Is this the way the world will end, with neither a bang nor a whimper, but a
tweet?
~ Mark Mardell, US BBC Editor, article: A market-moving fake tweet and Twitter’s trust issue
Is this the way the world will end, with neither a bang nor a whimper, but a
tweet?
~ Mark Mardell, US BBC Editor, article: A market-moving fake tweet and Twitter’s trust issue
Posted in Religion | Leave a Comment »
Dr Sam Parnia is director of Resuscitation Research at Stony Brook University in New York, as more people recover from dying minutes or even hours after they would traditionally have revived he is re-evaluating what death means to individuals and society:
Contrary to popular belief, death is not a moment in time, such as when the heart stops beating, respiration ceases, or the brain stops functioning. Death, rather, is a process—a process that can be interrupted well after it has begun.
For people lucky enough to have cardiac arrest at a facility with specialist staff and protocols, prompt and continuous CPR and cooling therapy can lead to full recovery. However in the UK and the US such treatment is not routine:
The painful reality is that even though most of us are not aware of it, many living on our own doorsteps, even in industrialized countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, or elsewhere, even areas with many of the best medical care centers in the world, may still not receive optimized care.
~ Erasing Death: The Science That Is Rewriting the Boundaries
Between Life and Death, Sam Parnia MD and Josh Young
Posted in Current events, Death, Ethics, Medicine | Tagged Erasing Death: The Science That Is Rewriting the Boundaries Between Life and Death | Leave a Comment »
Margaret Thatcher was the most socially divisive British politician ever. Those of us who grew up in Britain in the seventies or eighties found ourselves fortunately- or less so- on either side of a realm in which poor people get worse off versus richer people benefit.
It would be dishonest even in sympathy to her own later circumstances and grieving relatives to say anything else of a politician who openly blamed and vilified people for their own situations whilst changing their way of life with drastic political policies.
She was no champion or role model for feminism or equality. She was ousted for unfairness. Here democracy prevailed.
Ronnie and Margaret were political soul mates, committed to freedom and resolved
to end Communism.
~ Nancy Reagan
There was no communism to fight in Britain ( was there any in the US? )
Taking care of people in need and making ordinary people’s work worthwhile financially isn’t communism. It’s Christianity. It’s humanity.
Maybe her greatest legacy will be her coping with dementia illness: but I doubt it.
Who cares about that?
She didn’t. We should.
Most dementia patients won’t end their ‘care in the community’ days in The Ritz.
Posted in Current events, Freedom, History, Politics | Tagged Margaret Thatcher | Leave a Comment »
Nigerian author and former Biafran politician Chinua Achebe died yesterday in a Boston hospital. His novel ‘Things Fall Apart’ is the most widely translated and best-selling book of African literature. From 2009 to his death Achebe was Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University.
While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.

Posted in Current events, Literature | Tagged African literature, Chinua Achebe, Nigeria | 1 Comment »
A day after 46 people were hospitalised when a meteorite fell in the Chelyabinsk district of Russia’s Ural Mountains, today a giant meteor passed within 17 500 miles of earth’s orbit. The two events are not thought by scientists to be connected.
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Posted in Current events, Nature, Poetry | Tagged Meteorite | Leave a Comment »
A village-wide game of football has traditionally been played for centuries in Ashbourne, Derbyshire in England on Shrove Tuesday, also Ash Wednesday, with the following rules :
Posted in Festivals, Tradition | Tagged Ashbourne Royal Shrovetide Football | Leave a Comment »