Pregnancy: Understanding the role of relationships, and mental health for healthy conception |  Photo Credit: iStock Images

New Delhi: We are witnessing the breakdown of relationships all around us. While it is sad that this is happening, it is nothing new. Humanity has always faced problems, both at a collective and an individual level. What we see happening around us now has only changed in intensity and phase. The basic root of the problem remains the same.

The relationship between a mother and her child is said to be the purest, but we are now seeing families not wanting to have children, terminating them before they are born, or having children and then abandoning them to the care of housekeepers. How did this happen? This is a social problem arising out of many factors. Society in many countries around the world is at a stage comparable to the 1930s and 40s in America when women want to work and walk step by step in the competition alongside men. There is nothing wrong in it, but it should not be at the cost of something more important. If we go back to the root of our many problems, we can identify selfishness as the main factor, closely followed by competitiveness. But, the competition also has its roots in selfishness! It is all about I, me and mine. This means that togetherness is lost and relationships are forgotten. In this article,Kamlesh D Patel (Daaji), Guide of Heartfulness Institute, talks about the role of relationships and mental health in conception, especially as we experience a fall in both during the pandemic.

The fundamental question is do we really want our relationships to work? If yes, is there a price that we are willing to pay for this to happen? Relationships are not a one-way street. They require trust and sacrifice. When we listen to someone with a lot of love, we display consideration and empathy. Submissiveness and surrender were once glorious virtues, but today these qualities are ridiculed. It is worth remembering that we are all human beings with defects. We have to learn to let go and be forgiving. For this, we need to work on ourselves and make wise choices.

When it comes to the conception of a baby, the attitude of the parents towards the pregnancy is very important. There is a world of difference between welcoming new life with joy and being unhappy about a pregnancy. The root of problems between children and parents often lies in rejection that has originated during the time of conception and pregnancy. The attitude of parents at the moment of conception determines the nature of the incoming soul and quality of their progeny. The future growth of the embryo and rearing of the children depend on external circumstances.

Dr. Bruce Lipton, in his book The Biology of Belief1, observes that genetic patterns and changes depend upon external circumstances. For example, when we are in a fight, our limbs are active. The sympathetic nervous system dominates and adrenaline rushes, making the blood flow to the limbs. Now, lets imagine a situation where a pregnant mother lives in hostile surroundings and is forced to always be in defensive mode. The adrenaline in her bloodstream crosses the blood barrier and reaches the placenta. The foetus reaction to the presence of adrenaline is the same as that of the mother. The limbs of the foetus are supplied with a lot of blood at the cost of other organs. Brain centres are also activated because of these neurotransmitters. Dr Lipton goes on to conclude that in an unbalanced family, where there is no harmony, children will be born with longer limbs and the back of their brains more developed. Children born to understanding parents in harmonious families will have well-developed frontal lobes and cognitive abilities. The environment that children are born into affects their health and quality of life.

Parents (and parents-to-be) share everything that is good and bad with their child, right from the moment of (or even before) conception. This includes attitudes such as confidence and emotions such as fear. Even when one is alone, inner harmony with oneself ones inner nature is very important. This connection with the inner self also affects the child. The solution to achieve the right balance is available for everyone who wishes to use it.

Meditation helps us see things before we even think of doing them. This is because we observe our thoughts during the process. We are many steps ahead because we are not only looking at the action or the immediate phase before an action is taken but also already observing ourselves when we are in a state of intention. We regulate and fine-tune our intentions. We ask, Should I have such intentions in my heart? and our heart always guides us with a yes or no. Thus, we are able to prevent conflicts before they happen. In this, it is like vaccination, which helps to prevent a disease before it happens.

Meditation helps us evaluate whether our thinking is right or wrong, beneficial or not beneficial. So, when we meditate, we are able to see a clearer picture. This is the reason we are able to maintain an introspective process and see what is important and what is not important. The heart speaks louder than anything when we are listening to it. The more we listen to it, the more it guides us in the right direction. People often ask the question, What can one do with eyes closed? With our eyes closed, we are able to see things clearly, including our future and the future of others. We are able to see our intentions and clear them properly so that we can all support each other.

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Disclaimer: Tips and suggestions mentioned in the article are for general information purposes only and should not be construed as professional medical advice. Always consult your doctor or a professional healthcare provider if you have any specific questions about any medical matter.

Original post:
Pregnancy: Understanding the role of relationships, and mental health for healthy conception - Times Now

Novak Djokovic of Serbia during the ATP Cup in Melbourne / AFP on February 5, 2021

Amid isolation, proven injuries or fears and a lack of competition, this is the unreadable Australian Open, which starts in Melbourne on Monday, where Novak Djokovic will aim for his 9th title, his 18th major.

The good news, however, is that after more or less fourteen days of isolation with Covit-19, players will find themselves in the public domain because organizers have announced they want to allow 25,000 to 30,000 visitors a day into Melbourne Park.

. Joko and Le Joker

I feel right at home, and especially at Rod Laver, the main court this week at the Melbourne Park campus, which hosts the first Grand Slam of the season.

He is well prepared. When you come out of an intensive training set, a few days before the ATP Cup and the Australian Open, you dont want to take too many risks, he explained, explaining that he supported a physiotherapy session, even though it was missing the first set of an exhibition match on January 29th.

That day, like many players, he suffered from blisters on his hands after not playing for a long time.

The current best hard player should be the man to win in this 2021 edition.But if he is undeniable in the game, his attitude is competitive.

He was disqualified for accidentally directing a lineman with a ball at the last US Open, and again raised criticism during the isolation imposed on players upon his arrival in Melbourne.

