Lifestyle topics
Little white lies have a tendency to snowball. The more we lie, the more our brains seem to become desensitised to deception. Tali Sharot at University College London and her team ran an experiment that encouraged volunteers to lie. They were shown jars of pennies, full to varying degrees, and asked to send estimates of …
A fake generational war over the climate crisis has distorted public thinking and political strategy, when in fact older generations are just as worried about the issue as younger people, according to research. In fact, the study found older people were actually more likely than the young to feel that acting in environmentally conscious ways …
“If things were simple, word would have gotten around”. Jacques Derrida, quoted in TheBrowser.com
To The Economist Europe and America have been shipping their collected plastic waste en masse to Asia and wrongly assuming that it is recycled there. Nothing could be further from the truth: it is dumped. After China halted imports of Western plastic waste in 2017, it seems that Malaysia is following – in 2020 Malaysia …
Did you know that the latest figures show that 875,000 people use cocaine in Britain every year at a cost of up to £100 pounds ($130} per gram? Did you know that in Mexico in 2017 there were 29,000 drug- related murders, with civilians caught in the crossfire, and the demand fueled by Westerners with …
The British philosopher and author Prof AC Grayling comments that “Passion suggests something active to us,” he says. “But if you look at the etymology of the term, it’s passive – it’s something that happens to you – like love or anger or lust – that was visited on you by the gods. Unlike passion, …
The annual UK Youth Index set up by the Prince’s Trust earlier this year stated that young people’s happiness and confidence across a range of areas, from working life to mental and physical health should “ring alarm bells”. Wellbeing has fallen to the lowest level since 2009. The research, based on a survey of 2,194 …
Continue reading ‘A bleak picture of the happiness of youth’ »
“I’m baffled by the present obsession with transgender issues. I appreciate that everyone’s different and am happy for individuals to arrange their physiology, desire and role in whatever permutation they fancy”. But why should society be required to reform its language, its census forms and its lavatories around an “ever-growing taxonomy of genders” – “bi-gender”, …
Continue reading ‘There are other, bigger issues than gender’ »
Robots are the great bogeymen of the 21st century. With their superhuman strength and non-stop work ethic, many feel they are gunning for our jobs. But these fears may be overblown. The first comprehensive look at automation on the German economy suggests that robots created more jobs than they destroyed. People’s fears have been stoked …
Continue reading ‘Robots don’t take people’s jobs – they make new ones’ »
An hours-long standoff between a group of heavily armed individuals and Massachusetts State Police on an interstate ended with 11 taken into custody. The situation was resolved “through negotiation and tactical maneuvers,” Massachusetts State Police Colonel Christopher Mason told reporters. The standoff began nine hours prior when police said the group claimed to “not recognize …
– Nuclear weapons – Corporations as persons. (ridiculous) – Online financial transactions in general. Unsafe? – Plastic bags and bottles – Cellphones (anti-social time gobblers) – The technology that allows social media, e.g Facebook and most other “social media” offerings, to flourish. – Availability of mind altering drugs and the violence that accompanies them. – …
Continue reading ‘The worst inventions of the last 100 years:’ »
England’s young lions won praise across Europe after making it to the final of a major international tournament for the first time in 55 years. What didn’t go down so well was the behaviour of some of their fans – or of the British government. The drunken louts, the booing of opponents’ anthems, the racist …
Continue reading ‘Lack of sportsmanship is vulgar and tiresome’ »
It’s a five minute walk from my house to the pub It’s a 35 minute walk from the pub to my house The difference is staggering.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland recently ordered a moratorium on federal executions and a Justice Department review of the death penalty. The move followed a decision by the Trump administration Justice Department to revive federal executions by lethal injection in 2019, using a one-drug protocol. The federal government then carried out 13 executions from July 2020 …
In 1921 men in England and Wales had a life expectancy of 56 years,women 60 years. Ninety years on the figures are 79 and 83 years respectively. Simply living longer is a bit meaningless in itself, but it is a pointer to better health. The Western world has shared in this greater longevity, thank to …
