Social

From a distance, it looked like a simple picture of a tree: nothing very artistic—more of a sketch in subtle shades of brown and green. But as I looked closer I noticed something unusual. The tree had been constructed out of words and phrases. Someone had collected snippets of information about their family and their ancestors, and written it down to form the...

While the form and content of books may evolve, their essence and function will remain unchanged—“the book will remain what it is”. This is the view expressed by renowned literary figures Jean-Claude Carrière and Umberto Eco in their 2009 dialogue series titled This is Not the End of the Book.

Elspeth Muir’s brother, Alexander, died from drowning. It was 2009, and he had just turned 21. He died from drowning, but his death “was not foreshadowed by his love of water except that it explains why he was near a river, alone, with a blood-alcohol content of almost 0.25. My brother died because he was drunk, and because the drink made him stupid.”

In the age of the internet and the “global village,” an irrational fear taking hold in a small American town can easily go viral, reaching and affecting us all. Once online, news—whether true or false—can have a corrosive effect, leading us to feel cynical about the future and to hold low expectations for our leaders.

Holiday greetings are a nice custom, but they are also an opportunity to assess how much we care about each other, how much we have grown closer or, on the contrary, how much we have grown apart over the past year.

"I'm 14 years old — and I'm sick and tired of social media." (Riley Jackson)

Walk into any shop and you will find yourself having to choose between not only hundreds of different products but even numerous varieties of a single product. You have two choices: settle for something good or search for the perfect choice. One of these choices will make you unhappy.

Footballers are often in the headlines for their off-field antics more than their on-field achievements. So, it is no real surprise that the greatest story...

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.

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

“Why are you still single?” Even though I have been asked this question countless times, I still never know how to answer it. 

Happiness must come naturally – and this is true for success: you must let it happen simply by not obsessing over it.

Lace-edged rumours wafted through the student campus in Sagunto, Spain: Devin, one of the American boys who had come to Spain for a year of study, was dating Teresa, a second-year theology student who was hard to miss. Her striking beauty and cheerful nature attracted gazes like a magnet. No one suspected then, not even the protagonists of this relationship, that their love...

Two recent stories in Australian media shocked me to my core. Two 12-year-olds in different states took their own lives after being bullied at school. 

The inability of the mind to concentrate on what one is experiencing in a particular moment has the effect of overshadowing the joy of a day, even when the subject of the wandering thoughts is as pleasant as can be.