From his obituary:
Dr. Nuland wrote that his intention was to demythologize death, making it more familiar and therefore less frightening, so that the dying might approach decisions regarding their care with greater knowledge and more reasonable expectations. The issue has only intensified since the book was published, and has been discussed and debated in the medical world, on campuses, in the news media and among politicians and government officials engaged in health care policy.
“The final disease that nature inflicts on us will determine the atmosphere in which we take our leave of life,” he wrote, “but our own choices should be allowed, insofar as possible, to be the decisive factor in the manner of our going.”
(How We Die: Reflections of Life’s Final Chapter. Sherwin B. Nuland.)
Checkout It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens by Danah Boyd. From an interview:
Has technology – and specifically social media as shared through ubiquitous mobile devices – fundamentally altered the growing up process?
The Internet has not radically transformed our children. Instead, it’s provided a platform through which young people enact all sorts of practices – good, bad, and ugly. What’s really different today is that those practices are far more visible precisely because of the traces that people leave behind when they’re interacting online. But when you look at what teens are doing online, they’re doing what they’ve always done at this stage – socialize, gossip, flirt, joke around. It’s just that those practices weren’t always so visible to adults.
Checkout “The Centre – NCCR Affective Sciences:”
The National Center of Competence in Research “Affective Sciences – Emotions in Individual Behaviour and Social Processes” (NCCR Affective Sciences) is a research centre dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of emotions and their effects on human behaviour and society. Emotions play an important part in almost all areas of our lives, such as health, at school, in the courtroom, in politics, in the arts, in economic life, and in sport. What triggers our emotions? How do we control our emotions? How do emotions influence interpersonal relations and social interactions?
(Find the image above here.)
Checkout Inferno: An Anatomy of American Punishment by Robert A. Ferguson. From a review:
This book forces prison officials and lawmakers to look inward and see within themselves the dark, unremitting reasons why things have gotten as bad as they have inside our prisons and jails. It says squarely to these political and legal and community leaders (and by extension to their constituents): in seeking to bring retributive justice to bear, in seeking to diminish the prisoner, you have also diminished yourself in ways you are unable or unwilling to admit. Even today, with the whiff of reform in the air, this is a brave and honest message.
February 27th, 2014
admin
Nature has an article titled “Medication: The smart-pill oversell: Evidence is mounting that medication for ADHD doesn’t make a lasting difference to schoolwork or achievement.”
In people without ADHD, such as students who take the drugs without a prescription to help with school work, the intellectual impact of stimulants also remains unimpressive. In a 2012 study of the effects of the amphetamine Adderall on people without ADHD, psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia found no consistent improvement on numerous measures of cognition, even though people taking the medication believed that their performance had been enhanced 10.
