Live while you are alive
Really good news! Dr. Emeran Mayer, a professor of medicine and psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles thinks the bacteria in our digestive systems may help mold brain structure as we’re growing up, and possibly influence our moods, behavior and feelings when we’re adults. “It opens up a completely new way of looking …
Continue reading ‘Your digestive system could affect your brain, mood and behaviour’ »
Angela Brooks-Wilson, a geneticist at the Genome Sciences Centre in Vancouver, quoted in a Washington Post article (December 29th), says that 70-75% of longevity is down to lifestyle and the rest can be accounted for by your genes. I quote in brief the recommendations on how to play the hand you are dealt with: – …
There is a body of scholarship showing that the collapse of the fertility rate to dangerously low levels across east Asia is the direct consequence of school cramming and “education fever”. Education fever causes Korean parents to scrape and save to send their children to private Hagwon schools to push up their grades and give …
Continue reading ‘Are children in east Asia being over-schooled?’ »
“Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality”. (Ian McEwan, novelist). “Empathy matters not just because it makes you good, but because it is good for you. It has the power to heal …
Continue reading ‘Empathy makes us truly human and humane.’ »
The sultan of Brunei has announced that he is imposing a strict new criminal code based on sharia law. There is already a sharia Islamic court in Brunei, but it mainly handles family matters. Next year, the 280,000 Muslims in the country will be subject to a tough new penal code that is expected to …
