The Prime Minister should walk his talk about empowering women and confront the powerful IVF industry Indian author and activist Pinki Virani has been given a national award for her book Bitter Chocolate: Child Sexual Abuse in India, which ripped the lid off the extent of this secretive crime in Indian homes across class and gender […]
Don’t like guns? Fine. Just remember other people (mostly men) are at your beck and call carrying guns so that you don’t have to. Somebody has to have the courage to do what you would rather not. Have some gratitude.
A tale of family traditions and the inculturation of a Christian feast. My great grandfather was the first Christian in my family tree. I figure he converted to Catholicism around the time of the first World War. Like nearly all his contemporaries, he was polygamous. He did not quite get why he needed to leave […]
Western exceptionalism is one of the fiercest battlegrounds of contemporary history. And far from being a purely academic argument, it has immediate repercussions on today’s culture wars.
We’ve selected 20 films from the hundreds released during 2019. Not all of them are Oscar material, but they all have that combination of artistry, engagement and reasonably humane values which put them a cut above the rest. We’ve done our best to cater for all ages and interests. No doubt we’ve left out some […]
With the release of “The Rise of Skywalker”, last weekend, there have now been nine “Star Wars” movies. And with the saga coming to an end, without delivering any spoilers for the latest and last film, we can now say one thing, definitively: Palpatine, Darth Sidious, Emperor of the Galaxy, was the good guy, all […]
In the December Scientific American, brain expert Christof Koch takes up the question of whether a machine will ever manifest consciousness. This seemingly abstruse issue may arise in actual systems sooner than we think, and so considering it is worth doing before it happens.
There’s a couple of days to Christmas and there’s no better way to capture some of the magic than to forget the shopping and the drinks for a while and enjoy some of the wonderful traditions that make Christmas so memorable and special. 1. Indulge in Christmas baking Nothing else smells quite like Christmas […]
A docudrama on the mission of a Polish nun who inspired the Divine Mercy movement has returned to Irish cinemas in December after theatres experienced a popular demand during its first showing.
The dispute between Israel Folau and Rugby Australia may have ended last week but it was only one of the more prominent cases involving religious discrimination with many other incidents in Australia and overseas receiving far less, if any, media coverage. The substantial harm experienced by victims of religious discrimination supports the need for effective legal protection and the […]
On 7th December, the National Graves Association unveiled a statue in Finglas commemorating Liam Mellows who was executed on December 8, 1922 by Free State forces. Mellows was born in Lancashire into a British army family. When his father was transferred to Dublin he spent some years with his mother’s family in Wexford. He joined […]
The prospect of “designer babies” is both a dream and a nightmare. For a growing number of companies, it is not just a dream, but the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The Hong Kong company Gene Discovery offers its customers genetic testing for their children’s “talent” — IQ, emotional IQ, nutrition metabolism, expertise […]