Dictionary of Irish Biographies - RIA

The Dictionary of Irish Biography from the earliest times to the year 2002, edited by James McGuire and James Quinn, was published on 18 November 2009 by Cambridge University Press in nine volumes and online. It has been devised, researched, written and edited under the auspices of the Royal Irish Academy’s Dictionary of Irish Biography project.

Covering 9,700 lives in 9,014 articles, the Dictionary is an indispensable work of reference for scholars, journalists, broadcasters, diplomats, and the general reader interested in Ireland’s past or in biography. It is an educational resource of huge potential: 9,700 lives; 700 contributors; 8 million words; over 2000 years of history.
DIB

Oscar Wilde essay: The soul of man under Socialism

THE SOUL OF MAN UNDER SOCIALISM

"The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody. In fact, scarcely any one at all escapes.

Now and then, in the course of the century, a great man of science, like Darwin; a great poet, like Keats; a fine critical spirit, like M. Renan; a supreme artist, like Flaubert, has been able to isolate himself, to keep himself out of reach of the clamorous claims of others, to stand "under the shelter of the wall," as Plato puts it, and so to realise the perfection of what was in him, to his own incomparable gain, and to the incomparable and lasting gain of the whole world. These, however, are exceptions. The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism - are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man's intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.

They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.

But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good; and at last we have had the spectacle of men who have really studied the problem and know the life - educated men who live in the East End - coming forward and imploring the community to restrain its altruistic impulses of charity, benevolence, and the like. They do so on the ground that such charity degrades and demoralises. They are perfectly right. Charity creates a multitude of sins...

...Now, as the State is not to govern, it may be asked what the State is to do. The State is to be a voluntary association that will organise labour, and be the manufacturer and distributor of necessary commodities. The State is to make what is useful. The individual is to make what is beautiful. And as I have mentioned the word labour, I cannot help saying that a great deal of nonsense is being written and talked nowadays about the dignity of manual labour. There is nothing necessary dignified about manual labour at all, and most of it is absolutely degrading. It is mentally and morally injurious to man to do anything in which he does not find pleasure, and many forms of labour are quite pleasureless activities, and should be regarded as such. To sweep a slushy crossing for eight hours on a day when the east wind is blowing is a disgusting occupation. To sweep it with mental, moral, or physical dignity seems to me to be impossible. To sweep it with joy would be appalling. Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt. All work of that kind should be done by a machine...

...In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralising. Somebody - was it Burke? - called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time, no doubt. But at the present moment it really is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three...

... There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannises over the body. There is the despot who tyrannises over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannises over soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People. The Prince may be cultivated. Many Princes have been. Yet in the Prince there is danger. One thinks of Dante at the bitter feast in Verona, of Tasso in Ferrara's madman's cell. It is better for the artist not to live with Princes. The Pope may be cultivated. Many Popes have been; the bad Popes have been. The bad Popes loved Beauty, almost as passionately, nay, with as much passion as the good Popes hated Thought. To the wickedness of the Papacy humanity owes much. The goodness of the Papacy owes a terrible debt to humanity. Yet, though the Vatican has kept the rhetoric of its thunders and lost the rod of its lightning, it is better for the artist not to live with Popes. It was a Pope who said of Cellini to a conclave of Cardinals that common laws and common authority were not made for men such as he; but it was a Pope who thrust Cellini into prison, and kept him there till he sickened with rage, and created unreal visions for himself, and saw the gilded sun enter his room, and grew so enamoured of it that he sought to escape, and crept out from tower to tower, and falling through dizzy air at dawn, maimed himself, and was by a vine-dresser covered with vine leaves, and carried in a cart to one who, loving beautiful things, had care of him. There is danger in Popes. And as for the People, what of them and their authority? Perhaps of them and their authority one has spoken enough. Their authority is a thing blind, deaf, hideous, grotesque, tragic, amusing, serious, and obscene. It is impossible for the artist to live with the People. All despots bribe. The people bribe and brutalise. Who told them to exercise authority? They were made to live, to listen, and to love. Some one has done them a great wrong. They have marred themselves by imitation of their inferiors. They have taken the sceptre of the Prince. How should they use it? They have taken the triple tiara of the Pope. How should they carry its burden? They are as a clown whose heart is broken. They are as a priest whose soul is not yet born. Let all who love Beauty pity them. Though they themselves love not Beauty, yet let them pity themselves. Who taught them the trick of tyranny?..."
Oscar Wilde essay The soul of man under Socialism