READ Zapada doubled over Atlanta against Ajax in Bergamo

Isolated in VIP conditions in Adelaide with the freeing of tennis, he sought to improve on the isolated conditions of his colleagues confined to Melbourne. But these plans (including the provision of homes with tennis courts and the best quality food) addressed the organization did not have the expected impact.

The Prime Minister of the State of Victoria answered firmly No and some of the players were harsh.

Some people need to make public everything they try to do to help others, Rafael Nadal commented. Nick Kyrgios called Djokovic a Maran and Stan Wawrinka mocked the plans made from Adelaide? Ahaha .

. Enemies

Australian Open 2021: 5 players to follow / AFP

The draw with Djokovic was tough. In the absence of Roger Federer, the Serbs will have to fight hard from the 16th round before reaching a final against Natal, who is aiming for the men s record of 21 Grand Slam titles. He defeated Stan Wawrinka (18th) or Milos Ronnick (15th), Alexander Sverev (7th) and Dominic Theme (3rd) in last years final, but then the more confident one can stand in his way. Won his first major at the US Open.

At the bottom of the table, Nadal said that if he recovers physically (he quit playing in the ATP Cup this week, he has not played in the tournament since the Masters semifinals in November), then Tsitsipas (6th) will have to wait until the quarters where Stefanos is, then Daniel Medvedev (4th). The latter, like his comrade Andrei Rublev (8th), confirmed the spectacular end to the 2020 season during the ATP Cup, by presenting Russia with its first ATP Cup.

READ Manchester's Park Life has moved its 2021 edition to September

Australian Ashley Party on February 5, 2021 in Melbourne / AFP.

Among the French, we mainly trust Monfils (11th) in the Mon, who can face Svere in the 8th.

In the womens table, as the hierarchy continues to grow, Corbyn Muguruza (2020 final) and Ashley Party (World No. 1), in particular, have shown great ambitions by reaching the final of the Yarra Valley, which was won by the Australians. Serena Williams will continue her quest for the 24th Major to balance Margaret Courts record.

. Difficulties

Australian Open 2021: Watch 5 Players / AFP

Several players, including Nadal, Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka, Simona Halep, Victoria Azarenka and Bianca Andres, have either dropped out of the game or have been sidelined, announcing injuries in pre-season matches for OA. Often, in the Majors view, they are just trying to protect themselves physically.

But former World No. 1 Jim Courier underscored the critical aspect of the mental attitude after 14 days of isolation (72 players were restricted from being allowed to leave when they were entitled to 5 hours a day for training). Players have already expended a lot of mental energy to achieve the right mood. Some people told me I didnt have much, said American.

Originally posted here:
Djokovic against the rest of the world - The Press Stories

Anything the Department of Education and Skills can do moving forward to minimise that level of stress, we would be focused on doing that.

The level of stress the minister is referring to is the stress felt by Leaving Certificate students as they face the prospect of sitting their State Examinations in the midst of a pandemic. It has become increasingly obvious, however, that students across Ireland are now feeling let down by the Department of Education and Skills, as it seems that they have done little to alleviate the undue stress felt by the 2021 Leaving Cert students.

The stubborn attitude the department took on school closures, and the 2021 Leaving Cert, has had a damaging effect on students mental health and well-being. For months, we were promised that schools would not face an additional closure, and that the 2021 Leaving Cert would be fair and accommodating.

Unfortunately, it has become abundantly clear that the department has failed on these promises.

Students have lost their trust and faith in a system that promised to keep their best interests at heart.

Every day, the student body of Ireland is subjected to another day of uncertainty with regards to our State Exams. This uncertainty surrounding the exams has put a massive strain on both Leaving Cert and Junior Cert students throughout the last year.

The discrepancies that the student body is being presented with is having an overwhelmingly negative effect on our well-being and welfare. Is this the standard to which students mental health and well-being are hanging upon?

We continue to live in uncertain and terrifying times as it is, and the students of Ireland deserve better than this. We deserve better than being kept out of the loop in matters that are directly affecting our well-being, our education, and our future.

These school closures bring about a great deal of multifaceted issues that sixth year students in Ireland are having to face for a second time, and it is painfully clear what students need: answers. What makes this lack of clarity even more frustrating is the fact that we saw the exact same situation happen with last years Leaving Cert students.

The class of 2020 was kept in the dark and left ill-informed for how their own exams would proceed, with detrimental effects on their mental health. In fact, these students were forced to wait until just one month before the proposed start date of the Leaving Cert 2020 before they learned of the exams unanticipated cancellation.

The time missed by sixth years was always going to be an issue. With the closure of schools now extending into February, sixth-year students will be missing out on five months of in-class tuition.

A lack of face-to-face teaching and an absence of mock examinations has left the class of 2021 ill-equipped and unprepared for a traditional Leaving Cert.

Sixth year students will have missed out on five full months of a curriculum spread out in just under two years. This is a significant chunk of the course missing, and if the traditional exams go ahead in June, students will be sitting an exam in subjects with a curriculum that has only been roughly 72% covered.

The prospect of potentially sitting such an exam in June with little-to-no adequate exam preparation is just one of the many things that are causing a great deal of distress for exam year students across the country.

With this attitude in mind, the Irish Second-Level Students Union (ISSU), the national representative body for second-level students, consulted and engaged with students and asked them the key question - what format they thought the 2021 Leaving Cert should take.

The ISSU consulted with over 20,000 students to allow them to express their thoughts and opinions on how the State Exams should be run. Across Ireland, the student voice was heard loud and clear - over 81% of respondents indicated they wanted the choice between calculated grades or sitting an in-person exam.

After all, isnt this the most accommodating option, and arguably the fairest? The class of 2021 has endured more stress and anxiety in one year alone than anyone should face in a lifetime - why now should our opinion be exempt from how we believe our exams should be run?

