There is a scene in ‘America’s Sweethearts’ where John Cusack holds his head in his hands and chants “I am grateful for the sun. I am grateful for the trees” and so on ad infinitum. The general depression of my temporary unemloyed exile in my parents’ home in mouldy Glasgow (it has not stopped raining [...]

As Thomas Hobbes almost said, the lives of many of our ancestors were nasty, brutish and short. While nastiness and brutishness may still be making the rounds, the duration of life in modern Western society has expanded beyond the wildest dreams of our forefathers.
We now laugh in the face of the infections that only [...]