Author: rrn69

Books, Health and Safety, technology1 Comment

Smartphones, gaming, Sleep deprivation and addiction rewiring childhood

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Social psychologist, professor of ethical leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business, Jonathan Haidt,  reveals why have rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide risen so sharply, more than doubling in many cases in recent years. Haidt’s International bestselling author of the Righteous Mind  (2012, looking at the role of emotion and reason in moral convictions) and The Coddling of the American Mind, (2018, co-written with Greg Lukianoff describing a culture of “Safetyism” in which helicopter parents and educators protect their young charges from potential har, including even thoughts), Haidt argues that the decline of free-play in childhood … Continue reading Smartphones, gaming, Sleep deprivation and addiction rewiring childhood

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Caught in the honeytrap of malicious communications

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William Wragg, a senior Conservative MP, chairman of a Commons select committee, has admitted his involvement in a honeytrap sexting scandal targeting a minister and fellow MPs, told he handed over the personal phone numbers of colleagues to a man he met on Grindr, a gay dating app. The vice-chairman of the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers said that he provided the details after sending intimate pictures of himself to the user. Wragg said he was “scared” that the man ” had compromising things on me”. Those colleagues who included several MPs, members of their staff and a political journalist … Continue reading Caught in the honeytrap of malicious communications

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Gold Prices rally, soaring all time high

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Gold has another record high above $2,295 per Troy ounce yesterday, extending a rally that has seen it rise 15 per cent since mid-February 24, after interest rates cuts with persistent US inflation and escalating conflict in the Middle East. Investors are betting it will honour its traditional role as a hedge against inflation if price increases persist when interest rates starts to fall. Gold also seen as protection against rising US debt and possible widening of war in the Middle East and Central banks, Indian multi-million wedding market and Chinese customers are buying it in record numbers as Gold … Continue reading Gold Prices rally, soaring all time high

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“Rage” inspiring tragedies

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Stephen King who earned the title of King of Horror after publishing novels like It, Pet Sematary, Carrie and The Shining, has asked for his latest book to go out of publication because of the controversy it generated. A high school student Charlie Decker, who after an incident that sent his chemistry teacher to the hospital and insulting the principal led to his expulsion, took a pistol from his locker and shot his Algebra teacher while holding his classmates hostage. Over the next two decades several number of shooting incidents took place at high schools across the US. On several … Continue reading “Rage” inspiring tragedies

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A SUBTLE AND COMPELLING TAKE ON NATURE.

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Annamarie Dzendrowskyj – “Shadows of Perception” 28 March – 21 April 24 The MuseGallery 269 Portobello Road W11 1LRThe natural world is the central subject of the artist’s work and is drawn from imagery fromThe Blue Mountains World Heritage Centre in Australia taken in 2020 a few months afterthe bushfire season. The natural world is cherished and all imagery is about this. TheArtist’s inspiration was based on Junichiro Tanizaki’s “ In Praise of Shadows” – an essaylooking into the interpendence of darkness and light and saying that one cannot existwithout the other. Climate change is also an issue on this … Continue reading A SUBTLE AND COMPELLING TAKE ON NATURE.

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Every Pilgrimage is unique

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Travel writer Oliver Smith takes us to sacred travel made across time, from murmurs  of ritual journeys in the depth of Ice Age to new pilgrimages of the 21st century finding sanctity in remote peninsulas and holy islands. He embarks on an epic adventure across sacred British landscapes – climbing into remote sea caves, sleeping inside Neolithic tombs, scaling forgotten holy mountains and once marooning himself at sea, following holy roads to churches, cathedrals and standing stones, this evocative and enlightening travelogue explores places prehistoric, pagan and Christian, but also reveals how football stadiums and music festivals have become contemporary … Continue reading Every Pilgrimage is unique

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Look East to understand first world war

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 Nick Lloyd professor of modern warfare at King’s College, London, tells the story for the first time of what Winston Churchill once called the “unknown war”: the vast conflict in Eastern Europe and the Balkans that brought about the collapse of three empires. Although much has been written about the fighting in France and Belgium, The Eastern Front was no less bloody. Between 1914 and 1917, huge numbers of people- perhaps as many as 16 million soldiers and two million civilians were killed, wounded or maimed in enormous battles that sometimes range across a front of 100km in length.  Lloyd … Continue reading Look East to understand first world war

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The Secret of aging

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All of us would like to live longer, or to slow the debilitating effects of age. Coleen Murphy, a leading scholar of aging,  show how recent research on longevity and aging may be bringing us closer to this goal. She explains that the study of model systems, particularly simple invertebrate animals, combined with breakthroughs in genomic methods have allowed scientist to probe into molecular mechanisms of longevity and aging. Understanding the fundamental biological rules that govern aging in model systems provide clues about how we  might slow human aging, which could lead in turn to new therapeutics and treatments for … Continue reading The Secret of aging

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You can destroy by cynicism and disillusion better than by bombs

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Indian born Fareed Zakaria, who claim to be America’s best-known tutor on world events, quotes from Civilisation, the classic 1960s BBC series narrated by Kenneth Clark, an art historian.“It is lack of confidence, more than anything else, that kills a civilisation. We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs.” Kenneth Clark said. Age of Revolutions chronicles ceaseless action and reaction , progress and backlash, that has been endemic to the modern age. Zakaria  dates the birth of the liberal nation state to the 16th-century Netherlands, which is where  his book begins. He ends after … Continue reading You can destroy by cynicism and disillusion better than by bombs

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How can you be American and Vietnamese, “both the killer and the person being killed”?

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An unconventional memoir with insight, humor, formal invention and lyricism by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen in A Man of Two Faces, rewinds the film of his own life wrestling with dual identity, entwining his family experience with racism, refugeehood and colonisation and ideas of Vietnam and America, writing with his trademark sardonic wit and incisive analysis, as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a son. At the age of four, Nguyen and his family are forced to flee his hometown of Ban Me Thu?t and come to … Continue reading How can you be American and Vietnamese, “both the killer and the person being killed”?