A healthy lifestyle can magically make you live longer.

OK, so that sounds a bit dramatic and the idea is not exactly novel:  That healthy living – diet, exercise and stress management – helps you live longer.  But emerging science suggests that there is a real rejuvenation at the cellular level.  And it’s not induced by some chemical cream from a pharmachem cosmetics company. …
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The god and bad of not having enough …

Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir was reviewed by The Economist here. People can succumb to a “scarcity mindset” when they feel they have too few friends, time or calories, as well as too little money. This mindset has benefits because it helps you focus on pressing …
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How Money Actually Buys Happiness

But not in the way you think. Have a quick look through this post on the Harvard Business Review blog.  (http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/06/how_money_actually_buys_happiness.html?goback=.gde_2827692_member_254100025 and it’s copied below in case it’s moved.) Research shows that more stuff does not make you happier, but regularly giving to people without does make you happier.  Why?  Because empathy is strong in …
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Facebook, Google and other data grabbers really know you. Really.

Let’s just skip to the meat: Digital records of behavior, Facebook Likes, can be used to automatically and accurately predict a range of highly sensitive personal attributes including: sexual orientation, ethnicity, religious and political views, personality traits, intelligence, happiness, use of addictive substances, parental separation, age, and gender. That’s just scary, especially when you think …
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Living like a human let’s you love longer.

That is not a trite comment because most of us don’t live very natural lifestyles.  We sit around most of the day and eat processed “food” and drink sugary “water”.  Humans are built for mobility.  We are bipedal and that physiological mutation allows us to travel far and fast allowing us to overcome other beasts …
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Is a vegetative brain alive?

It looks like some medical books will be redrafted.  A patient who woke from a coma a decade ago and has been vegetative ever since, has now communicated with carers through brain imaging.  It’s the first time an uncommunicative, severely brain-injured patient has been able to give “answers” clinically relevant to their care. It will …
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Can we face reality? Can we do the right thing?

Some have said for a long time that the management of Ireland has been corrupt, collusive and self-destructive. The solutions have been evident, but require action by those that are party to the inefficiencies.  The track record is not good – even the priests never owned up about their corruption. Perhaps enough people will wake-up …
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