Have Work-Life Balance p.2

It's 9am? Time to go back to bed?
10 per cent of us work best in the morning so why should they dictate working patterns, writes ANNA CAREY of The Irish Times on Saturday, January 2, 2010

"IMAGINE A world without alarm clocks. A world where you could choose to work when you were at your most productive. A world where the results of your labours were what counted, not how long you spent at your desk. Sounds idyllic? If Danish activist and entrepreneur Camilla Kring is right, it may be the future for all of us.

She’s the founder of B-Society, an organisation with more than 8,000 members in 50 countries, which aims to create a more flexible world. “We all have different forms of family, different ways of working, different biological rhythms,” says Kring.

“But society only supports the ‘A-Persons’, who work best from nine-to-five. I really think we need a revolution in the way we organise society so we can support diversity in the way we work and live.” This new society would include schools, childcare facilities and universities running on later schedules...

..In 2005 she founded Super Navigators, which works with businesses to create less rigid, more employee-centric work environments through a programme called “life navigation”.

“Our industrial work culture says that, if I can see you, then you are working and, if I don’t, then you are not working,” she sighs. “The idea that we all have to work during the same time period in the same place has been [transferred] from the factory to the office. It made sense with industrial factory work but not when we’re talking about innovation, ideas, creativity.”

Kring’s ideas have already spread to Ireland. In 2008 the Citywest branch of international pharmaceutical company Abbott introduced a life navigation programme. Employees attended five half-day sessions designed by Kring to encourage them to prioritise their work-life balance, to respect and create individualised working schedules and methods. The results are impressive. There’s been a marked increase in employees working from home or to a flexible schedule, employee turnover has reduced by more than half, and internal surveys show that staff morale has greatly increased.
..."

It's 9am? Time to go back to bed - The Irish Times - Sat, Jan 02, 2010

The 10 commandments of B-society -
1.The daily rhythm of each individual is genetically conditioned by heredity. Society needs to be structured to support a diversity of daily rhythms.
2.We are calling for an uprising against the tyranny of early rising, and for a better world where a diversity of daily rhythms is acknowledged and respected, giving us the opportunity for a better quality of life, more productive working time and major socioeconomic gains once we no longer take up the same space on the same roads at the same time.
3.We are working for equality between early birds and night owls.
4.We are working for a more flexible labour market. Each individual's daily rhythm should, as far as possible, govern that person's working life.
5.We are working for the introduction of collective agreements for early birds and night owls at negotiations for labour market agreements.
6.We are working for the establishment of day nurseries, kindergartens, primary and secondary schools as well as universities that open between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m, at least.
7.We are working for more research into daily rhythms.
8.We grant ”B-certification” on www.b-productive.dk/eng to businesses, who allow employees to work according to their own daily rhythm, work rhythm and life rhythm.
9.We are working globally for a better world that supports a diversity of individual daily rhythms, working rhythms and life rhythms.
10.Imagine how differently society would have turned out if the creators of the world had been night owls!

At: The 10 commandments of B-society | B-Society -

Have Work-Life Balance p.1

Timothy Ferriss, nominated as one of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Business People of 2007,” is an angel investor and author of the #1 New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek bestseller, The 4-Hour Workweek, which has been sold into 35 languages.

He has been featured by more than 100 media outlets, including The New York Times, The Economist, TIME, Forbes, Fortune, CNN, and CBS. He speaks six languages, runs a multinational firm from wireless locations worldwide, and has been a popular guest lecturer at Princeton University since 2003, where he presents entrepreneurship as a tool for ideal lifestyle design and world change.

About the book:

"Whether you're an overworked employee or an entrepreneur trapped in your own business, The 4-Hour Workweek is the compass for a new and revolutionary world.

Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan—there is no need to wait and every reason not to. Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, high-end world travel, monthly five-figure income with zero management, or just living more and working less, this book is the blueprint.

You can have it all—really.

