In Poland a simple poster distributed by an LGBT activist featuring an image of the Virgin Mary with a rainbow halo has got Catholic leaders in a lather. Elzbieta Podlesna allegedly put up the posters near a church to protest an anti-gay Easter message that denounced words like “LGBT” and “gender” as “aggressive” and “deviant”. …
Earlier this year, the National Rifle Association opposed a bill that would prevent convicted stalkers and abusive boyfriends from possessing guns. “Why? Because any gun purchase increases profits for gun manufacturers, and any regulation – even common-sense measures – is to be opposed.” Having arrived at this indecent and immoral policy the NRA leadership deserves …
Continue reading ‘Hard to comprehend such a massive difference in values!’ »
Eton College is adding gratitude, kindness and empathy coaching to its curriculum to build its pupils’ “character”. Following a review into what values Eton should be promoting, boys at the £40,700-a-year school are being taught to take a moment each day to acknowledge how others have helped them and what they have to be grateful …
Lawmakers in Alabama have passed a bill that virtually bans abortion. The legislation, to be signed by the state’s Republican governor, outlaws abortion except in cases where the pregnancy poses a “serious health risk to the mother”, the “unborn child has a lethal anomaly”, or the pregnancy is ectopic (in an abnormal place or position). …
Nearly 25% of UK teachers say they are physically attacked by pupils at least once a week, a study by the NASUWT union has found. The report found that 89% have suffered physical or verbal abuse in the past year, and 49% say that at their school it is considered part of the job. The …
Letter to The Times The proposal by Cambridge University to devote resources neither to teaching nor to research, but to virtue signalling over slavery is not only questionable for a charity, but also an endorsement of notions of hereditary guilt. Leaving aside the prevalence of coercive labour systems across much of the world, including Africa, …
In the early church nearly all Christian priests were married. Popes tried to ban marriage and co- habitation, but to little effect. Pope Gregory the Great (590-604) said that all sexual desire is sinful in itself (meaning that sexual desire is intrinsically evil?), but right up to the 800’s the majority of priests were nonetheless married. …
It seems intuitive that children’s schoolwork will suffer if they spend too much time gazing at their phones instead of getting to bed or getting some exercise. And that is broadly what a recent study has found. But should parents be panicked into pulling the plug on their kids’ electronic devices. Jeremy Walsh at the …
Continue reading ‘Does more than 2 hours of screen time really harm children’s brains?’ »
The Italian Mafia has made €3bn over the past ten years by siphoning off EU funds intended for farmers within Sicily’s largest national park, according to a former director of the park, who survived a Mafia assassination attempt in 2016. In his new book, Giuseppe Antoci claims that Cosa Nostra clans use threats to deter …
Continue reading ‘Mafia steals billions: surprise, surprise’ »
An analysis of millions of Wikipedia articles suggests that ideologically diverse groups can not only cooperate effectively, but also produce better work than homogenous groups. How did Wikipedia succeed where much of the online world has failed? Misha Teplitskiy and his colleagues at Harvard University looked at the editors of Wikipedia articles on politics, science …
Continue reading ‘In contrast to media Wikipedia arguments are quite civilised’ »
A majority of people living in developed countries want their government to tax the rich more to help the poor, according to an OECD survey of 21 countries. “Too many people feel they cannot count fully on their government when they need help,” said Ángel Gurría, secretary general of the OECD, which polled 22,000 people. …
When I was seven years old I was sent to a boarding school. There I was cheek by jowl with the other little boys, sharing ice-cold baths in the morning and crammed into small rooms with eight other boys, teasing and being teased. There was no privacy whatsoever. On to the next school at 13, which …
Continue reading ‘One person’s (very personal) journey towards Epicureanism’ »
More than 87,000 properties in England and Wales, worth £100bn in total, are owned by anonymous companies registered in tax havens. (The Week, 23 March 2019) If you think this is sleazy, wait until Britain is out of the EU. Given the main cheerleaders of Brexit one has to conclude that one motivation of the …
Continue reading ‘Britain is the bolthole for crooked money from all over the world’ »
If we really want the parties to reconnect with voters, we should import – from Australia, say, or Brazil – a far more important innovation: compulsory voting. Obliging people to cast a ballot may sound illiberal: but it has the huge advantage of forcing political parties “to reach beyond their comfort zone”. Labour could no …
Don’t smoke The Hisayama Study, an ongoing investigation of a suburban Japanese community, has found that smoking in mid to late life not only raises the risk of lung cancer, but also ups the chance of developing dementia. Smokers who quit, even in their 40s or 50s, didn’t see the same rise in risk. Don’t …
Only 40% of adults in the United States believe evolution to be “true”. A third of American adults positively believe it to be false, presumably believing that God delivered man and woman, fully formed, to the Garden of Eden five thousand years ago, as per one of the Hebrew creation myths (there were two of …
According to data produced by the General Social Survey Americans are getting more miserable. On a scale between 1 and 3, where 1 represents “not too happy” and 3 means “very happy”, Americans on average give themselves 2.18. In 1993 the figure peaked at 2.26. The downward trend has been confirmed in the latest World …
“Vain is the word of a philosopher, by which no mortal suffering is healed. Just as medicine confers no benefit if it does not drive away bodily disease, so is philosophy useless if it does not drive away the suffering of the mind”. (from “The Essential Epicurus”, trans. by Eugene O’Connor, Great Books in Philosophy …
Kruschev was nuts but he was prescient when he said, “We will defeat you from within”. (John Chappell) Is there anyone out there who agrees? If so, why?
In England less than 1% of the population – including aristocrats, the royal family and wealthy investors, owns about half the land. Putting it another way, with a population of about 56 million, half the country belongs to just 25,000 landowners, some of them corporations. This reflects the chronic inequality of Britain, in contrast to …
