Rend your clothes, put on sackcloth and pour ashes on your head. Prime Minister May has actually done it. I had hoped that sober minds might, at the last minute, prevail and steer the government away from a long-term disaster that probably means the break-up of the UK as well as weakening Europe. But alas, …
Continue reading ‘The die is cast. There is now no going back.’ »
The vast majority of people are religious, which generally entails belief in a supernatural entity or three. And yet amid the oceans of religiosity are archipelagos of non-belief. Accurate numbers are hard to come by, but even conservative estimates suggest that half a billion people around the world (and counting) are non-religious. But scientists who …
Continue reading ‘Do you consider yourself to be a rational person?’ »
These days everyone “talks a bit like a management consultant”: it’s symptomatic of the growing “professionalisation” of ordinary life. Thanks to blurring work-life boundaries and the rise of the “self-help” industry, we increasingly view our lives as “projects in which excellence needs to be achieved” – and can be, with “the right toolsets”. Hence the …
When the Royal Society of Literature asked almost 2,000 people if they were able to name an author, 20% said they couldn’t think of one. 25% had not read a book in the past six months.
Across the developed world, the combination of slow economic growth and an ageing population is creating a market for cheap, hi-tech solutions to elderly care. There’s the RoboCoach: an android that is being used in Singapore to give exercise classes to senior citizens, using motion sensors to detect whether they are doing it right. Then …
