Analysis

"Most of us now living have a chance for personal, physical immortality." This is the sentence French biologist and philosopher Jean Rostand (son of the writer Edmond de Rostand) used to begin the preface of a book on cryonics, The Prospect of Immortality, by the physics professor and science fiction writer Robert C. W. Ettinger.

There are three main qualifications I have as an amateur Road to Bethlehem actor: I am tall, I am prepared to wear a funny hat in public and I have committed to making myself available to do it each year for a week in December over the past 10 years.

A diet that significantly reduces carbohydrate intake may shorten life by up to four years, according to a study published in The Lancet Public Health.

It was terrifying. They kept trying to comfort me by telling me they had the best surgeons. But they also said that I needed a new liver and that my body might reject it. – Christopher Herrera

When we try to understand our fellow human beings, to grasp their thinking, the reasons behind their decisions, and the purpose of their actions, a familiar adage from popular wisdom comes to mind: “Put yourself in their shoes.”

No matter how hard we try to hide it, there are days when we are struck by the overwhelming feeling that our lives, however beautiful and enviable, are missing something essential.

A global crisis situation, such as that generated by the current pandemic, is a complex picture with many variables bringing high levels of emotional distress. During a pandemic, many people will face a wide range of reactions and emotions, and the psychological impact will often be greater than the medical one.

The book of Exodus is the second book in the Bible. It follows God’s servant Moses leading the Israelites out of slavery and through the desert towards the hoped-for Promised Land. Along the way, they stop at Mt Sinai. Moses goes up the mountain and receives from God ten commandments carved on a stone tablet. This is one of the most famous sections...

The biased sample is a kind of unrepresentative sample, either for quantitative reasons (as is the case with the too-small sample), or for qualitative ones, when its structure does not represent the structure of the real population that is the object of the research.

When it comes to cases where "doctors don't know what to do," the first thought that comes to mind is usually cancer. Conventional treatment, which can prolong life for a few years and sometimes just a few months, comes at a high price in the quality of life, and patients come to prefer the "natural" way: alternative medicine.

Arguments must be convincing and, in order to convince, they must be valid—the minimum requirement of persuasion.

An experimenter is like a hunter who, instead of waiting quietly for game, tries to make it rise, by beating up the locality where he assumes it is. – Francis Bacon, 17th-century English philosopher

“For a long time I supposed that somewhere in the university, there were really clever people whom I had not yet met, and whom I should at once recognise as my intellectual superiors, but during my second year, I discovered that I already knew all the cleverest people in the university. This was a disappointment to me, but at the same time gave...

Many families who feared that the new coronavirus would affect their health ended up dreading its effect on something seemingly even more difficult to protect: the well-being of their relationship.

Suppose I leave the window open then leave home. A stack of banknotes can be seen on the table through the open window. An individual walking down the street notices the opportunity, thinks for a while, but decides to move on. Why would a man who has the opportunity to steal decide not to?