The ISSU has set up a dedicated hub of online learning resources with the aim of simplifying Department guidelines and providing clear statements around students' rights during online learning. Read more below All resources are available at: https://t.co/VXI9rbcZWa pic.twitter.com/PRQxJRcWXo

Many feel that opening up the choice to students is a turn in the wrong direction. But to create a Leaving Cert that is fair and accommodating means creating an exam that is equitable.

The student experience of school closure has been varied; while some students have thrived from remote learning, more have fallen drastically behind in the curriculum, plighted by stress, anxiety, and uncertainty around the Leaving Cert.

Its at times like this that the student voice should not be divided, but united.

We should stop fighting with each other on whether a traditional Leaving Cert or calculated grades is the most suitable option, but come together and fight for a common cause - for equity and fairness, for an accommodating Leaving Cert, and most of all, for answers.

Read the original post:
Analysis: What format should the 2021 Leaving Cert take? - Irish Examiner

If you think back to the first lockdown, many people took to baking banana bread, others took to learning a new language or instrument with the extra free time they had.

Lockdown gave us a time to slow down and enjoy hobbies wed neglected. It also got us to rediscover the little things in life we can take pride in.

Gianni Clifford reconnected with his childhood hobby and took the time to recreate his favourite Dublin pubs that have been closed since last March.

His quarantine hobby of building Lego has resulted in a collaboration with the Danish toy giant.

The 35 year old shared his work on Instagram which captured the beauty of the citys traditional spots in a time when we miss them most.

The Instagram account @dublinbricks has built a steady fan base since Dublin Enquirer interviewed Clifford last November.

To date, he has recreated the following iconic boozers: Grogans, Anseo, The Long Hall on Georges Street, The Lord Edward Pub, The Bernard Shaw, and The Harold House.

Gianni has even added tiny customers and creamy pints of Guinness into his recreations.

He also included DJ decks in the Bernard Shaw, a dartboard in the Harold House, toasties in Grogans and there are also some replica packets of Tayto.

He told RTE that he was always big fan of Lego, and has been building it since he was a kid.

Speaking about his creations he said: "It's obviously something we're all particularly missing now. I think pubs symbolise a lot, they symbolise the place where you go and meet your friends.

"I think I speak for myself and many others probably, in that I would do anything to be in a pub and see some of those friends and have some hugs and some cheers as well."

He embraced his love of Lego as a way to get through lockdowns, he said it gave him a sense of "escapism" and it was a "really, really positive thing"

"To be able to do a hobby like this, where you're being creative, you're trying to figure some things out but you're also getting a lot of escapism from your day to day.

He highlighted that his hobby was positive towards his mental health.

Clifford has also been creating replicas of popular spots in the city such as the generating station in Poolbeg, Leo Burdock's chipper, the first floor of the National History Museum, and Green 19 restaurant.

You can visit Giannis website here and purchase his Lego recreations here.

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Dublin pubs: Lego artist recreates the citys iconic boozers with tiny bricks - Dublin Live

Todays birthdays

Janet Suzman, actress, 82

Carole King, singer/songwriter, 79

Joe Pesci, actor, 78

Mia Farrow, actress, 76

Gordon Strachan, football manager, 64

Sandy Lyle, golfer, 63

Glenn McGrath, former cricketer, 51

Darren Ferguson, football manager, 49

Tom Hiddleston, actor, 40

Michael B Jordan (pictured), actor, 34

Rose Leslie, actress, 34

1540: The first recorded horse racing meeting in Britain was held at the Roodeye Field, Chester.

1855: The Devils Footprints appeared in snowbound South Devon 100miles of cloven hoofprints, eight inches apart in a single line and measuring four inches by two.

1865: Mrs Patrick Campbell, the actress famous for creating roles such as Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion (1914), was born Beatrice Tanner in London. Her stage name came from her elopement in 1884 with a Patrick Campbell and she kept it despite a later marriage as well as a well-documented relationship with the playwright George Bernard Shaw.

1891: Ronald Colman, English actor who became a romantic star in Hollywood, was born in Richmond, Surrey. His films included The Prisoner Of Zenda.

1893: The worlds first public striptease took place at the Moulin Rouge in Paris.

1942: Soap rationing began in Britain.

1949: Actor Robert Mitchum was jailed in Los Angeles for smoking marijuana.

1961: The Beatles made their first appearance at Liverpools Cavern Club during a lunchtime session.

1964: Beatlemania gripped America as around 70million tuned in to see the Fab Four on the Ed Sullivan Show.

1981: Rock n roller Bill Haley died. He spearheaded the 1950s rock revolution with Rock Around The Clock.

2020: The Solar Orbiter, a spacecraft designed and built in the UK, prepared for launch on its journey to unlock the secrets of the Sun.

I like to think Ive got a pretty high tolerance. I wear a lot of glitter and I wear a lot of armour and I also wear my heart on my sleeve, but it gets broken a lot Singer Miley Cyrus (pictured) during her star-studded pre-Super Bowl performance.