Join Tim Ferriss, popular guest lecturer in entrepreneurship at Princeton University, as he teaches you:

•How to outsource your life and do whatever you want for a year, only to return to a bank account 50% larger than before you left
•How blue-chip escape artists travel the world without quitting their jobs
•How to eliminate 50% of your work in 48 hours using the principles of little-known European economists
•How to train your boss to value performance over presence, or kill your job (or company) if it's beyond repair
•How to trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and frequent “mini-retirements”
•What automated cash-flow "muses" are and how to create one in 2-4 weeks
•How to cultivate selective ignorance—and create time—with a low-information diet
•Management secrets of Remote Control CEOs
•The crucial difference between absolute and relative income
•How to get free housing worldwide and airfare at 50-80% off
•How to fill the void and creating meaning after removing work and the office
The 4-Hour Workweek also includes the sample e-mails, voicemails, and real-life deals (with dollar figures and all) you will need to master the new world of luxury lifestyle design."

The 4-Hour Workweek and Timothy Ferriss

Kind Economic Growth

In a 'truthOut' article entitled 'Adequate, Negative, Sustainable: What Kind of Growth?' appearing on Tuesday 15 December 2009 and written by Jacques Attali/ L'Express, the best form for the future economy to take is considered:

"The ever-more-fashionable idea that we should desire and organize shrinkage in the economy to fight against the destruction it generates may seem a priori totally idiotic: how can anyone want to institutionalize depression, the consequences of which the whole world is suffering today in terms of unemployment and poverty? How can anyone desire a drop in production, that is, in average income, while the most elementary needs of developed countries' populations have not been satisfied, let alone those of the billions of people who still live in extreme destitution? How can one desire negative growth when so much progress is heralded, creating hope for the possibility of ridding humanity of tiresome jobs, suffering, ignorance and pollution? Finally, how can anyone think that zero or negative growth would improve the environmental situation, while it's not growth that pollutes, but production, the content of which is not improved by its stagnation?...

...This transformation will require enormous investments, which will - for a long time - translate into strong growth in material production that will have become adequate, that is, ever more economical of energy and careful to preserve the environment, turned toward immaterial achievements, acts of freedom and altruism, spirituality and fullness. That development will give its full value to time lived and no longer to forced time. One day, it will, perhaps, make us forget the very idea of growth, to replace it with the idea of fulfillment."

t r u t h o u t | Adequate, Negative, Sustainable: What Kind of Growth?

The 100 Best Innovations of 2009 | Popular Science Images

Gallery: Looking Back at the 100 Best Innovations of 2009

The Best of What's New 2009 winners, all in one place, from 'Popular Science'.

Gallery: Looking Back at the 100 Best Innovations of 2009 | Popular Science

Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty (short film)

Accompanying information: - NEW! Full Oscar-shortlisted film of 'Granny O'Grimm', directed by Nicky Phelan, produced by Brown Bag Films, and written/voiced by Kathleen O'Rourke. Shortlisted for the 2010 Oscar for Best Animated Short Film! www.grannyogrimm.com -

YouTube - Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty (full film)

2009 Current Affairs Slideshows: Irish Times

Audio slideshows by Irish Times photographers went online for the first time at the beginning of 2009. Instead of one chosen photograph from a particular event, you can now see a comprehensive selection of images.

Watch the Anzac day Dawn Service captured by Bryan O' Brien; meet the extraordinary James Brosnan in Frank Miller's The Voice Inside; or take a look at the Alternative Miss Ireland contest by Matt Kavanagh which scored an unprecedented number of hits. Start with the sequence of moves leading to Thierry Henri's notorious handball:

France v Ireland

John Bruton on The Nation State: Article in The Irish Times - Sat, Jan 02, 2010

Nation state model no longer works in today's complex world -

Copenhagen is a symptom of a wider failure – the failure of the nation state as an organising principle for today’s world, a world that is radically different from the one in which the nation state principle was devised, writes JOHN BRUTON

This is closely related to two other modern dilemmas. Why do people get so angry with their politicians? Why is there such a big gap between the way people spend their scarce time and money, and the things they say they believe are really important?

The failure of world leaders to come up with a meaningful and binding agreement on climate change at the long-planned meeting in Copenhagen means that the binding, if incompletely applied, agreement in the Kyoto protocol will now expire and will not be replaced in time, if ever...

...That was not always so.

When the concept of the modern nation state was devised in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, what happened in China had little or no effect on what happened in Europe, and Atlanta was not even a mark on a map. Then the nation state was a perfectly workable means to organise world affairs, and remained so for centuries. That is no longer the case.

