Dr Paul Allen

I think it’s fair to say that the year 2020-21 were stressful years for the global population. The COVID-19 pandemic was a large part of that, but people are also worried about the government, the economy, their health, their jobs, their loved ones, and their futures. In 2022. Omicron arrived. A survey of 3,013 adults conducted on behalf of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 2020 showed stress levels in American adults as the highest since these levels started being recorded, and “marks the first significant increase in average reported stress” since the survey began in 2007. According to the APA, parents are more anxious than adults without children, reporting stressors related to education, basic needs, access to health care services, and missing out on major milestones. The poll found that nearly 80% of adults say the coronavirus pandemic is a significant source of stress in their lives, while 60% say the number of issues America faces is overwhelming to them. Australia...

Sometimes I worry about losing my job. Do you? I mean, I work pretty hard. But you never know, you know? Maybe funding for our organization won’t come in. Or perhaps the organization’s needs will change. Or even—I’m embarrassed to admit this—we’ll face societal breakdown, like in one of those “day-after” movies, where the square-jawed hero has to defend himself and his two precious children with nothing but his wits and a shotgun, as marauders patrol burned-out streets in pickup trucks with tough-guy rollbars. No, that’s not a big worry—but it crosses my mind. More realistically, foreign governments could call in our debts, tanking the dollar and collapsing the economy - let alone a virus pandemic that has shut down the world.  Then a massive natural disaster could hit. You think those things could never happen? It’s easy to think about job loss when you’re balancing the chequebook or watching shower tiles fall in your twenty-five-year-old bathroom. Should we redo the b...

Since Steve Jobs ’ death in October, numerous pro-life commentators have linked the fact that Jobs was adopted to the issue of abortion – pointing out how different the world would be if Jobs’ birth mother had simply chosen to abort her unwanted pregnancy . But it turns out that pro-life groups weren’t the only ones to make the connection: Jobs himself did. The late Apple CEO Steve Jobs. In the new authoritative biography of Jobs, biographer Walter Isaacson reveals how Jobs set out to find his birth mother in the early 80s, even hiring a private detective for the task. While his first efforts to find his mother failed, Jobs persisted, particularly after his adoptive mother passed away in the mid 80s. Jobs explained to Isaacson why he was so determined to find his biological mother: “I wanted to meet [her] mostly to see if she was OK and to thank her, because I’m glad I didn’t end up as an abortion,” he said. “She was 23 and she went through a lot to have me.” Eventually Jobs wa...