The importance of protecting our society’s health and well-being became starkly apparent during the pandemic. People’s physical and mental health were severely impacted by the sudden changes forced by the emergent global crisis. Although nations reacted quickly at the onset, coming back from the pandemic has been difficult. Overlapping crises including the renewed urgency of the Black Lives Matter movement […] … learn more→

Title of course: “Sociology of Guns” What prompted the idea for the course? I grew up in the liberal culture of the San Francisco Bay Area and never touched a firearm until I was 42 years old, living in North Carolina and teaching sociology at Wake Forest University. For the past 10-plus years I have been […] … learn more→

Western sciences have little grasped the issue of ignorance despite the fact that, in the words of Karl Popper , “our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance is necessarily infinite”, with important consequences for our lives. . This is observed by Robert N. Proctor in the introduction to a collective work on agnotology published in 2008. This […] … learn more→

The current funding crisis in New Zealand universities has not happened in a vacuum. It is a byproduct of the neoliberal “reforms” introduced here in the 1980s and which have affected every aspect of university work. Nor is this confined to New Zealand. The stress on corporate capitalism, adoption of business practices, and prioritisation of economic goals […] … learn more→

Parents today spend more time with their children than ever before. Yet, at the same time, they worry more than previous generations about doing enough – believing a lack of engagement may harm their child’s future success and wellbeing. This can have negative impacts. Increased social pressures on mothers to be engaged with their children, compared to fathers, […] … learn more→

As tourists head to airports this summer, American travelers are likely to see groups of young people in matching T-shirts awaiting flights to Latin America or further afield. Their T-shirts sport biblical verses or phrases like “Here I am, send me” or “Called to serve,” and the teens may gather for prayer before boarding. These […] … learn more→

It is not uncommon to find, more and more, texts adapted with fonts specially designed to help people with dyslexia in reading . These are the fonts known in English as dyslexia friendly : Dyslexie, EasyReading(TM), OpenDyslexic, Read Regular(TM) and Sylexiad, among others. These sources have two main characteristics: Graphical features of the appearance of the letters to avoid confusion between […] … learn more→

When a young athlete is drafted into the NBA – as 58 players are expected to be on Thursday, June 22, 2023 – it is often seen as a life-changing event. The money makes it so. Salaries for first-round draft picks this year are projected to range from about $2.4 million at the low end to $12 million at the very […] … learn more→

Our nation is experiencing its lowest productivity growth in 60 years, according to the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia. And this downturn is reflected across most advanced economies worldwide. So it’s not surprising some see the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) as productivity’s saviour. Media articles herald a new era of high productivity enabled by AI, and particularly […] … learn more→

Technological advances have changed the relationship to the world and to human relationships . In a society of the image, marked with the seal of individualism, it is now a question of investing in an infinitely perfectible “capital” body , and one to be preserved. There has been an increase in maintenance and fitness activities since the health crisis, and more […] … learn more→