Popular Culture Archives - Page 4 of 6

Who’s my doctor?

It’s inherently hard to trust doctors in America. In the land of the free, healthcare is privatised and opened up to the free market, which brings with it the ugliness of capitalism. I’m by no means anti-capitalist: it does a lot of good and has even enabled me to start and run my own business. However, my health is one of the few things that I do not want subject to the many faces of capitalism.

In case you weren’t aware, I hail from the wonderful rolling hills of England. I am proud to be British, but don’t shove it in other people’s faces (a la “America is the best country in the world”). The British way is still very ingrained in British culture and the way we do things, regardless of the influence that America has had on our society.

One of the vastly different ways that things are done in the UK is healthcare. Established in 1948, The National Health Service (NHS) brought freely accessible healthcare to all, regardless of one’s ability to pay. Funded by taxes, the NHS is still almost universally where all Britons’ healthcare is conducted, unless you happen to be quite rich and decide to opt for private healthcare.

The Oatmeal’s thoughts on religion

I am a Christian, so I have to acknowledge the irony in some of this, but the Oatmeal’s latest comic on religious extremism is a humourous and thought-provoking read, that is, assuming that you’re open to criticism and discussion (unlike the guy shouting “Jesus! Abortion! Monster Trucks!”)

Stop this culture of image obsession, for our children’s sake

As the father of a young daughter, this talk by Meaghan Ramsey spoke to me at a deep level. It is one of my biggest goals to make sure that Ellie finds her identity in God, and not in the world. I hope that she is a confident, amazing woman when she grows up and that she throws off the shackles of our image-obsessed society.

I am so disheartened by how so many women have bought into this practice and grade themselves for their appearance and find their value in that. There’s so much more to it. It’s so cliché to say so, and it’s very hard to hear when you’ve staunchly convinced yourself otherwise, but beauty really is on the inside. Looks fade and bodies sag, but intelligence, humour, personality, verve and perspective only get better with age, and I can say with confidence, that as each year passes, my wife only gets more and more attractive to me.

So, let’s make sure that our children acknowledge that they’re all unique and all have something valuable to offer the world, instead of allowing them to start seeking the approval of others for their appearance.

Apple Watch – an April Fools’ joke?

As I do every year, I watched the Apply keynote speech to see what new tech was coming out soon. It’s a ritual that gets more attention on alternating years when I know that I’ll be buying the new iPhone, no matter what it is.

The iPhone 6 was a nice upgrade, but I agree that the days of enormous leaps in new features and huge improvements are probably waning, and I have been less and less captured by the hype that surrounds these events, which has been refreshing. I’m not much of a capitalist, but I have long been a fan of the iPhone, because it helps me out in so many aspects of my daily, and business, life, so that I’m seeing it as more of a tool than a toy is very welcome to me.

When Tim Cook breezed through the iPhone announcement, it was becoming apparent that he was making room for the rumoured “iWatch” announcement, and sure enough, he devoted the second half of his keynote to just that.

As his presentation went on, I was getting less and less impressed, and more and more angry by how they were trying to hype up ridiculous features.

The Killing

Martina and I recently got a Netflix subscription when we moved house, and bought a Smart TV for our (now much larger) living room, since watching TV on the 27″ iMac wasn’t going to cut it any more.

We started watching a few familiar shows before branching out and trying some new things. One of our favourite finds has undoubtedly been The Killing.

Martina and I have grown rather tired of “typical” American TV which is predictable, repeatable, blunt and tired. So we were a bit skeptical when we heard about The Killing, an American remake of a Dutch crime thriller (American remakes usually make me in particular cringe – I still refuse to watch the American version of The Office).

But after watching the first episode, we were tantalisingly hooked on a refreshingly dark and gritty thriller with political twists thrown in there. It only took us a couple of weeks to watch the first two seasons (which focus on one main story line), quickly followed by the third season (a new main story, with the same central characters) which although not as strong as seasons 1 & 2 was still time well spent.

A hilarious review of the meaning and usage of “awesome”

Jill Shargaa fights back against the overuse of the word awesome, noting that it’s

fear mingled with admiration or reverence; a feeling produced by something majestic, sublime, etc.

Jill contests that the sandwich you had for lunch is probably not awesome, but gives 10 great examples of what could be considered awesome, like “the wheel” and “bees”.