Researchers followed participants for 20 years and discovered “there is a link not only between helping [others] and beneficial health effects, but also between helping and mortality” (Time, December 27, 2016).

The gap between the rich and the poor is growing larger. Eight billionaire businessmen “have more combined wealth than the poorest 3.6 billion people in the world put together” (Euronews, January 16, 2016). “The Oxfam report added that since 2015 the richest 1 percent has owned more wealth than the rest of the planet.

Seventy nations just completed a day-long summit in France with the aim of “kick-starting peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians” and  maintaining the two state solution (BBC, January 15, 2017). The irony of the meeting is that Israel and the Palestinians did not take part in the meeting! Also sobering was the fact that Britain refused to sign the joint statement at the end of the summit.

To “follow the crowd” means to go along with the majority—to “go with the flow.” It is conformity. Is following the crowd a good idea?

A recent study warns that “future crops will face threats… from the massive expansion of cities… By 2030, it’s estimated that urban areas will triple in size, expanding into cropland and undermining the productivity of agricultural systems that are already stressed… Roughly 60% of the world’s cropland lies on the outskirts of cities—and that’s particularly worrying, the report authors say, because this peripheral habitat is, on average, also twice as productive as land elsewhere on the globe” (