Cleaning Tarnished Silver

Silver jewellery looks lovely when new, but over time it will tarnish, becoming dark and dull. Here is a quick way to restore the shine.

1. Line a bowl with tinfoil, shiny side up.
2. Add 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda.
3. Pour boiling water into the bowl.
4. Place item to be cleaned in the solution.
5. Leave for five minutes.
6. Remove, rinse and dry.

Source: This appears on several blogs and news items.

Magnesium

 Magnesium is a crucial co-factor in enzyme reactions in the body and brain. It plays a part in heart rhythm, blood vessel health, muscle relaxation, healthy nerve function and the release of neurotransmitters (such as serotonin). 

It is thought that many people are magnesium deficient, impacting on these functions. Some studies suggest magnesium may help in relieving depression. Our need for magnesium goes up during stressful periods.

Magnesium-rich foods are: dark chocolate # avocados # nuts # legumes (includes lentils, beans, chickpeas, peas and soyabeans) # tofu (soybean curd) # seeds (especially flax, pumpkin and chia seeds) # wholegrains (wheat, oats, barley, buckwheat and quinoa) # some fatty fish (e.g salmon, mackerel and halibut) # bananas # leafy greens (especially kale, spinach, turnip greens and mustard greens.

Psychologist Kimberley Wilson takes a daily morning dose of half a teaspoon of powdered magnesium (citrate) dissolved in a glass of water.

Source: Item in Good Housekeeping, Sept. 2020.

Origins of Religious Belief

Only 16% of people are not religious: in 2018 that's around 1.2 billion people who find it difficult to reconcile the ideas of religion with what they know about the world.

A recent psychological explanation is that our evolution predisposes us to believe in an external agency, and that religion is a by-product of a number of cognitive and social adaptations which have been very important in human development.

• We are social creatures who interact and communicate with each other in a co-operative and supportive way.
• We have stronger attachments to some individuals than others.
• We rely on these attachments during childhood, when making friends and falling in love.
• We can also form strong attachments to non-human animals and inanimate objects.
• These strong attachments can also be transferred to religious deities and their messengers.

Our relationships depend on being able to predict how others will behave in situations and time. But the things we form attachments to don't need to be in front of us to predict their actions. We learn to imagine what others may say or do through childhood pretend play and stories.

We then moved from imagining the minds of other humans to imagining omnipotent, omniscient beings. And religious texts telling of past actions fuels belief.

We are also able to anthropomorphise objects - we see a person when it is just a coat hung on a door, (and our pattern seeking tendencies lead us to see pictures in the clouds, and on slices of toast). We then endow non-human entities such as gods with human qualities.

The ritual behaviour of collective worship makes us enjoy and want to repeat the experience. Dancing, singing and trance-like states are known in many ancestral societies. These social acts, however formal, increase levels of serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin in the brain - chemicals that make us feel good, want to do things again and provide a closeness to others. 

Educational and household norms don't tend to dispute religious ideas, but do encourage challenge to early childhood ideas such as Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy.

The impact of religion and religious thinking on human functioning continues to be the subject of intellectual debate.

Source: Why do people believe in God?  in Daily Mail, 19 Dec. 2018

Leveson Inquiry - Second Stage Axed

At the beginning of March 2018 the Culture Secretary, Matt Hancock, announced that the (Conservative) government :

• would not implement the second stage of the Leveson Inquiry, which was due to examine relations between journalists and the police, claiming that the press had 'cleaned up its act'
• would not put section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act (which would force media organisations to pay legal costs of libel cases whether they won or lost) into effect and would seek to repeal at the earliest opportunity.

The Conservatives opposed Leveson part two in their general election manifesto but peers voted to revive it through an amendment to the Data Protection Bill. Newspapers had lobbied hard to avoid for this outcome.

Leveson part two was scheduled to consider the extent of improper conduct and governance failings by individual newspaper groups, how these were investigated by police and whether police officers received corrupt payments or inducements.

Source: BBC News, Leveson Inquiry: second stage axed by Matt Hancock, 1 March 2018