You dont always have to be doing something. You can just be, and thats plenty US author Alice Walker

Visit link:
On this day: February 9 - Metro Newspaper UK

Ahead of the next covid-19 known unknowns webinar, Allyson Pollock discusses the uncertainties around testing for SARS-CoV-2 in asymptomatic people

The topic of our next The BMJ/MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit covid-19 webinar is testing for SARS-CoV-2 in asymptomatic people. It continues the theme of our previous webinars, which have looked at public health interventions that have been rolled out without adequate evaluation of the dataeither data that are already available or data which are being collected during the rollout. Mass testingand mass testing of asymptomatic people in particularin schools, universities, care homes, hospitals, prisons, communities, and workplaces is close to an evidence-free zone. While many countries agencies (e.g. Germanys Robert Koch Institute, or the European Centre for Disease Prevention & Control), and the UKs SAGE committee, advise that the focus of effort and resources should be on identifying symptomatic people and their contacts, the UK government sees mass testing simply as another world-beating initiative. [1,2]

Finding and diagnosing symptomatic people, tracing their contacts, and isolating cases and contacts are the classic tools of communicable disease control. Sounds simple? In practice, each of these little steps is a complex task involving multiple organisations and different types of professionals. Miss a step and you miss the opportunity to break the chains of infection and transmission. Our success rate isnt good. Almost a year into the covid-19 pandemic, the effectiveness of the UKs contact tracing, the key intervention for breaking the chain of transmission, has still not been evaluated; fewer than 20% of people isolate, with financial constraints and caring responsibilities the main impediments to compliance. [3] According to media reports an estimated 22bn has been spent so far on test and trace for symptomatic people for which the benefits are still uncertain.

When it comes to testing for covid-19, the fundamental tenets of public health have been set aside. Community testing has been divorced from health services, bypassing GPs, NHS labs, and public health departments. [4] Instead of rebuilding capacity in the public system, the government has funded a hugely expensive parallel edifice of fragmented private providers, with no previous experience. For over eight months, GPs were denied access to tests and results for their patients. [5] The tests themselves are being used outside their prescribed purpose, and manufacturers instructions, namely, clinical correlation with patient history and other diagnostic information is necessary to determine infection status are ignored. [6]

In August 2020, Tony Blairs Institute for Global Change felt sufficiently confident to issue two reports advocating mass testing and credentiallingno test, no travel, no work, no play. [7] Jeremy Hunt, one of the reports co-signatories and current chair of the Health Select Committee, has been an enthusiastic supporter of mass testing, and the Health Select Committee has thus far failed to address the lack of evidence in support of mass testing.

In September 2020, leaked government documents revealed the scale of planned expenditure on mass testing to be 100bn, almost 70% of the NHS annual budget for England in 2019. Hundreds of millions of tests have been purchased so far, prior to evaluations in field settings.

While theres an understandable desire to move fast, pandemic preparedness should have ensured systems were in place to ensure robust procurement and allow for some form of evaluation.

The true test of intelligence is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we dont know what to do.[8] The billions of pounds spent on contracts for tests without formal tender and bypassing tendering procedures reveals that thus far commercial interests have trumped the public health concerns.

Communicable disease know-how built up over a century and more has been ignored. Experts in public health and communicable disease control and on the UK National Screening Committee have been sidelined, and replaced by captains of industry, most notably the appointment of Dido Harding and outsourcing of testing and tracing to Serco, Deloitte, and Amazon.

The long established rules and standards for scientific evaluation have not been followed. And nowhere is this more evident than in the reporting of UK test and trace data on cases. These make no distinction between people who are asymptomatic, presymptomatic, paucisymptomatic, and symptomatic, or whether infectious or not. A case is simply a positive test, regardless of symptoms and purpose of testing. And yet a case definition is key to evaluating the effectiveness of screening, contact tracing, and estimating secondary attack rates. [9] To add to the confusion and blur, since 27 January 2021 people testing positive with lateral flow tests (LFTs) are counted as cases under track and trace, and confirmatory PCR is no longer required. [10]

Since 10 January mass testing using LFTs has been ramped up across local authorities such that LFTs now number approximately 350,000 tests or more each day, outnumbering PCR tests. [11,12]

Given that all screening programmes do harm; some do good as well, and, of these, some do more good than harm at reasonable cost. [13] It is crucial to address the question as to whether mass testing of healthy people is cost effectivenot least given the scale of spending.

The uncertainties generated by the failure to follow the fundamental principles and establish the purpose of testing programmes including costs, benefits, and harms has created space for division. To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, the test of good science and evidence is seeing how people behave in a quarrel.

Until we subject mass testing programmes and other non pharmaceutical interventions to rigorous evaluation in the way we are required to do for medicines or vaccines, disputes over whether LFTs are more sensitive and more likely to detect infectious people than PCR tests, and the effectiveness of test and trace (including whether screening asymptomatic people is more effective than test and trace for symptomatic people at breaking chains of transmission ) are unsubstantiatedleaving us in the realm of unknowns. [14]

Details of the content and free registration for the next covid webinar is here. The next webinar will be about covid-19 testing in asymptomatic people #covidunknowns on 11 February 2021, 16:00-18:00.

Allyson M Pollock, Professor in Public Health, Population Health Sciences Institute, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK

Competing interests: AP was a member of Independent SAGE.

References:

Read the original post:
Allyson Pollock: Testing, testing...for SARS-CoV-2 in asymptomatic people - The BMJ - The BMJ

Do you ever think of showers as like a new beginning? 20-year-old Leeds-based songwriter Amber Strawbridge asks on the opening track of her new EP, Sometimes I Forget Youre Human Too. The project, out today via Clue Records, indeed marks a kind of new beginning for the dream-pop artist, who was born in Whitehaven, Cumbria and started making songs on GarageBand while literally bored at her grandmothers place. After releasing a series of singles on SoundCloud as well as Isolation Tape, in her words a kind of random release that nevertheless allowed her to further explore her sound, her latest finds her refining her approach with help from producer Alex Greaves while retaining the lo-fi, bedroom pop charm of her early productions. Nowhere is this more evident than on opener Showers, which conjures the kind of soaring hook youd expect from any of the big names in shoegazey alt-rock, while the title track swirls in a melodic haze and Skin cuts through the messiness of human relationships. With the addition of live drums and gauzy layers of guitars towering above her, it sounds like watching someone beginning to open up to the immensity of the world around them as they reflect on things either lost or forgotten, but no longer completely out of view.

