Outnumbered by viruses by Susan Grimsdell
I’ve been reading about viruses. There are trillions of them. For example, in a litre of sea water a scientist identified 100 billion viruses. Hundreds of thousands inhabit our bodies, but luckily very few of those have been found to affect us – so far, just 263 out of those hordes. This is something I did not know, that they are everywhere inside our bodies, in our noses, on our skin, in our lungs, in the gastrointestinal tract, swarms and swarms of them. A sense of purpose They are not alive. They… Read More
Empathy and sympathy by Angela Caldin
I was pondering the other day on the difference between empathy and sympathy and having a bit of difficulty distinguishing between the two. Empathy, it seems, is a fairly modern concept encompassing the ability to understand emotionally and cognitively what other people feel. It’s the ability to see things from another’s point of view, and imagine yourself in the place of another. In essence, it is putting yourself in someone else’s position and feeling what they are feeling. Sympathy, on the other hand, is a feeling of pity or sense of compassion… Read More
Taxing the super rich by Susan Grimsdell
NZ’s richest man, Graeme Hart, got headlines not long ago for donating fishing boats, tractors and a container of breakfast food to Tonga. Well, good on him, but where was the accompanying headline reporting that he is one of the super rich people who, thanks to a rigged economic system, grew his fortune by $3.4 billion during the Covid pandemic which has caused the worst recession since the 1930s. Avoidance of tax Recently, Hart lost a tax fight in Chile, a battle he had been fighting in the courts for 6 years. … Read More
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