Tyranny as an outcome of democracy?

02ap20 26mar2020 13nov2019

It was a democracy without constraint against the worst impulses of the majority.

 Demagogues’ manipulation of the Athenian people left a legacy of

instability,

bloodshed and

genocidal warfare,

described in Thucydides’ history.

Misleading speech is the essential element of despots, because despots need the support of the people.

That record is why Socrates – before being sentenced to death by democratic vote – chastised the Athenian democracy for its elevation of

             popular opinion

at the expense of truth.

Greece’s bloody history is also why Plato

associated democracy with tyranny

in Book VIII of “The Republic.”

https://theconversation.com/why-tyranny-could-be-the-inevitable-outcome-of-democracy-126158

Basic liberal assumptions to remember

02apr20 26mar20 07dez2018

"Much of America still lives in the dark ages,

bound to their conspiracies,

unable to account for basic liberal assumptions:

     women are equal citizens,

     science is real,

    doctors aren’t trying to kill you,

    the news isn’t always lying,

    races can co-exist,

    school is important,

    government can do more good than bad,

     etc." 

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/12/07/the-case-for-chuck-mertz-not-noam-chomsky-as-americas-leading-intellectual/

Filmes Indicados por Tema

Autismo

Uma viagem inesperada (Filme) 

The good doctor (Série)

daily meditation could slow brain aging

02/04/20 26-23mar2020

Study suggests daily meditation slows brain aging by Bob Yirka , Medical Xpress

Researchers scanned [Budhist Monk] Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche's brain

via an MRI machine four times over the past 14 years.

Over the same period, the researchers also obtained MRI brain scans of a control group consisting of 105 other adults from the local area who were near in age to Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche.

The researchers then submitted all of the brain scans to an AI system called the Brain Age Gap Estimation (BrainAge) framework. It had been taught to make

educated guesses of a person's age by looking at brain scans.

It does its work by noting the structure of gray matter in the brain, which lessens in mass as a person ages.

The BrainAge system estimated Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche's age to be 33 [while he actual age was 41];

others in the control group fell into what the team described as the "typical aging band."

The researchers interpreted this result as evidence of his brain aging at a slower rate than the control group.

The researchers note that the BrainAge system did find some parts of Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche's brain that had aged in ways similar to the control group, suggesting that

brain aging differences between individuals may be due to coordinated changes throughout a person's gray matter.

They also noted that they had found evidence showing that Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche's brain

     had matured earlier

     than the brains of the others in the control group.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-03-daily-meditation-brain-aging.html

>8000 step a day could lower risk of early death, study finds

02apr20 26-24mar2020 

compared with taking 4,000 steps per day,

taking 8,000 steps per day was associated with about a 50% lower risk of death and

taking 12,000 steps per day was associated with a 65% lower risk of death.

By contrast the team found no link between

     mortality and the intensity of steps

     – explored by looking at steps per minute – once the total number of steps taken was considered.

step monitoring in more than 4,800 adults aged 40 or over has shown that higher step counts are associated with a lower chance of death from any cause over a 10-year period. What is more, it seems individuals do not need to hit 10,000 steps a day to start seeing a benefit.

By contrast, taking 2,000 steps per day was linked to a 50% greater risk of death than hitting 4,000 steps per day, with 21.7 deaths per 1,000 adults per year compared with 14.4 deaths per 1,000 adults per year respectively.

Further analysing showed higher step counts were also associated with a lower risk of death from

cardiovascular disease and

cancer.

However, the study has limitations, including that

it cannot prove that the increased walking is the cause of a reduced risk of death, while

participants’ data on their health and lifestyle

was only collected at one point in time and by self-report,

and activity was only monitored over one week.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/mar/24/higher-step-counts-could-lower-risk-early-death-study-finds