We caught up with Amber Strawbridge aka Bored at My Grandmas House for the latest edition of our Artist Spotlight interview series, where we showcase up-and-coming artists and talk to them about their music.

How are you? How has your day been so far?

Ive not done much today. I went for a walk, that was fun. Im at my parents house at the minute because of lockdown.

I just noticed what does the poster behind you say?

It says, Animals are my friends and I dont eat my friends. Its by Bernard Shaw, whos a really great writer.

Are you interested in veganism and animal rights?

Yeah, I mean, Im vegan, so.

Me too actually, which is why that caught my eye. This isnt how these interviews normally start!

Yeah, I was raised veggie, so its kind of always been normal to me. And then I went vegan around five years ago.

Thats really cool. And from what I understand, you also grew up in a kind of musical family and around many instruments? Do you have any early memories of being drawn to music?

My parents used to just take me to loads of different little festivals. They were just really weird hippie festivals with like, gypsy jazz, folk music, that kind of stuff. So I was just always surrounded by loads and loads of different types of we went to, like, Austria, and went to festivals there, so I had a really good childhood in that sense. And my dad plays loads of different instruments like piano and violin. I think he just kind of let me do whatever I wanted, like I cant even play piano or violin, but just having them there and just him playing stuff, I think it probably subconsciously affected me.

What types of music were you exposed to at the time, and what did you find yourself gravitating towards?

I feel like when everybodys younger they kind of just listen to whatever their parents are listening to, so like, Pink Floyd, The Police, David Bowie, that kind of stuff, but also just weird folk bands who I dont even know the name of. And I have an older brother, so then I progressed into liking what he liked, and he just liked loads of indie bands. And when I got a bit older, I just found my own niche, I guess, I went more into shoegazey kind of people.

I got my guitar because I saw Ellie [Rowsell] from Wolf Alice with her guitar and I was like, I want that. And then I just taught myself.

What was it that drew you to shoegaze?

Its actually kind of weird, because I was listening to shoegaze before I actually knew what shoegaze was. So I was listening to bands that were probably influenced by like, Slowdive or Jesus and the Mary Chain, like bigger shoegaze people. And then I started to make music and people would come up to me and be like, Oh, I like how youve got that shoegaze sound and I was like, What? What is shoegaze? I didnt even know what it was, and then I started to get more into it.

When did you go from uploading songs on SoundCloud to deciding you were going to make this EP? How did the idea of the project come about?

For this EP, I did the songs in the first lockdown, so all of them were just recorded when I came back home. And I dont know, I think it was just like, Id been at uni for so many months and at uni its just very fast-paced and like everyones constantly doing stuff and then when I came home, it was kind of a calmness that I could get in touch with my thoughts and everything, and I just wrote a lot.

Its interesting that you mention that, because Im curious about the title of the EP, Sometimes I Forget Youre Human Too. Youve said thats about the realization that not everyone has got it together all the time. Where did that realization come from?

I think I started writing that song at uni, because it was kind of around a time when everyone was just I think for me, Im always like, Oh, I should be doing more work or like, I should be doing better, like Im quite self-critical. And I cant put my finger on it, but just one day I was like, everybody has their own kind of faults or demons that theyre dealing with or whatever. I think it was kind of good for me to know, because the songs kind of me reassuring myself that its okay if youre not 100% amazing all the time. Because, you know, everybody else isnt.

Do you feel that relates at all to being a perfectionist? Is that something that informs how you approach music?

Its weird, because with songs I dont really like to go back to them. I do them as a whole product and then I find it difficult to go back I have a kind of flow of thoughts so I find it difficult to then get back to the same headspace that I was in when I was writing it. So I guess that would be not perfectionism, but I just think in day-to-day life Im quite a perfectionist. I just like to achieve things. [laughs] Im just like, Oh, I cant watch TV because I should be doing this, which is more productive, that kind of thing.

To change the subject a little bit, throughout the EP, I noticed there are a lot of references to water, from Showers to Summer, where you sing about hanging by the lakes, and of course the closing track, Safer at Sea. And I know you grew up in a coastal town as well.

Yeah, thats where Im at.

Was there any particular reason you found yourself returning to that kind of imagery?

You know what, Ive never thought about that, so thats a good point. It wasnt a conscious decision, maybe subconsciously. Maybe its just a safe space or what Im used to, maybe, or have always been surrounded by. I live by the coast, and then I also like 10 minutes out of the Lake District. And I guess in a way, because I came home from uni which is like a city, which is the opposite of my hometown, coming back from somewhere thats busy and just big lights and all that kind of stuff to, like, nature, maybe I was just reconnecting with that. But it wasnt deliberate.

To get to Safer at Sea specifically, which stands out to me lyrically. It feels like quite a vulnerable moment on the record. Do you remember what was going through your mind while writing that song?

I think what it was was, I started writing it during lockdown and there was just lots of things happening. There was something to do with the refugee crisis and like, one of the MPs said something really just horrible. And I was just so angry about it, and I think the line safer at sea its kind of like theres these people who are like, Were gonna travel across the sea to try and come to a safe space, and then theyve been met with horrible bigotry and it just contradicts what theyre hoping for. So the sea in the middle is like the safe space when theres not that, and none of society. And then I just kind of thought, maybe everyones safer at sea, like theres no racism, sexism, anything, its just peaceful. And then in the verses, I was kind of expressing how I feel a bit distant from society sometimes.

Could you talk more about that feeling?

I think its when things like that happen, like when I hear somebody say something that I just do not understand at all, I just dont understand how people like that can exist. And then because you live in a bubble, like I live with people who are on the same wavelength and we all have kind of similar opinions, I think its easy to get trapped in the thought that everyone thinks like you, whereas if you watch the news you can easily see that not everythings the same.

