue reading ‘How can you spend £217 million on lobbying?’ »
Two years ago the National Crime Agency revealed there are up to 80,000 people in the UK who present some kind of sexual threat to children online – a figure some experts say is conservative. (Guardian 3 Sep 2018) Really? How can normal, decent people comprehend such a figure? The word “disgusting” doesn’t do it …
Two doses of the measles vaccine are required for it to be fully effective An estimated 169 million children worldwide have missed out on getting the first dose of a measles vaccine, according to an analysis by the children’s charity Unicef. This includes nearly 2.6 million children in the US, 608,000 children in France, and …
Continue reading ‘Measles has made a shocking return to the US. Can it be stopped?’ »
To The Times “The naming of grandmothers as “nanny” has little to do with goats, but is a hypocoristic form found throughout the Indo-European language family, in use thousands of years ago before the language groups split. It was found, for example, in the Indian word ‘nani’ (grandmother) and the ancient Greek word ‘nanna’ (aunt). …
