Archive for July, 2009
Give me a doctor partridge plump!
I switched on the radio this morning and immediately heard extremely important news from America. Apparently the President had appointed a very FAT doctor to the most heavyweight medico-political job in the country – surgeon general. Across the media and the blogosphere, self-righteous commentators were self-righteously condemning the Chosen One for sending out the ‘wrong [...] Read more »
£20 to see a doctor? Americans would think they had died and gone to heaven!
The suggestion by a ‘think tank’ that more well-off patients should be charged £20 when they see their NHS GP has been greeted with howls of disapproval here in the UK. I’m informed however that people in America are totally bemused by this news item. For them £20 to see a doctor must seem [...] Read more »
How to Achieve Happiness: The Evidence
For many years the high ground on happiness has been held by the gurus of positive affirmations and mantras. Books and films by the thousands extolled the value of ‘postive thinking’. But has there been any evidence that these bestsellers actually made anyone any happier – apart from their authors and publishers of course?
Now some [...] Read more »
Brilliant Speech by Prince Charles: Future King shows the limitations of mechanistic and reductionist thinking.
In what was surely the speech of his life, Facing the Future, (The Richard Dimbleby Memorial Lecture broadcast on BBC last night – you can still hear it here, Prince Charles made an impassioned appeal for a new way of viewing the present world crisis with special regard to the environment.
Rather than condescendingly lecturing and [...] Read more »
GENDER SELECTION: The Aristotle Way Warning: Do NOT try this at home!
In the third of this year’s excellent Reith Lectures, Prof. Sandel explored Genetics and Morality. One of his points was that no matter how hard we try, our children may not turn out the way we want because we don’t choose them. In this way parenthood, he maintains, more than other human relationships, teaches what [...] Read more »