Thats interesting, it sounds like you feel strongly about injustice in general, and maybe that relates back to veganism as well?

Yeah, definitely. During the time I was writing, it was the comment about the refugees that really pissed me off, but the thing as a whole is like, you know, if everybody was vegan, if everybody wasnt racist or xenophobic, it would just be a better place. And obviously, thats not what it is at the minute, so the sea is kind of a better place. I think thats what I meant at the time.

I know you recently put together a band do you have any plans that youre excited about in the coming months or anything that youre working on currently?

Well, my band is just going to be my live band, so Im still gonna do everything myself and record it all myself. But I really, really wanna do gigs, thats my main thing. Ive got a catalog of songs now that are ready, so hopefully that will happen soon.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

Bored at My Grandmas Houses Sometimes I Forget Youre Human Too EP is out now via Clue Records.

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Artist Spotlight: Bored at My Grandmas House - Our Culture - Our Culture Mag

George Bernard Shaw is one of the most celebrated writers to emerge from Ireland and is the only person to have won an Oscar and a Nobel Prize in Literature.

The only man in the world to have won a Nobel Prize for Literature (Pygmalion) and an Oscar (for the screenplay of Pygmalion), George Bernard Shaw was a rare wit, journalist, author, and iconic Irishman,born on July 26, in 1856.He died on November 2, 1950, at the age of 94 while he was working on his next play.

His lifes work includes over 60 plays, as well as highly esteemed works of journalism, essays, novels, and short stories. He was also co-founder of the London School of Economics. His works engaged on many social issues including education, marriage, religion, government, healthcare, and class privilege.

George Bernard Shaw, pictured here circa 1920 (Getty Images)

Shaw was born on Synge Street, in Dublins city center on July 26, 1856, to George Carr Shaw, an unsuccessful grain merchant, and Lucinda Elizabeth Shaw, ne Gurly, a singer. He attended Wesley College, a Methodist grammar school, before being transferred to Dublin's Central Model School. He ended his formal education at the Dublin English Scientific and Commercial Day School.

At 16, Shaws mother followed her voice teacher to London, Shaw's two sisters going with her. He remained in Dublin and worked as a clerk in a real estate office.

In 1876 he joined his mother in London. His mothers partner George Vandeleur Lee provided him with a pound a week affording him to visit public libraries and the British Museum reading room where he studied earnestly and began writing novels. His literary earnings remained negligible until 1885 when he became self-supporting as a critic of the arts.

In 1884 he joined the Fabian Society, turning his attention to politics. The societys goal was the transformation of England through a more vibrant political and intellectual base.

A year after he joined he began to get some writing work in the form of book reviews and art, music, and theater criticism.

George Bernard Shaw, circa 1946 (Getty Images)

In 1895, he was brought aboard the Saturday Review as its theater critic. It was at this point that Shaw began writing plays.

His first plays were published in volumes titled "Plays Unpleasant" (containing Widowers' Houses, The Philanderer and Mrs. Warren's Profession) and "Plays Pleasant" (which had Arms and the Man, Candida, The Man of Destiny and You Never Can Tell).

They were filled with his signature wit along with a healthy dose of social criticism.

Around the period he wrote, Caesar and Cleopatra (1898) his works came into their own.

In 1903, Shaw wrote Man and Superman, whose third act, "Don Juan in Hell," achieved a status larger than the play itself and is often staged as a separate play entirely. While Shaw would write plays for the next 50 years, the plays written in the 20 years after Man and Superman became foundational plays in his oeuvre. Works such as Major Barbara (1905), The Doctor's Dilemma (1906), Androcles and the Lion (1912) and Saint Joan (1923) established Shaw as a front line and popular dramatist of his day.

In 1912 came his most famous play, Pygmalion, which won him a Nobel Prize and eventually an Oscar. Amazingly, Shaw turned down the opportunity to be a Member of Parliament and all other honors or prizes.

Looking for Irish book recommendations or to meet with others who share your love for Irish literature? Join IrishCentrals Book Club on Facebook and enjoy our book-loving community.

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

A happy family is but an earlier heaven.

Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.

People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.

There is no sincerer love than the love of food.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance.

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

George Bernard Shaw, pictured here in 1925 (Getty Images)

What's your favorite piece of work from George Bernard Shaw? Let us know in the comments!

*Originally published in October 2014.

Excerpt from:
The life and greatest quotes of George Bernard Shaw, Nobel Prize and Oscar winner - IrishCentral

Theres a mesmerizing video animation on YouTube of simulated, self-driving traffic streaming through a six-lane, four-way intersection. Dozens of cars flow through the streets, pausing, turning, slowing, and speeding up to avoid colliding with their neighbors. And not a single car stopping. But what if even one of those vehicles was not autonomous? What if only one was?

In the coming decades, autonomous vehicles will play a growing role in society, whether keeping drivers safer, making deliveries, or increasing accessibility and mobility for elderly or disabled passengers.

But MIT Assistant Professor Cathy Wu argues that autonomous vehicles are just part of a complex transport system that may involve individual self-driving cars, delivery fleets, human drivers, and a range of last-mile solutions to get passengers to their doorstep not to mention road infrastructure like highways, roundabouts, and, yes, intersections.

Transport today accounts for about one-third of U.S. energy consumption. The decisions we make today about autonomous vehicles could have a big impact on this number ranging from a 40 percent decrease in energy use to a doubling of energy consumption.

So how can we better understand the problem of integrating autonomous vehicles into the transportation system? Equally important, how can we use this understanding to guide us toward better-functioning systems?

Wu, who joined the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) and MIT in 2019, is the Gilbert W. Winslow Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering as well as a core faculty member of the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society. Growing up in a Philadelphia-area family of electrical engineers, Wu sought a field that would enable her to harness engineering skills to solve societal challenges.