Frustration with politicians grows, and people do things that do not match their beliefs, because there are no globally effective rule makers powerful enough to set minimum global standards that will govern behaviour in China, Cork, Antwerp, and Afghanistan. The failure in Copenhagen is a failure to make a rule that would have applied to the whole world..." -

Nation state model no longer works in today's complex world - The Irish Times - Sat, Jan 02, 2010

Corpse Bride Piano Duet

From Tim Burton's movie: a charming moment:



YouTube - Corpse Bride Piano Duet

Oscar Wilde - From the Afterlife, on YouTube!

Accompanying information:
"Here's a virtual movie or should I say a ghostly happening. Here's the great Oscar Wilde (apparently) speaking to us from the twilight world of the otherside, the "afterlife" LOL.

The sound recording comes from very intrigueing paranormal website "Oscar Wilde Returns" at this link a fascinating and very entertaining website even to sceptics like me.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~wichm/wildera.html - "

YouTube - Oscar Wilde "A Ghostly Discussion" From the afterlife

There's also an unusual article called "Oscar Wilde, Queer Addict: Biography and De Profundis" written Aug. this year by Clifdon Snider, who is a poet, queer critic etc at California State University. It's a fairly no-nonsense and detailed, sometimes even clinical, examination, as sympathetic as it is largely realistic, of why Wilde may have behaved as he did. -
Oscar Wilde: Queer Addict

Excerpts:

- "Although there have always been brave scholarly and creative souls who have dared write about him, Wilde's literary reputation did not begin to rise until about the middle of the twentieth century. Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, there is an academic industry devoted to Wilde, augmented by the popularity of Queer Studies, one of the most current trends in literary criticism. Commentators as disparate as Arnold Bennett, a fine though seldom-read early-twentieth-century novelist, and W. H. Auden, a giant of twentieth-century poetry, have agreed that The Importance of Being Earnest is his "best work" (Bennett 418), "perhaps the only pure verbal opera in English" (Auden 322). Bennett was completely wrong in his opinion that "Wilde's popular vogue is over" (417), and Auden, right in so many of his opinions on Wilde, was completely wrong to call The Portrait of Mr. W. H. "shy-making" and The Picture of Dorian Gray a "bore" (322). However, reviewing the Rupert Hart-Davis edition of The Letters of Oscar Wilde (1962), Auden is right on the mark when he observes that after prison, Wilde "turned to the only consolations readily available--drink and boys" (319).

Wilde's grandson, Merlin Holland, gives an excellent summary of the history of Wilde as a subject of biography in his article, "Biography and the Art of Lying," published in The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde (1997), and supplemented by his richly-illustrated but brief biography, The Wilde Album (1997). The early recollections by those who knew Wilde were "fragmentary, even impressionistic, and books for the most part alluded to his downfall in veiled terms" ("Biography" 5). Even the indispensable biography by Richard Ellmann contains errors, such as the photo of Wilde in drag as Salomé, which is actually the "Hungarian opera singer Alice Guszalewicz as Salome, Cologne, 1906" ("Biography" 11). Basing his judgment on the latest medical findings, Holland also believes Ellmann is wrong about Wilde having suffered from syphilis (12-13), and I agree with Holland's assessment. As Holland says, "The French doctor who attended Wilde [on his deathbed] and signed the diagnosis, Paul Claisse, had previously written papers on skin disorders, meningitis and tertiary syphilis, all conditions which are alleged to have contributed to his [Wilde's] death" (13). Had Wilde suffered from tertiary syphilis, surely Claisse would have discovered the fact.

Despite the weighty attention Wilde and his work have received, I agree with John Lahr's assertion: "None of Wilde's biographers offer[s] an interpretation of his self-destructiveness [. . .]". Lahr adds, "for that one has to read between the lines of Wilde's wit" (xxxix). Yet, although Lahr cites a few lines of that famous wit, he doesn't begin to analyze Wilde's self-destructiveness. This I intend to do. I suspect biographers and critics have shied away from the subject for a number of reasons: personal friendship with Wilde, self-protection (here the prime example is Lord Alfred Douglas), other aims, lack of knowledge and evidence, and political correctness. Queer critics in particular may not want to sully the reputation of one who is, after all, a gay icon.1 As a queer critic myself, I have no intention of tarring Wilde's reputation in the least. What I intend to do is to uncover some of the reasons for Wilde's self-destructiveness, recognizing, as Wilde says in Intentions, the full truth is "unattainable" (405)...

