Why gardening is good for your mind as well as your body

  More than half the planet’s population now live in cities, with limited access to the natural world. For Europe and Latin America, the figure is more than 70%. Yet contact with nature has numerous benefits for both our physical and mental health.

  Gardening is an opportunity for everyone to experience this kind of regular contact with nature, even if they live in built-up areas. For those without a garden of their own, allotments, or community gardens are a highly valuable resource. Demand for allotments is increasing and in some locations, waiting times have reached as much as 40 years.

Righteousness is revealed in conduct, not rhetoric

  It's hard to look at the world and some of the people who seem to get ahead without occasionally asking ourselves why we should be ethical. However normal it is to think like this, the question should be off limits for people who profess strong religious beliefs. After all, what religion does not mandate morality?

Wearing shoes in the house is just plain gross. The verdict from scientists who study indoor contaminants

  You probably clean your shoes if you step in something muddy or disgusting (please pick up after your dog!). But when you get home, do you always de-shoe at the door?

  Plenty of Australians don’t. For many, what you drag in on the bottom of your shoes is the last thing on the mind as one gets home.

The essence of sportsmanship

  In the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria, six-time medalist Eugenio Monti from Italy was favored to win the gold medal in the bobsledding pair event. After his team’s last run, it looked like they were going to make it.

  The British team, led by Tony Nash Jr., still had a chance, but before their final run, Nash discovered a critical axle bolt had broken on their sled. They were done.

Clarence Thomas and his wife’s text messages highlight missing ethics rules at the Supreme Court

  Time and time again, the nation’s highest court has come under fire for failing to manage potentially unethical behavior by its justices.

  In the past, the Supreme Court of the United States has cast aside pleas to adopt an ethics code for the justices.

How much are you willing to pay for money?

  Disdain for money is a common theme among moralists and philosophers. But money’s not the problem. It’s what people do to get it and what they do with it when they get it.

  In "Fiddler on the Roof," a poor man sings of his daydreams of the wonderful life he’d have if he were a rich man. And surely it would be better. As someone once said, “I’ve been poor and I’ve been rich. Rich is better.”

Black Lives Matter protests are shaping how people understand racial inequality

  Considered to be the largest social justice movement since the civil rights era of the 1960s, Black Lives Matter is more than the scores of street protests organized by the social justice group that attracted hundreds of thousands of demonstrators across the world.

  From its early days in 2014 after Officer Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown, Jr. to the protests following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, Black Lives Matter has opened the door for social change by expanding the way we think about the complicated issues that involve race.

The parable of Brother Leo

  An old legend tells of a monastery in France well-known throughout Europe because of the extraordinary leadership of a man known only as Brother Leo. Several monks began a pilgrimage to visit Brother Leo to learn from him. Almost immediately the monks began to bicker over who should do various chores.

‘Every day feels unsettled’ – educators decry staffing shortage

  The COVID-19 pandemic, with its multiple waves of remote, hybrid, and in-person education, increased students’ needs for support, revealed political minefields in teaching, and heightened labor tensions for educators. And in the 2021-2022 school year, staffing shortages have made all of that worse, as our work details.

  Our long-term research with hundreds of teachers and school administrators reveals that persistent staffing shortages are leading professionals to feel burned out and to worry about students missing learning opportunities.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse - Who is Mike Durant?

  Many of you have asked the question, “Have you ever seen anyone simply run a media-only campaign and avoid campaigning like Mike Durant has done in this year’s U.S. Senate campaign?”  Surprisingly my answer for many of you is, “Yes, I have.”

  Ironically, the man that Richard Shelby beat for this U.S. Senate seat 36 years ago, Jeremiah Denton, was almost a carbon copy of Mike Durant. Denton was a POW/national war hero of the Vietnam era.

  Like Durant, Denton had very distant ties to and knowledge of Alabama. They were both national war/POW celebrities who wanted to be a United States Senator from whichever state was convenient.