What do people do when they have to wait for anything? They immediately pull out their smartphones and kill the time by staring at them. Some people do that even when they don’t have any time to kill; some others do it as if they intended to kill when they play with their phones while driving… The main reason for…

Which country is the most prosperous and the happiest, the envy of the rest of the world? Have a guess… It’s North Korea, now closely followed by Russia – if you believe their respective, state-controlled mass media. The official propaganda presents the country’s officialdom as competent, efficient and effective, leading the country from strength to strength, providing everything that its…

I like my breakfast full. Not full-English or full-Scottish. It’s full when I have a newspaper to flick through and read while having breakfast. For that reason, I’ve had a subscription for years, so the paper could arrive regularly and be cheaper-ish. In practical terms, the publisher would send me a bunch of special vouchers I could use to buy…

The human capability for benevolence as well as malevolence can produce astonishing results. The modern mass media, combined with modern communications technology, provide us with near-constant displays of human greatness as well as human meanness. It’s a perennial challenge faced by all societies across the globe. The opening reading of Jesus’ triumphant entry into the city of Jerusalem was soon…