...But why did Wilde continually take Bosie back after all kinds of scenes, lies, extravagant outlays of Wilde's money, and interruptions of Wilde's creative time? Why did he not end their "fatal friendship" (693 and 770)? Repeatedly, Wilde accuses Bosie of a "lack of imagination," his "one really fatal defect of . . . character" (709) and berates him for having "the supreme vice, shallowness" (715). Had Wilde refused to see Bosie after his release from prison, one might believe all this vituperation. However, just as he had accepted Bosie back approximately every three months, as he says in De Profundis, so he returned to live with him in Naples after his release and with the certainty of losing his income from his wife for doing so. Clearly we are dealing with an addiction here, but not a sexual addiction (for Wilde and Bosie sex was never an important part of their relationship), and not a relationship addiction, for both sought other sexual partners and never took the time really to become intimate with each other. The addiction was romance, and for Wilde it was as fatal as any drug.

Within five months after his release from prison (September 1897), Wilde was living with Bosie in Naples. In defense of his decision, he writes to Turner:

- Much that you say in your letter is right, but still you leave out of consideration the great love I have for Bosie. I love him, and have always loved him. He ruined my life, and for that reason I seem forced to love him more: and I think that now I shall do lovely work . . . whatever my life may have been ethically, it has always been romantic, and Bosie is my romance. My romance is a tragedy of course, but it is none the less a romance, and he loves me very dearly, more than he loves or can love anyone else, and without him my life was dreary. (948, emphasis Wilde's)

Wilde adds: "So stick up for us, Reggie, and be nice." We know in retrospect that Wilde did not do "lovely work" living with Bosie. Apart from finishing "The Ballad of Reading Goal" in Naples, he added nothing to his creative oeuvre. The key words in this letter are "seem forced" and "without him my life was dreary": the romance addict without his fix is compelled to find it again. Others intervened to break them apart, but doubtless they would have broken up in time, for the old pattern had reasserted itself. Bosie was again spending Wilde's meager funds as if he were entitled to them (Ellmann 555). It was the same fatal process Wilde had wailed about in De Profundis. Disease is no respecter of people, time, or place.

Schaef describes four levels of romance addiction. The first two fit Wilde well. The first level "is the person who practices his or her addiction almost completely in fantasy," and in the second level "romance addicts act out their fantasies" (62). Third level addicts act out "in such a way that it is harmful to themselves and others and may even verge upon or be illegal" (64, emphasis Schaef's). This level also applies to Wilde given the fact that were it not for him Alfred Taylor, the person through whom Wilde met his rent-boys, would not have been tried and convicted, never mind the harm Wilde did himself through his romantic addiction to Bosie. As for the illegal actions, the applicable laws no longer apply (and of course never should have been on the books).7...

...Despite the obvious delight with which Wilde describes his "tricks," to use a modern word, he felt equivocal about them. He says in a letter to Ross from Rome (14 May 1900):
- In the moral sphere I have fallen in and out of love, and fluttered hawks and doves alike. How evil it is to buy Love, and how evil to sell it! And yet what purple hours one can snatch from that grey slowly-moving thing we call Time! My mouth is twisted with kissing, and I feed on fevers. The Cloister or the Café--there is my future. I tried the Hearth, but it was a failure. (1187)

...Schaef writes that "romance addiction keeps individuals . . . immature" (72). And some fifty years ago one of Wilde's biographers noted Wilde's "emotional life . . . never reached maturity" (Pearson 285). Worse than that, his addictions, whatever their causes (and homosexuality was not one of them), led him on a path of inevitable self-destruction. His final illness can not have been helped by his drinking and smoking cigarettes nearly to the end. Nevertheless, during his last years perhaps the drinking and the romancing ironically alleviated some of the pain caused by those very addictions and by his loneliness and the routine rejections of those who used to honor him. Wilde's work remains. By now it has passed the "test of time." As a gay icon he remains both a positive and a negative example to all sexual minorities just as he remains one of the best as well as one of the most popular writers from the late nineteenth-century."

