Alain de Botton's 10 Commandments - for Atheists. Republic of Ireland abandoning religion faster than almost every other country in the world - Europe - World. Worldwide, only Vietnam experienced a greater drop in those describing themselves as religious in a poll which extended to 57 countries, covering three-quarters of the world's population.
The survey confirms that Ireland, once regarded as particularly devout, has been almost transformed from the days when the Catholic church exercised both political power and strong social influence. The church's standing has taken a series of severe blows over the last decade, in particular suffering damage from a series of devastating sex abuse scandals. The sense is widespread that it has reacted sluggishly to the revelations and has been more concerned with defending itself rather than with the interests of victims. The survey showed that those Irish who considered themselves religious had fallen from 69 per cent in 2011 to less than half today.
Ireland was ranked seventh in the 57 countries for those describing themselves as convinced atheists. 'Arrest us all' A year ago Usha Narayane was about to embark on a new life.
A call-centre worker with a diploma in hotel management, she was 25 and about to travel north from her home in the centre of India to begin a managerial job in a hotel in Punjab. The job would transport her not only geographically but also socially. Like her neighbours, Narayane is a dalit, an "untouchable", at the bottom of the caste ladder. Schooling and literacy are rare among the women of Kasturba Nagar, the slum neighbourhood in the city of Nagpur where she grew up.
Benoit Mandelbrot, the Father of Fractal Geometry, Pens a Disturbing New Memoir. “Nearly all common patterns in nature are rough,” writes the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot at the beginning of The Fractalist: Memoir of a Scientific Maverick published posthumously this month by Pantheon.
“They have aspects that are exquisitely irregular and fragmented—not merely more elaborate than the marvelous ancient geometry of Euclid but of massively greater complexity.” As Mandelbrot illustrates in his memoir, there are many rewards out there for an elite mathematician—university chairs, corporate research jobs, and conference junkets—but fame is not usually one of them. Look Great at Any Age: Men's Health. Eilis O'Hanlon: Clearly, class is the fear that dare not speak its name - Analysis, Opinion. Updated 02 December 2012 09:20 AM.
The Becker-Posner Blog. How Gay Liberation became a Family Values movement « Automatic Writing. The Gossage–Vardebedian Papers. How to spot a sociopath - 10 red flags that could save you from being swept under the influence of a charismatic nut job. Originally published June 8 2012 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor.
FC71: The Black Death and its Impact (c.1300-1450) The Campaign Against Women. Russia in color, a century ago. With images from southern and central Russia in the news lately due to extensive wildfires, I thought it would be interesting to look back in time with this extraordinary collection of color photographs taken between 1909 and 1912.
In those years, photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II. He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images.
The high quality of the images, combined with the bright colors, make it difficult for viewers to believe that they are looking 100 years back in time - when these photographs were taken, neither the Russian Revolution nor World War I had yet begun. A time-ticking countdown of 1000 awesome things by Neil Pasricha. I e-mailed a teacher to say thank you, and he posted it on Facebook saying "I really needed this." What's something you've said/done that you didn't expect to have such a big impact? : AskReddit.
Philip Gould: I'm enjoying my death. It's the most fulfilling time of my life. One man's extraordinarily powerful - and ultimately inspiring - account of how he came to terms with the most devastating news of all...
By Philip Gould Published: 21:51 GMT, 2 May 2012 | Updated: 08:19 GMT, 3 May 2012 Philip Gould was the brilliant Labour Party strategist who helped bring Tony Blair to power in 1997, and was awarded a peerage in 2004. Here, in the first of two extracts from his new book serialised in the Mail he describes movingly the journey from being diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in 2008 to being told he had three months to live. He died at 61 last November, with his wife Gail and their daughters, Georgia, 25, and Grace, 22, by his side. Sedated but fully conscious, I am lying on my side hearing the quiet hum of medical conversation around me.
Lessons Worth Sharing. The Evolving Man. Illustration: Clive OffleyThe evolving man We may believe that masculine behaviour should change.
But this can be dismissed as mere personal opinion - which is why academic study of masculinity is so valuable. Bob Connell, Norm Radican and Pip Martin publish here for the first time the findings of their pioneering research on men. 'One is not born, but rather becomes a woman.' Simone de Beauvoir's insight applies equally well to men: one is not born, but rather becomes a man. Dean, a bus driver we interviewed, put it simply: 'I've always been brought up that the man is the breadwinner and that the man serviced the woman. History and anthropology tell us that this apparently 'natural' arrangement is both recent and culturally specific. The World Economy. Forgetting Embarrassing Memories. What Is It About 20-Somethings?