Feature Articles

Toward a Four Day Work Week

By Jerry Brownstein

In recent decades globalization, automation, digitization and outsourcing have drastically changed the nature of work. Yet we still cling to a schedule for workers that was designed tofit the way the economy was a century ago. It may finally be time for that to change. Companiesin various countries have been experimenting with using a four day week for their employees, in the hope that it will improve both profits and worker contentment. Interest in this concept was heightened by the fact that many people had to [...]

Jazz Point Ibiza 2021

By Jerry Brownstein

Jazz Point Ibiza put our island on the international jazz map by bringing some of the biggest names in the business to perform here in March 2020.The 2021 edition of this annual celebration of jazz will be on October 15th and 16th at Can Ventosa in Ibiza Town. On each night there will be two different bands performing and the shows will start at 21:00. There will also be a free concert by a local band at Can Ventosa on Sunday, October 17th at 13:00. The festive mood will begin on October 14th with a musical dinner party [...]

The Genius of Einstein

By Jerry Brownstein

How does a person become an icon? In the case of Albert Einstein, the originality and brilliance of his scientific achievements were so memorable that calling someone an “Einstein” became synonymous with calling them a genius. His revolutionary ideas and theories changed the way that the universe was imagined... not just once but several times. Einstein developed the theory of relativity, which is one of the pillars of modern physics, and his mass to energy formula E = mc2 has been dubbed “the world’s most famous equation”. Not only did he receive the Nobel Prize and countless other prestigious [...]

Martin Luther King - The Dream of Justice

By Jerry Brownstein

Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) devoted his life to the cause of racial and social justice. From 1955 until his assassination in 1968, he was the most visible spokesperson and leader of the civil rights movement in the US. Inspired by the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Ghandi, King advanced the cause of civil rights through peaceful protests and civil disobedience. MLK was born in 1929, but his story begins in 1619 - the year that the first African slaves were brought to England’s American colonies. The early English settlers of the southern colonies had found that growing cotton was [...]

Fake News and the Search for the Truth

By Jerry Brownstein

It is becoming more and more difficult to know where to find the truth about what is happening in the world. The prestigious Oxford Dictionaries highlighted this problem by selecting as their word of the year for 2016  “post-truth”. This is defined as “a state of affairs where objective facts are less important in shaping public opinion, and people rely more on emotional appeals and personal beliefs.” What they are confirming is that we live in a society where we can’t agree on basic facts... or even agree that there are such things as facts! We have lost faith in the traditional sources [...]

Universal Basic Income

By Jerry Brownstein

How would you like to live in a society that gives every citizen a guaranteed minimum income for their entire adult life? This is the essence of what is called Universal Basic Income (UBI), and it is a hot topic among western economists and governments. Andrew Yang, who ran for President of the United States in 2020, made UBI the basis of his campaign, and Dutch economist Rutger Bregman has spread the gospel of UBI around the world. Those who favour this concept say that it is the best way to reduce income inequality and provide for those who are in need. They also claim that UBI is much [...]

The Covid Vaccines

By Jerry Brownstein

The policies and restrictions instituted as a reaction to Covid-19 have disrupted our lives in many ways – economically, emotionally, and physically. We all want to return to normal living, and most people feel that a safe and effective vaccine is the best way for us to accomplish this. In order for that to work a large percentage of the population needs to take the vaccine. However, polls show that the attitude of the public toward being vaccinated for Covid-19 is a spectrum of opinions with polar extremes. On one end you have people who completely trust the government and the medical [...]

The Origins of Christmas

By Jerry Brownstein

We all love those wonderful December days when the world is filled with good cheer and the happy vibes of the ‘Christmas spirit’. It is of course the time of a Christian holiday that celebrates the birth of Jesus, but it is also a worldwide cultural and commercial phenomenon that goes far beyond religion. People share celebrations with family & friends, exchange gifts, decorate trees, sing carols and generally feel uplifted. But where and when did all of these customs come from, and how did December 25 become so important?  Christianity began after Jesus died (about 32 AD) as [...]

Reflections on Covid-19

By Jerry Brownstein

The Covid-19 virus came upon us like a slow moving tsunami. In January 2020 we started to hear news of a serious virus in the Chinese city of Wuhan. We saw it coming in the distance but there was little fear. Over the years we had seen SARS, MERS, Bird Flu and other supposedly dreaded pandemics pass us by with no real effects, so this seemed to be a similar situation. But by mid February this tsunami was starting to look much more dangerous as step by step Italy was locked down. In early March the wave was clearly visible, but most of us still felt that it would only be a minor event... and then [...]

