Paradise is no more. The town in California, ravaged by the recent wildfires, looks like a post-apocalyptic ghost town. The disaster hit so suddenly that many of the town’s residents were only saved by the skin of their teeth; many didn’t make it and died where they were. Sadly, it is the latest, but not a one-off tragic event on…

I was about twelve years old when it became blindingly obvious that my eyesight wasn’t as sharp as I wanted. A standard eye-test confirmed the obvious and the sentence was passed: life behind glass. Or – to be more precise – behind correction glasses. Nowadays glasses seem to be quite fashionable amongst young people. But for me, at that time,…

Money can’t buy happiness, but neither can poverty. This rather catchy phrase by a German-born teacher and academic, Leo Rosten, has a ring of truth about it. But it also goes against today’s gospel, where Jesus gives a jaw-dropping piece of advice to a wealthy man: ‘Go and sell everything you own and give the money to the poor, and…

Differences between men and women have always been fertile ground for jokes! Some of them good, others less so. Some jokes considered good and funny in the past can be perceived nowadays as embarrassing at best, or insulting or sexist at worst. There also exists a much darker side regarding differences between men and women. In many cultures over the…

The word ‘radical’ seems to be amongst the most popular adjectives in use nowadays. It’s used to describe a whole raft of social aspects. The ‘radical’ cuts of public spending and the ‘radical’ reform of the benefit system, for example; we’ve all heard about those and many have experienced the pinching results. In many established democracies across the globe, ‘radical’…