The Critical Commentator

  Woman with Cylindrical Body unknown artist Photo Credit: National Museums Scotland [CC BY-NC-ND]  A couple of years ago, I became obsessed with changing my body. Inspired by "gymfluencers" and an Instagram feed filled with workouts and progress journeys, I dug into gym culture, often spending two hours weightlifting in one day, consuming more than 100 g of protein daily to build a "revenge booty"... As I became obsessed with the gym, I noticed that the things pushing me away from the pub and towards exercise were not positive thoughts but fears - self-esteem issues, financial worries and an anxious desire to be maximising my time. I also suspect that this rush to the gym is partly driven by social media. It's hard to tell the difference between an obsession with health and an obsession with physical appearance, and we know the latter particularly affects the children raised on a diet of online fitness influencers. Fifteen years ago, only celebrities had unachi...

  Justice Trampling on Injustice 1600-1650 (unknown artist) Photo Credit: West Suffolk Heritage Service  [CC BY-NC]  What drives someone to become a journalist? A good journalist, someone whose keyboard is a tool for exposing injustice, a truth seeker who would risk life and limb to report their experiences back to the world? I know I couldn't do it. I've interviewed people for a research project and was hopeless. I found myself shying away from asking the really difficult questions.. There's no way I could confront a corrupt official, or race to file a story before a hostile regime tried to silence me, possibly for ever. I like to think of myself as someone who would speak truth to power, but would I really, if my life was in the balance?... In the film Words of War , I have the honour of portraying the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya - a woman with immense courage and integrity who, despite the threats to her life, continued to be a blazing beacon of truth in a ti...

  As the vast crowds patiently filed past his coffin in St Peter's Basilica, the message was unmistakeable: Pope Francis was, above all else, a pope for the people. He strove to resist the splendour and remoteness that can come with the papacy. He chose simplicity in life and in death, from the moment he stepped out onto the balcony of St Peter's in 2013, asking the world to pray for him before he blessed them... Francis stood out for his humility, his accessibility and his open heart. His model of leadership was one of presence, not power. He rejected the grand papal apartments in favour of a modest suite in the Cas Santa Marta. His language, too, was striking - he famously likened the church to a "field hospital": a place of immediate care and unconditional welcome, particularly for those wounded by life...   The Good Samaritan George Frederick Watts (1817-1904) Photo Credit: Manchester Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-ND]  He never shied away from confronting the pain of the ...

  A Girl Writing Henriette Brown (1829-1901) Photo Credit: Victoria and Albert Museum London  Imagine for a moment you are a child in 1941, sitting the common entrance exam for public schools with nothing but a pencil and paper. You read the following: "Write for no more than a quarter of an hour, about a British author". Today, most of us wouldn't need 15 minutes to ponder such a question. We'd get the answer instantly by turning to AI tools such as Google Gemini, ChatGPT or Siri. Offloading cognitive effort to artificial intelligence has become second nature, but with mounting evidence that human intelligence is declining, some experts fear this impulse is driving the trend... One of our most vital cognitive skills at risk is critical thinking. Why consider what you admire about a British author when you can get ChatGPT to reflect on that for you? Research underscores these concerns. Michael Gerlich at SBS Swiss Business School in Kloten, Switzerland, tested 666 peo...

  Woman in Space David Sullivan (b. 1969) Photo Credit: The Priseman Seabrook Collections [CC BY-NC]  Six women - including the pop star Katy Perry and the US morning TV host Gayle King - yesterday safely completed a trip to the edge of outer space and back from a private Texas ranch on a rocket owned by Jeff Bezos, the Amazon co-founder and commercial space flight entrepreneur. The women, who also included Bezoz's fiancee, Lauren Sanchez, made the trip to the Karman line - the internationally recognised boundary of space - to float about, weightlessly, in the rocket's capsule for three minutes before returning to Earth... King's longtime friend, the TV chatshow host Oprah Winfrey, was on hand in Texas for the launch. Winfrey said that, for King, "this is bigger than just going to space" and "more than just overcoming fear". "Life is about continuing to grow into the fullest expression of yourself," she said... As the rocket reached its highest...

 Beer Talking 26 February : Trade body the British Beer and Pub Association - which has been urging the government to raise the alcohol-by-volume threshold for "alcohol-free" beer from 0.05 to 0.5 percent - forks out £450 for Labour MP Jacob Collier to attend the British Kebab Awards. 4 March : Jacob Collier asks in the Commons whether the chancellor will "consider raising the alcohol-free threshold to 0.5 percent alcohol by volume, in line with international markets, to improve consumer choice." Gifts William Davis (1812-1873) Photo Credit: Walker Art Gallery [CC BY-NC] Lucky Gamble 4 March : Tory Baroness (Anne) McIntosh submits two written parliamentary questions on gambling, one asking how much tax had been raised from gambling over the past three years, the other what steps the government is proposing to tackle black market gambling - the threat of which is being used by the industry to argue for limiting reforms. 12 March : Baroness McIntosh receives a fancy f...