Forgotten Bookmarks

Here's a lovely website from Paul Bunyan who works at a used and rare book-store. He logs 'the personal, funny, heart-breaking and weird things' he finds in the books.

For example:



Forgotten Bookmarks: From The Library of Paul Bunyan

Eoin Purcell's Blog

Bio
Eoin Purcell works and lives in Dublin, Ireland.
He has worked as Commissioning Editor with one of Ireland’s oldest independent publishers Mercier Press and at Nonsuch Ireland.

He writes regular blog posts and columns on the Irish book trade for The Bookseller magazine.

His own blog is -
About Eoin « Eoin Purcell's Blog

He updates it regularly with news about the book trade and issues in relation to writing. He provides advice and consultation on books, content, authors, publishing and the digital future.

Is It Depression?

According to the WHO, depression is set to be the world's second-biggest killer in 2020 after cardio-vascular disease, but psychotherapist Gary Greenberg's upcoming book Manufacturing Depression (Bloomsbury, March) takes a different view, claiming that it's a phoney disorder, invented by drug companies to sell pills.

"Am I happy enough?

This has been a pivotal question since America's inception. Am I not happy enough because I am depressed? is a more recent version. In the past twenty years, as antidepressants have become staples of our medicine chests -- upward of thirty million Americans are taking them at an annual cost of more than ten billion dollars -- more people have begun to ask themselves if their unhappiness is a disease that can, and should, be treated by medication.

Part memoir, part intellectual history, part exposé, Manufacturing Depression reveals how this question has come to dominate our understanding of our suffering. Author Gary Greenberg draws on sources ranging from the Old Testament to current medical journals and scholarship to his twenty-five years as a psychotherapist and his own experience as a depression patient to show how the idea that depression is a widespread chronic disease has been packaged by brilliant scientists, doctors, and marketing experts -- and why it is has become wildly successful in the marketplace of ideas.

Rather than asking whether or not depression is a disease, or whether or not we should take drugs to ease our pain, Greenberg asks what we gain and lose by taking this approach, and who benefits when we do. Manufacturing Depression allows readers to think of depression not just as an illness, but as a story about our suffering, its source, and its relief. A remarkably intelligent, witty, and deeply perceptive writer and professional observer, Greenberg has insights and perspective that are bound to spark much debate, and challenge many -- experts and casual readers alike -- to view depression in a wholly new light."

- Manufacturing Depression - Book Summary & Video

Kind Eating is Good for Everyone

"There is hope. Real, scientifically valid, practical hope. This is what I am learning from a few highly esteemed doctors and nutrition scientists who say there is much to be done with diet when it comes to cancer. What we eat very much affects the state of our health, so if we add in nutrition that supports healing while cutting out foods that create havoc, we can really change the course of our lives for the better. Here’s the bottom line: Animal protein seems to greatly contribute to diseases of nearly every type, including cancer, and a plant-based (vegan) diet is not only good insofar as prevention, but it could also be curative..."

PETA Prime: Celebrating Kind Choices: Can a Plant-Based Diet Cure Cancer?

"Mark Bittman thinks so. He’s the author of the popular New York Times food column “The Minimalist” and the best-selling book Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating. In the book, Bittman proposes a simple plan for eating healthier and saving the planet at the same time: VB6 (which stands for “vegan before 6 p.m.”). In other words, eat all vegan meals (and also hold the white flour and sugar) before dinnertime, after which you can eat pretty much whatever you want. But he believes that if you get into the habit of eating healthier foods most of the time, you’ll eventually start eating better after 6 p.m. too.

Bittman’s mantra is that we should all be eating more whole, fresh, seasonal, homemade foods—and we should be eating lots and lots of fruits and vegetables and other plant-based foods too. His epiphany came when he read the U.N. report Livestock’s Long Shadow, which lays out in no uncertain terms just how devastating the meat industry is to the environment. “It’s not sustainable to raise all the meat we raise now,” he told the Toronto Globe and Mail. “No matter which way you raise it, it’s not sustainable...”

PETA Prime: Celebrating Kind Choices: Can Flexitarians Save the World?

Radiohead - Scotch Mist

A film with Radiohead in it made for New Year's Eve, 2007. Features every song on their then new album IN RAINBOWS, the "physical manifestation"...



YouTube - Radiohead - Scotch Mist