Education

Big chain stores know them and use them to make a profit. What is more, they are willing to pay a lot of money for studies on how to improve them. We're talking about the secrets of optimal product placement.

At the age of nine, the young Dante Alighieri fell hopelessly in love with Beatrice Portinari, a young woman of about the same age, whose image would haunt him for the rest of his life and inspire one of the most famous female characters in universal literature.

One of the most powerful pieces of literature illustrating the proper preparation for a financial crisis comes from antiquity. More precisely, from the Bible.

I love Christmas, and opening Nathan Brown’s book, Advent: Hearing the Good News in the Story of Jesus’ Birth, reading each page, is like opening a carefully wrapped Christmas present, undoing the gift card attached with ribbon and bow, folding back the bright cellophane wrapping and lifting the lid off a curious little box containing the Gift itself. The gift in this case...

It is said that the intelligent and cynical Talleyrand, a French diplomat and Catholic priest who was later secularised, said to Napoleon when asked to devise a political message: "Sir, give me the idea and I'll find the arguments myself..." If such an intellectual attitude is cynical and unscrupulous in politics, let's imagine the consequences in the religious sphere.

For some people, suffering is temporary. For others, life itself can be a long series of painful blows. However, experience shows that recovery is possible even when people seem to be at the end of their tether.

"No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books." (Elizabeth Barrett Browning, British poet)

Early reports out of China showed that elderly people and the chronically ill were most vulnerable to Covid-19. Yet an alarming number of young people in the United States have been hospitalized with severe infections. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 40% of American Covid-19 patients who were hospitalized were under 55 – and 20% were between ages 20...

Bridges seem to be the emblem of existential stress for Romanians. In the face of a difficult situation, even Romanian folk wisdom recommends: "Make a pact with the devil until you have crossed the bridge."

Even in difficult times there are many things we can do at home to help children as well as teenagers to feel less worried.

Early exposure to technology helps children accumulate information quickly, opening up new ways for them to understand the world. At the same time, however, the online environment can put many of its most vulnerable users at risk.

"One Thousand Gifts" describes the beautiful revolt of a soul that does not want to be crippled by what it has lost, but to pierce its own suffering like an arrow springing from the bow of grace, a leitmotif of the whole book.

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

“In the works of Comenius one feels that a prophet is speaking; he was indeed a colossal figure, but only in recent years have his ideas received the respect they merit”.

Roberto Badenas is a Seventh-day Adventist who specialises in Bible studies and is a New Testament teacher, with a theological leadership career that reflects his concern for people.