UNDP Human Development Index Ranking, 2019

Country Ranking

UK ranks fifteenth, with an HDI score of 0.920 (maximum 1) and average life expectancy 81.2 yrs

Full report

Edwin Muir's "The Labyrinth". 1949; Prague, Czechoslovakia, 1945-1948

One of the greatest post-war collections of poetry, The Labyrinth (1949), "written in Czechoslovakia between 1945 and 1948, when Edwin Muir was Director of the British Institute in Prague".

Edwin Muir's "The Labyrinth": A Study of Symbol and Structure, Christopher Wiseman

Studies in Scottish Literature Volume 10 | Issue 2,, 10-1-1972 (12 pages)

Art in Dorset County Hospital, George Wright, Vanishing Dorset, Photographs

Wonderful black and white photographs by George Wright along the corridor between the Abbotsbury and Lulworth wards in DCH.

See George Wright Photography, Vanishing Dorset

About George Wright


The curative value of art...


Arts in Hospital, DCH

Another impressive series of black and white photographs at DCH:

Jean Macalpine, Dorset Land and Sea

Dorchester (Dorset): Happiest Town to live in the South West. Ranked No. 8, nationwide, Rightmove Survey

Rightmove Survey

MailOnline Graphic, Article

Why does music affect the way we feel? BBC World Service, The Why Factor

Why does music affect the way we feel? Listen

Fascinating discussion of the emotional and therapeutic powers of music.

About the programme (BBC):

"An exploration of why and how music can exert a powerful effect on our emotions. Why does one particular collection of notes make us want to get up and dance, and another calm us down?

Edwina Pitman hears from record producer turned neuroscientist Daniel Levitin about how our brains process music and from psychologist Victoria Williamson about how we react to the memories that sounds trigger. Renowned Hollywood film composer Brian Tyler demonstrates how he creates music that reflects the many shades of emotional grey between happy and sad, and Emmanuel Jal, the South Sudanese-Canadian musician and former child soldier, reveals how music helped him come to terms with the trauma of his childhood".

Guests:
Bryan Tyler - film composer and conductor
Dr Daniel Levitin - neuroscientist, and Founding Dean of Arts and Humanities at The Minerva Schools at KGI and author of This Is Your Brain On Music
Dr Victoria Williamson - Lecturer in Music Psychology at the University of Sheffield and author of You Are The Music
Rob Wood - founder of Music Concierge
Bibi Heal - opera singer
Emmanuel Jal - singer and musician

Presented and produced by Edwina Pitman
Editor: Andy Smith

Scotland: Inside the stomach of a whale on a Scottish beach (Euronews)

100kg 'ball of rubbish' found in stomach of whale on Scottish beach, Euronews