  Dogs George Armfield (1810-1893) Photo Credit: Glasgow Life Museums [CC  BY-NC-ND] Vets have reported a surge in the use of "puppy Prozac" as owners seek medication for anxious lockdown dogs. Research has revealed a ten-fold increase over the past decade in the number of dogs in the UK on fluoxetine, an anti-depressant sold under the brand name Prozac when used in humans. Fluoxetine increases levels of serotonin in dogs' brains and is licensed in tablet form to treat pets with separation anxiety, or those displaying forms of aggression... In some cases people wanted their pets to be "fur-babies" that stay quiet, and believed medical intervention was needed if dogs ran around, jumped up or barked too much, vets added. Others were "projecting human emotions" onto their pets, making the mistake of trying to "psychoanalyse" their dogs. Dr Dan O'Neil, an associate professor at the Royal Veterinary College, analysed data from 2.3 million dogs...

 Do you feel rich or broke? Do you prioritise experiences or possessions? Spend or save what's spare? And what happens when the way you feel about money is out of wack with reality? Turns out there's a name for that last one: money dysmorphia... Those who experience it can develop unhealthy spending habits. "Some people overspend, believing they have more money than they do," explains Christie Cook, a finance expert from Hodge Bank. "It can lead to racking up debt on credit cards and overdrafts, potentially landing themselves in financial difficulty." On the other hand, some with money dysmorphia become overly frugal, Cook continues. "They may avoid small expenses like going out for a meal, even if they can afford it, as they're financially insecure and worry that their savings aren't as high as they need to be." The Money Counter Northern European School Photo Credit: Cornwall Museum and Art Gallery [CC  BY-NC] Emma Hall is such a person. ...

  ESAs [Emotional Support Animals] first came to mainstream attention around 2015 following some high-profile examples on US college campuses. The idea is that the presence and companionship of a pet can help to alleviate the symptoms or effects of someone's disability or mental health condition, and help them to succeed at school. But what started out rooted in reality, as a compassionate accommodation extended in specific circumstances to a few, is increasingly being taken advantage of. It is hard to believe that anyone would attempt to argue that they can't function without their emotional support squirrel. Or peacock. Or turkey. And yet all those cases have been made, presumably with a straight face. Beauty and the Beast Charles Burton Barber (1845-1894) Photo Credit: Reading Museum [CC BY-NC]  Last week, 71 year-old Karl Mitchell from Nevada, who had been keeping seven tigers at his home without a permit, argued that they were there on doctor's orders, to help with his...

 "It's a miracle for a funeral parlour to become famous for its rice noodles," an unnamed worker in the canteen of the Erlong Funeral Home told reporters in Kaili, Guizhou province "but it has become a serious problem. "We are not open to the public, we are only here to serve relatives and friends of families holding funeral services. But now there are hundreds of people pretending to be relatives of the deceased, sneaking in just to get a bowl of noodles. It's hard to tell them apart when it gets crowded, and the queues are now so long that legitimate diners sometimes have to wait a couple of hours to get their food. The queue for food is longer than the queue to lay flowers for the deceased.. The Old Master James Hayllar (1829-1920) Photo Credit: Nottingham City Museum & Galleries [CC BY-NC]  "Many people rave about our rice noodles because our chefs are exceptionally skilled. We use only fresh ingredients, our broth is simmered with pig bones for...

  Mrs Raynes's Tea Party Henry Tonks (1862-1937) Photo Credit: Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums [Public Domain] Society feels instinctively that manners are more important than morals, Oscar Wilde wrote, and tortuous politeness that masks true meaning can even be read in Beowulf. Centuries later, British conversations are regularly strewn with polite phrases that try to conceal seething resentment or avoid awkwardness, research shows. These include " Sounds fun, I'll let you know " (translation: "I've no intention of coming."), and "I'm sure it's just me" (translation: "This is entirely your fault but I'm trying to soften the blow"). Almost half of people told researchers that they uttered such phrases, which were used about 14 times a day. Trinity College London questioned 2,000 adults to create a list of the British phrases most regularly to avoid disagreements or social discomfort. "Could I just squeeze past you?...

The Sick Child Edvard Munch (1863-1944) Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND]  ...  We have lost sight of the wisdom that a bit of suffering, stress and criticism is part of the human condition and doesn't require intervention by the police, the state or anything else beyond our own inner resilience... A decade ago a psychologist called Nick Haslam noticed a curious shift in the meaning of words. Trauma, for example, was once applied to physical injury (like blunt force trauma), but usage gradually extended to encompass being belittled verbally, or merely hearing about the trauma suffered by others. Over time, an ever wider and milder range of experiences were coded as traumatic. The same was for bullying. Once used to denote a big kid hitting a little kid in the playground, its meaning was extended to verbal aggression in the workplace, and then minor interactions in which harm was not even perceived by the putative victim. In a way, you might think, so what? Many words change the...