During her years as an undergraduate at MIT, she reached out to Professor Seth Teller of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory to discuss her interest in self-driving cars.

Teller, who passed away in 2014, met her questions with warm advice, says Wu. He told me, If you have an idea of what your passion in life is, then you have to go after it as hard as you possibly can. Only then can you hope to find your true passion.

Anyone can tell you to go after your dreams, but his insight was that dreams and ambitions are not always clear from the start. It takes hard work to find and pursue your passion.

Chasing that passion, Wu would go on to work with Teller, as well as in Professor Daniela Russ Distributed Robotics Laboratory, and finally as a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, where she won the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society's best PhD award in 2019.

In graduate school, Wu had an epiphany: She realized that for autonomous vehicles to fulfill their promise of fewer accidents, time saved, lower emissions, and greater socioeconomic and physical accessibility, these goals must be explicitly designed-for, whether as physical infrastructure, algorithms used by vehicles and sensors, or deliberate policy decisions.

At LIDS, Wu uses a type of machine learning called reinforcement learning to study how traffic systems behave, and how autonomous vehicles in those systems ought to behave to get the best possible outcomes.

Reinforcement learning, which was most famously used by AlphaGo, DeepMinds human-beating Go program, is a powerful class of methods that capture the idea behind trial-and-error given an objective, a learning agent repeatedly attempts to achieve the objective, failing and learning from its mistakes in the process.

In a traffic system, the objectives might be to maximize the overall average velocity of vehicles, to minimize travel time, to minimize energy consumption, and so on.

When studying common components of traffic networks such as grid roads, bottlenecks, and on- and off-ramps, Wu and her colleagues have found that reinforcement learning can match, and in some cases exceed, the performance of current traffic control strategies. And more importantly, reinforcement learning can shed new light toward understanding complex networked systems which have long evaded classical control techniques. For instance, if just 5 to 10 percent of vehicles on the road were autonomous and used reinforcement learning, that could eliminate congestion and boost vehicle speeds by 30 to 140 percent. And the learning from one scenario often translates well to others. These insights could one day soon help to inform public policy or business decisions.

In the course of this research, Wu and her colleagues helped improve a class of reinforcement learning methods called policy gradient methods. Their advancements turned out to be a general improvement to most existing deep reinforcement learning methods.

But reinforcement learning techniques will need to be continually improved to keep up with the scale and shifts in infrastructure and changing behavior patterns. And research findings will need to be translated into action by urban planners, auto makers and other organizations.

Today, Wu is collaborating with public agencies in Taiwan and Indonesia to use insights from her work to guide better dialogues and decisions. By changing traffic signals or using nudges to shift drivers behavior, are there other ways to achieve lower emissions or smoother traffic?

Im surprised by this work every day, says Wu. We set out to answer a question about self-driving cars, and it turns out you can pull apart the insights, apply them in other ways, and then this leads to new exciting questions to answer.

Wu is happy to have found her intellectual home at LIDS. Her experience of it is as a very deep, intellectual, friendly, and welcoming place. And she counts among her research inspirations MIT course 6.003 (Signals and Systems) a class she encourages everyone to take taught in the tradition of professors Alan Oppenheim (Research Laboratory of Electronics) and Alan Willsky (LIDS). The course taught me that so much in this world could be fruitfully examined through the lens of signals and systems, be it electronics or institutions or society, she says. I am just realizing as Im saying this, that I've been empowered by LIDS thinking all along!

Research and teaching through a pandemic havent been easy, but Wu is making the best of a challenging first year as faculty. (Ive been working from home in Cambridge my short walking commute is irrelevant at this point, she says wryly.) To unwind, she enjoys running, listening to podcasts covering topics ranging from science to history, and reverse-engineering her favorite Trader Joes frozen foods.

Shes also been working on two Covid-related projects born at MIT: One explores how data from the environment, such as data collected by internet-of-things-connected thermometers, can help identify emerging community outbreaks. Another project asks if its possible to ascertain how contagious the virus is on public transport, and how different factors might decrease the transmission risk.

Both are in their early stages, Wu says. We hope to contribute a bit to the pool of knowledge that can help decision-makers somewhere. Its been very enlightening and rewarding to do this and see all the other efforts going on around MIT.

Original post:

Examining the world through signals and systems - MIT News

A snowy scene, Narnia

We must go as quietly as we can, said Mr Tumnus. The whole wood is full ofherspies. Even some of the trees are on her side.

Another snowy scene, a popular hillside in Somerset, January 2021

Its a Sunday and families living under lockdown are having fun near a remote car park, parents building snowmen with their children. Then a police car arrives and parks for a while. Similar scenes happen elsewhere in Britain. Why?

Since the end of the first lockdown in March 2020, this Somerset hillside has never been busier. It has become the go-to place to find some sort of normality.

The local hunt, for example, held a memorial gathering in one of the hills car parks before Christmas for a young lad killed in a car accident. They knew that such a gathering would not be allowed elsewhere.

Why are we all being forced to live like this? Why is the constabulary now becoming such a powerful presence throughout the land? (We couldnt summon any police when we needed them to stop an illegal rave on the same hillside years ago.)

Is it because there is a realisation that the public is losing respect for authority and more coercion will be needed to implement the global Build Back Better agenda?

Maybe the penny has begun to drop that there is insufficient support for fascism, even if it is re-labelled stakeholder capitalism?

Certainly in continental Europe there is growing resistance to Planet Lockdown, often of a violent nature. In Europe they have a better understanding of the nature of fascism, unlike in Britain where we lack historical experience of mass arrests, deportations and arbitrary shootings.