Facebook

By Jerry Brownstein

Facebook has become one of the world’s largest companies by offering people a place where they can share what they are thinking and doing. Despite the recent controversy swirling around the company and its founder Mark Zuckerberg, the social media giant keeps growing, and as of April 2020 it has more than 2.6 billion active users around the world. It has become the most important way that people connect with each other, and a major source of their news and information. Facebook’s revenue in 2019 was about 78 billion dollars, and 98% of that money came from advertising. Why is their advertising [...]

Be here now

By Jerry Brownstein

“The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past or worry about the future, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.”  -  BuddhaThese words echo the wisdom of many great teachers throughout history, but what does it mean to live fully in the present moment? It means that your awareness is completely centered on the here and now – not lost in thoughts about the unknown future nor re-living events from the unchanging past. When you live in the present moment you realize that past and future are merely illusions of the mind – they do not exist [...]

Aging Gracefully

By Jerry Brownstein

For most people “aging” is synonymous with aches, pains, forgetfulness, loneliness, and ultimately death. Growing older is inevitable, but research actually shows that how you think about it can make a big difference in how gracefully you age. Holding on to negative stereotypes about aging can have a significant impact on your quality of life, and prevent you from living to your full capacity. On the other hand, having a positive outlook can help you to look, feel and act younger. A compilation of recent studies that were designed to test the effects of positive attitudes toward aging have [...]

5G Technology is Coming

By Jerry Brownstein

From the first digital mobile phones in the 1990’s to our current standard of 4G (4th generation), the telecommunications industry has changed rapidly in just a few decades. Now we are poised to enter the fifth generation (5G), which promises internet speeds that are much faster than 4G – fast enough to download a full-length movie in a matter of seconds. More importantly, 5G will enable a new wave of connected devices with the potential to massively change the way we live our lives. Telecom companies are working at full speed to put up the millions of towers that will be necessary for the [...]

Jazz Point Ibiza 2020

By Jerry Brownstein

Jazz Point Ibiza is putting our island on the international jazz map by bringing some of the biggest names in the business to perform here on March 6 and 7. The Ibiza Music Agency worked with Joel Chriss Productions and Hampton’s Jam Sessions (both of New York) to present these two very special nights of entertainment. Heart Ibiza will be the scene of the first night with an opening set at 21:00 h followed by the featured stars at 23:00 h. There will also be an open jam session with the masters, and then dance music by DJs until 4:30 h. On the following night the action switches [...]

UFOs – Fact or Fiction?

By Jerry Brownstein

Sightings of “UFOs” (unidentified flying objects) of varying sizes, shapes and other characteristics have been recorded around the world for hundreds of years. Since the middle of the 20th century this activity has increased, and thousands of people have reported seeing something in the sky that they cannot identify. Some of these are explainable by natural or manmade phenomena, but most of them are not. Is this proof that the Earth has been visited by aliens from other worlds? Most scientists and governments tell us that there is no clear evidence that Earth has been visited. Yet they cannot [...]

BIG PHARMA - The Real Drug Problem

By Jerry Brownstein

When people talk about the major pharmaceutical companies of the world they use the phrase ‘Big Pharma’... and these entities certainly are ‘Big’. Over the past few years their annual revenue has been about 1.3 trillion euros... €1,300,000,000,000 per year! It’s a huge number, and to give you some perspective, that is three times as much as the total annual spending by the entire Spanish government. Given the size of Big Pharma and its presence in our lives, it is important to ask two questions: 1) is it right for an industry to make such an obscene amount of money from people’s illnesses and [...]

The Green Tech Revolution

By Jerry Brownstein

Technology is changing our lives in many ways, but perhaps none more startling nor more important than in the area of sustainable energy. As recently as a decade ago fossil fuels were the unchallenged king both on the road and in electricity generation. Electric cars and clean energy sources, like solar and wind, were futuristic concepts that had very little traction in our lives... but that has radically changed. We are beginning to see more electric cars on the road, and it was recently projected that sales of electric vehicles will surpass those of petrol cars by 2038. Global wind power [...]

The consciousness revolution

By Jerry Brownstein

There is a great revolution occurring in the world today... not a revolution of battles and armies... but of consciousness. Every day more and more of us are becoming aware that the world we live in needs to evolve to a new level. We are searching for alternative ways of living and being... ways that feel more real and valuable. This movement towards positive transformation is growing stronger each day, while at the same time our traditional systems of economy, ecology, government, and spirituality are proving to be outdated and unsustainable. The 20th century was the apex of humanity’s reliance [...]

