Category: Europe

Brain, Curiositys, Europe, Fascism, Health, History, Media&Culture, PsychologyLeave a comment

Harsh Nazi Parenting Guidelines May Still Affect German Children of Today

Fernando Kaskais

A German family poses for a portrait, 1937. Credit: Getty Images The Nazi regime urged German mothers to ignore their toddlers’ emotional needs—the better to raise hardened soldiers and followers. Attachment researchers say that the harmful effects of that teaching may be affecting later generations By Anne Kratzer on January 4, 2019 IN BRIEF In 1934 physician Johanna Haarer published The German Mother and Her First Child. Her advice guided child-rearing in the Third Reich. It ultimately sold some 1.2 million copies, almost half of them after the end of the war. In that book, Haarer recommended that children be raised with as few … Continue reading Harsh Nazi Parenting Guidelines May Still Affect German Children of Today

Bizarre, Curiositys, Europe, Politics, Technology, UK, Unbelievable1 Comment

Britain’s so soppy we can’t even fight off a toy helicopter

Fernando Kaskais

image edited by Fernando Kaskais By PETER HITCHENS FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY One of the things I most enjoyed about living in Russia was the absence of prissy health and safety. The doors on the Moscow metro slammed shut with a vicious crash, after a single warning, and if you were caught in them, too bad. No pathetic reopening of the doors. So nobody ever was caught in them, and trains ran fast and frequently. On ferociously freezing days when any Western airline would have given up, Russian internal flights took off without hesitation, and arrived on time. This is nothing to … Continue reading Britain’s so soppy we can’t even fight off a toy helicopter

Curiositys, Europe, Living, Media&Culture, Politics, Psychology, RightsLeave a comment

At home with the homeless

Fernando Kaskais

Homeless Gustave, 75, sits in front of the tent where he lives near the Boulevard Périphérique in Paris. Photo by Philippe Lopez/AFP/Getty Is a home made of bricks and mortar or hopes and dreams? Dispatches from among the rough sleepers on the streets of Paris by Johannes Lenhard is research associate and coordinator at the Max Planck Cambridge Centre for Ethics, Economy and Social Change. Edited by Sally Davies The park wardens woke up François almost every morning. They found him sleeping under the roof of the little shed in the playground, below the Church Saint-Vincent-de-Paul and about five minutes’ walk from the … Continue reading At home with the homeless

Art, Curiositys, Europe, History, Humor, Media&Culture, PoliticsLeave a comment

Geographical Fun: A Victorian Teenage Girl’s Impressive Cartographic Caricatures of European Countries and Their National Stereotypes

Fernando Kaskais

Within a humorous gem, a serious reminder of how malleable even the seeming solidities of geopolitics are. BY MARIA POPOVA It is in times of uncertainty and complexity, particularly the kind catalyzed by political tumult, that we are most drawn to caricature — the art of parodic exaggeration and oversimplification. Political satire of the visual sort seems to hold a special allure to artistically gifted and precocious teenage girls — from fifteen-year-old Jane Austen’s parodic history of England, illustrated by her sister, to sixteen-year-old Elissa Jane Karg’s brilliant visual satire of 1960s counterculture. In 1868, a century and a half before London-based … Continue reading Geographical Fun: A Victorian Teenage Girl’s Impressive Cartographic Caricatures of European Countries and Their National Stereotypes

Brain, Curiositys, Europe, History, Media&Culture, Philosophy, PsychologyLeave a comment

Strange and intelligent

Fernando Kaskais

Simone Weil. Photo by AKG Art London Estranged but not alienated, devout but not obedient, philosophical but not a systematiser, Simone Weil defies conventions Christy Wampole is an associate professor of French literature and thought at Princeton University in New Jersey. She is the author of Rootedness: The Ramifications of a Metaphor(2016). Edited by Sam Haselby Simone Weil (1909-43) belonged to a species so rare, it had only one member. This peculiar French philosopher and mystic diagnosed the maladies and maledictions of her own age and place – Europe in the first war-torn half of the 20th century – and offered recommendations for how … Continue reading Strange and intelligent

Curiositys, Europe, Living, Media&Culture, Politics, PsychologyLeave a comment

Fights, Cyberbullying, Rape: Why Are French Schools Getting More Violent?

Fernando Kaskais

© Sputnik / According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), a hefty 51 percent of French schoolchildren have at least once fallen victim to bullying in recent months and one in five faced physical abuse. Sputnik France discussed the situation with representatives of local federations of schoolchildren’s parents. On September 6, 2018, UNICEF released a report titled “The Daily Lesson: It is necessary to Put an End to School Violence,” as part of the #ENDviolence campaign. The report names France among the “bad students.” France fared no better in terms of its schoolchildren’s discipline, as is evident from data released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in March … Continue reading Fights, Cyberbullying, Rape: Why Are French Schools Getting More Violent?

Curiositys, Europe, History, Living, Mafia, Media&CultureLeave a comment

The big squeeze

Fernando Kaskais

Lemon vendors in Palermo, Sicily, in 1943. Photo by J R Eyerman/LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Sicily’s mafia sprang from the growing global market for lemons – a tale with sour parallels for consumers today by Ola Olsson is professor of economics at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. He is the author of Essentials of Advanced Macroeconomic Theory (2012), and his new book Prehistorical Economics: From African Origins to Civilization is due out in 2019. Edited by Sally Davies The Sicilian mafia is probably the most famous criminal organisation in the world. It’s been known to exist at least since the 1870s, when a Sicilian landlord documented how … Continue reading The big squeeze