Are you being watched?

On 17 March 2018, the world felt naked thanks to social media giant Facebook. It was confirmed that 87 million users’ personal information had been shared through an app developed by British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.

When online chats turn dangerous

Sexual extortion or “sextortion” is a form of blackmail where someone threatens to share an intimate image or video of you unless you meet their demands. Often, they’ll intimidate you by threatening to send the compromising content to everybody on your contact list unless you send money or more explicit images or videos of yourself.

Rest for our souls

What we do in our free time reveals who we are when we step out of the whirlwind of daily tasks. But the projects and relationships to which we devote our free moments also reveal who we will become. At the end of the journey, people see the value of every second much more clearly, and often realise that rest—physical rest, but more...

What we can learn from our children

The relationship between a parent and their child is one of the most significant in their lives, with its primary role being education.

Does shopping addiction really exist?

Maria is 21 years old. She is in her third year at the Academy of Economic Studies and has been working and paying rent for a year. Ever since she reached economic independence, she started going out in the city and being very concerned about the way she looks.

Looking back on small acts of great kindness

This article contains stories of kindness, courage and generosity. By their simplicity they prove that all it takes to do good is a heart that is open to the needs of others.

Learn to fight smart in your relationship

Couples do not break up because they fight, but because they do not know how to argue, relationship therapists say, underlining the functional components of the differences between partners.

Life really is beautiful

Graeme Frauenfelder, 56, didn’t realise until he was an adult that he was the victim of a mental health problem that affects 1.8 per cent of Australian males and 1.7 per cent of females. He’d assumed that his feelings were typical of any kid. But Graeme’s problem has a name. It’s bipolar disorder, which used to be called manic depression. Bipolar disorder is...

The inferiority complex and how to combat it

A lack of self confidence is like a stain that doesn't go away by itself. It is like oil dripping out of a machine, its drops collecting in the puddle of an inferiority complex. Such a problem is difficult to mitigate, even with motivational speeches or hopeful injections of fragile optimism.

The colours of silence

The hues of the rainbow, once considered the seal of peace between God and humanity in the Bible, have, in just a few years, become the symbol of an ideological conflict among people in a society where the “shame axis” spins according to the dictates of the public agenda.

“Facing Suffering: Courage and Hope in a challenging world” | Book review

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.

Colour you happy

Happiness is . . . ? How would you finish the sentence? What do you think happiness is? Positive psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky, in The How of Happiness, says it is is “the experience of joy, contentment, or positive wellbeing, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile.”

Freedoms on the verge of extinction

"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force." (Ayn Rand)

How can family conflict bring relatives closer?

Family conflict? The fact that not only milk and honey flow within our families, and conflicts crop up more often than we would like, is not new to anyone. Experience teaches us that people who share a roof as well as a last name clash in their opinions or behaviours in direct proportion to the number of hours they spend together.

The summer to end all summers

Growing up, a fixture of my childhood was the iconic Aussie summer. I spent many of my early years either indoors with the air conditioning turned up full-blast, or swimming in our local watering hole. The scorching sun was a constant, with days of humid weather on the east coast or dry, oven-like temperatures in the west.