Live while you are alive
We have been phoned about every five days by men purporting to be raising money for police charities. Nobody else phones us so often. I checked, and was told that this was not genuine and that the police were expressly forbidden to ask for money from the public, whether they are current or retired member …
One pays for things like blogs and websites. Money, that is. Today I decided I want to move to another planet, a planet without hi-tech stuff or teeming with fraudsters. I tried to renew my subscription for this blog domain. Should be easy, yes? No. It seems that my wife, minutes before, had tried to …
US Senators have accused Facebook of disregarding research showing harm to teens. Senators grilled Facebook executives recently, accusing them of ignoring internal research indicating that social media can harm teens. Lawmakers demanded that Facebook executives explain the company’s efforts to attract young users despite evidence that Instagram, owned by Facebook, makes body image issues worse …
Epicureans did not pool their assets in any communal fashion, as other philosophical groups actually did; the argument was that such a practice would either indicate or, worse yet, foster mutual suspicion. It is hard to define such terms as “job” in the context of the ancient world; “Old Money”, Athenian patricians –men only, of …
Studies that discovered it is safer to transport a rhinoceros upside-down and that beards may be an evolutionary development to help protect men’s faces from punches, have won Ig Nobel prizes. Another study to receive an award studied the ways cats communicate with humans. The prizes, awarded by science magazine Annals of Improbable Research, were …
The following are some facts about violence against women in the UK: – A woman dies at the hands of a man every three days. – 1,425 women were killed in the UK between 2009 and 2018. – Almost all young women have experienced sexual harassment in public places. – Almost one in three women …
Owing to the release of dopamine listening to music makes you feel good. This much is known. Studies by Levitin and others suggest the brain’s natural opioids also play a part. Their findings might help explain why music can act as an analgesic, and support its use by some hospitals to help relieve pain after …
“We’re looking for a Treasurer for the Christmas fund”, said Paddy “Didn’t you take on a new one last month ?” said Murphy. “That’s the one we’re looking for”, Paddy replied. (Relevance to Epicureanism? A sole diet of actual news is so depressing that ataraxia seems a thing of the distant past. We need a …
If it were not for my wife’s comfort with her cellphone I might as well be isolated on a tropical island. Everyone in the UK expects you to have a cellphone – the whole health system. the police, the local Council, the Post Office, the Bank, the government, the emergency services. Just everyone. I am …
A new Priest at his first mass was so nervous he could hardly speak. After mass he asked the Monsignor how he had done. The Monsignor replied, “When I am worried about getting nervous on the pulpit, I put a glass of vodka next to the water glass. If I start to get nervous, I …
Thoughts on attending an exhibition of John Constable’s painting at the National Gallery in Washington One knows only too well that landscape paintings hide Unseen miseries, unhappiness and early death. Yet here’s Old England, on the cusp of change, Captured immortally by the painter’s brush, The rustic face …
Is meritocracy what we really want? Theresa May has said, “I want Britain to be a place where advantage is based on merit, not privilege, where it’s your talent and hard work that matter, not where you were born, who your parents are or what your accent sounds like “. Sounds reasonable. And yet, in …
Every hot dog a person eats shortens their life by 36 minutes, according to new research. Experts at the University of Michigan said that the 61 grams of processed meat in the hot dog results in 27 minutes of healthy life lost. “Then, when considering the other risk factors, like the sodium and trans fatty …
Continue reading ‘A hot dog takes 36 minutes off your life’ »
“I can’t be a pessimist, because I am alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter”. (James Baldwin, quoted on NPR.org) My comment: I spent some time thinking about this, and concluded that I didn’t agree with it. Being a realist (another way of saying a …
There’s no such thing as the season of goodwill when it comes to political debate on social media. It’s all about fury and outrage. Even when tweets are funny, you can taste the “anger inside the sugar coating of smug satire”. Rage is contagious – it spreads like an infection across online forums, which have …
