Life, medicine and stuff

Shape an Optimistic Explanatory Style – model a positive style yourself. Criticize behavior, not character Teach your children their ABCs – adversity, belief, consequence (as in I'm OK, you're OK; transactional analysis) Teach your children how to dispute their negative thoughts. Let Them Fail -They need to learn to persist in the face of failure.…

Appeared 400 000 years ago, spread throughout Europe and Near East when climate was still virtually tropical. Lived in caves, hunted in groups. Could make tools eg scrapers, axes and would cook (some) food. Big noses, extremely muscular. Named after the Neander valley in Germany where bones first recognized as being distinct from Homo sapiens.…

Watched Richard Jobson's film, 16 Years of Alcohol. Very poetic, between the episodes of violence. Finishes with these lines from "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by American poet Robert Frost: The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to…

A star comes to the end of its life. It explodes as a supernova, showering particles out into the space – some light, gaseous, others heavier, such as soot (carbon) and sand (silica). Where these particles are swept together at sufficient density, perhaps around a young star, itself formed from collapsing clouds of hydrogen and…

So I turned 40 yesterday, and Pauline and I went to Argyll Arcade to spend my birthday money on a new watch. Was quite stressful, given that you can move a couple of feet along and be looking at prices with a couple of extra zeroes on the end, plus the variety is extraordinary. But…

Actually a series of paintings and prints (Munch clearly tried to monopolize on his success). Munch's mother died of TB when he was 7, his sister died of the same when he was 16. One of his younger sisters was diagnosed with schizophrenia at a young age. He himself wrote that he inherited 2 of…

There are over 200 mentions of angels in the bible. In only 2 of those do they have wings. They probably precede the bible, being messengers from the gods (angelos, in Greek). They have taken over in the minds of the superstitious from saints, who lost some of their influence during the reformation. NHS Lanarkshire…

[About his new book, Ill Fared the Land] What I tried to write in the book was a sort of plea to reopen an ethical conversation about what kind of society we want to live in. Not a conversation about how to be efficient, how to be wealthy, how to succeed, how to improve GDP,…

In 2007, almost half of prisoners said they were drunk at the time of their crime. In murder cases the proportion of those drunk or under the influence of drink and drugs is two thirds. NHSconfed.org report on alcohol claims cost to the NHS is £2.7 billion per year, and the 3rd leading cause of…

A Ghanaian artist, an Ewe no less (from the Volta region), who works with modern materials to create cloths that resemble traditional kente dress. Looks fabulous, would love to see for real. http://www.octobergallery.co.uk/microsites/anatsui/