The parallels with the 1930s are, however, becoming obvious to the extent that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, used his contribution to the World Economic Forums annual Davos meeting last month to warn the world. In his view, the situation could develop in an unpredictable and uncontrolled manner and risks a fight of all against all.

Meanwhile, the WEF is trying to distance itself from any accusations that its Great Reset is a conspiracy that is masking some nefarious plan for world domination (?!)

But then its plans are hardly nefarious, given that the WEF is so blatant about its role in bringing together global leaders and mega-corporations to rebuild the world along sustainable lines.

Sadly for the WEF, its own benign belief in its motives is not shared universally. Of the 200,000-plus views of its latest YouTube video, it could muster only 1,500 likes compared with 19,000 dislikes and openly hostile messages in the comments below. Not exactly a good indicator of widespread support. The UK government would do well to take note.

While there might not be agreement about return to pre-Covid ways of living were it possible or whether change is necessary, neither is there any consensus on what form that change should take.

In particular, there is increasing cynicism about an elite group of globalists lecturing us on how to collectively improve life on the planet without destroying it. It does not sit well with the public that the same billionaires who form the WEF are those who have profiteered from their misery during the pandemic.

Mega-corporations and their supporters politicians, financiers, non-governmental organisations, etc also have zero credibility as eco-warriors.

They are more closely associated in the public mind with creating problems rather than solving them. Pollution and destructive business as usual have continued unabated under a cover story of environmentalism.

The examples of cobalt and lithium alone reveal the empty virtue-signalling in the pious rush for the windmills and solar panels that are the basis for the WEFs Build Back Better campaign.

Cobalt and lithium are widely used in electronics for energy storage, whether a solar panel or a mobile phone. Yet the way cobalt is mined (using child labour) is never discussed, nor is the damage to Chiles Atacama desert, where lithium extraction displaces the flamingos. The billionaires have failed so far to provide viable alternatives.

There is also nothing remotely sustainable about increasing our reliance on electricity. It would take only a coronal mass ejection a gigantic release of plasma and magnetic field from the sun to wipe out the National Grid, as Sir Oliver Letwin so eloquently pointed out in his March 2020 bookApocalypse How?It makes no sense that a British government continues to take us on the doomed path that WEF promotes.

History will not judge kindly a government that abandons its people in favour of the diktats of a foreign entity. Our government needs to learn the lesson of Brexit. The British people want their independence. It is the reason we as a nation have been willing to fight wars.

Now is the time for the Government to abandon Build Back Better, and focus instead on building back without the WEFs fake sustainability and its Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is synonymous only with yet more unemployment and misery.

A useful first step would be for the Government to restore hope, at the very least, to the lost generation. The traumatising of the young, and their consequent despair, is one of the most distressing aspects of the mishandling of the pandemic.

The lack of support for the most disadvantaged white working-class boys is nothing short of a scandal. The Government is sending a clear message that these children have no future in the technocratic world.

This attitude toward the disadvantaged speaks to C S Lewiss grim prophecies of the 1940s. In his novelThat Hideous Strength,he blames advances in technology for the reductions in industrial and agricultural workforces, with no mention of retraining.

Instead, a large, unintelligent population is now a deadweight. In his view the masses are therefore to disappear the human race is to become all technology.

In 1945, George Orwell wrote a review in theManchester Guardianof Lewiss novel. The title of the review was The Scientists Take Over.

He believed that Lewiss dystopian vision was realisable and that there could be a time when the common people are to be used as slaves and vivisection subjects by the ruling caste of scientists Man, in short, is to storm the heavens and overthrow the gods, or even become a god himself.In effect, he was predicting transhumanism, artificial intelligence and genetic engineering.

At some point it will become obvious in the UK if the oppression we currently face is about keeping us safe from a virus, or about preparing us for life under the WEF reset.

The pandemic itself is likely to fade. Covid has now replaced seasonal flu in the official statistics, thus suggesting that it is no more deadly than a flu. Cases are on the decline. With Covid gone, what will be the excuse to bully us?

The narrative has already begun to change in the US. No sooner was it clear that Donald Trump would leave the White House, than theNew York Timesran an article suggesting that coronavirus will come to resemble the common cold and be no more than a minor annoyance,and the most draconian governors in California, New York and elsewhere began to lift restrictions.

It would seem that the pandemic had done its job: it left Trumps economy in ruins, and provided the perfect pretext for mail-in ballots and for keeping poll watchers at bay during the election count.

So, when can we expect a similar shift in the UK? Liberation cannot come quickly enough. We are fast turning into a nation of zombies. Nothing is working properly. People cant think straight. They demand vaccines in the hope of a return to normality, but fail to hear the Government telling them that nothing will change. The sunny uplands continue to recede.

We are now facing an unholy mess with a shrunken economy, no shiny new Fourth Industrial Revolution to fill the gap, and the potential for hordes of disaffected and disturbed masses to threaten us all.

Is this what is anticipated for us? We can only hope that there is no significance in the evidence coming from one part of Somerset, where an abandoned quarry is used for training police marksmen.

Locals tell me that the police have recently increased their use of the quarry and the barrage of shots can be heard more frequently over a wide distance. What hope is there?

Maybe, once it has sorted itself out, the US will once again help rescue us from fascism, as it did in the 1940s. My great-grandfather certainly believed in June 1940 that the US would rise to the occasion when he wrote to my grandmother from his hotel in Liverpool before setting sail for the States.

We were pleased to see the Americans when they did finally arrive. But more than 80 years later, perhaps such thoughts of rescue are more fiction than fact. Like Mr Tumnus, we may have to wait instead for The Last Battle for freedom to return, and who knows when that will be?

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The Chronicles of Covid, or why we must kill the Great Reset Witch - The Conservative Woman