Hope for a Brighter Future

By Jerry Brownstein

If you get most of your information from the mainstream media then it is very easy to think that the world is in terrible shape. TV, newspapers and the internet focus our attention on negative events like the wars in Syria, Yemen, Myanmar and beyond. Every day we are told to be afraid of terrorism, crime, immigrants, epidemics and impending economic doom. On top of all that we see a new wave of heartless autocratic political leaders arising in many countries (including Russia, China, Turkey, Brazil and the US). Yes, it sounds pretty grim, but that is only because our sources of news have no perspective. [...]

Creating miracles

By Jerry Brownstein

Those of us who envision the possibility of a more beautiful world are told that we are unrealistic dreamers who believe in miracles. But what is a miracle? It is not the intervention of an external force that comes out of nowhere and defies the laws of physics. A miracle is something that previously looked impossible because our limited consciousness could not comprehend it. When we expand our consciousness we open ourselves to greater possibilities that we could not see before. The way to create miracles in our lives and on this planet is by broadening our awareness so that the [...]

The Power of Music

By Krishna Dias

There you are, feeling sad and down... and suddenly your mood changes when you hear a song. Who is not familiar with this wonderful sensation? We know that music touches us deeply, but why is that so? Even Charles Darwin, the father of the theory of evolution, declared himself baffled by our capacity to both understand and create music. For him, it was “one of the most mysterious abilities of human beings”. Priests and priestesses of traditional societies used the secret arts of sound, music and words to teach, cure and illustrate. These traditions believed that sound is a direct link between [...]

The Mystery of Crop Circles

By Jerry Brownstein

Hundreds of complex and beautiful patterns appear in crop fields around the world every year, yet their origin and purpose remain a complete mystery. Conventional science and the media try to convince us that these crop circles are merely the work of human artists, but the evidence does not support that conclusion. These incredible shapes and forms seem to come out of nowhere... and they keep appearing year after year... yet most people are unaware of the mystery surrounding them. Who or what is creating them? What do they mean? If crop circles are not man-made then they must come from an other-worldly [...]

Mindfulness

By Jerry Browstein

Mindfulness is an ages-old practice that teaches you to be focused on the present moment so that you can make conscious choices. In recent years it has become a major buzzword throughout our society – not just in the spiritual/self-help community, but in science, academia, business and the media. It seems like every other week a new scientific study comes out showing how mindful meditation can actually change the way our brains work. Many big companies, including Apple and Facebook, are seeing the value of mindful meditation and are making it available to their workers. Google has gone one step [...]

The Great Hoax: A Tale from the Wild Days of Ibiza

By Jerry Brownstein

Clifford Irving was an American author living in Ibiza who, in the early 1970’s, perpetrated the biggest literary hoax of the 20th century. He convinced the entire world that he had written an authorized autobiography of the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes… but the book was actually based on fictitious meetings and interviews that never took place. It was a wild and crazy adventure that mirrored and magnified the free and easy spirit that flowed through Ibiza during that time. It is hard to imagine now, but for most of its history Ibiza has been an insular agrarian society. This gradually [...]

Water has Memory

By Jerry Brownstein

Research from the Aerospace Institute of the University of Stuttgart in Germany supports the theory that water has memory - a claim that could change our way of looking at the world. These experiments were made possible through the use of a revolutionary new process that quickly makes the molecular structure of a drop of water visible. Thus the scientists were able to instantly see whenever there was a change in the structure of the water. In a series of tests they found that each drop of water has a unique character that reflects the vibrations of what it has been exposed to. In [...]

Good vibrations

By Jerry Brownstein

Quantum physics tells us that everything in our world consists of vibrating energy that carries information. We also know that similar vibrations are attracted to each other – in the same way that tuning forks of the same note will resonate together. What does that mean for you and me? It means that the vibrations you project through your thoughts and feelings will attract into your life that same kind of energy from the universe… like attracts like. When you create your thoughts and feelings to be positive they attract positive things into your life, but if you are putting out negative thoughts [...]

Toward a Cashless Society?

By Jerry Brownstein

There is a trend toward a cashless economy that has people in many countries worried about issues of privacy and security. Relying on the banks and the government to completely control your finances does not feel safe to many people. But in Sweden these concerns are muted, and it is a good example of how this trend can gather momentum. Cash is now used in less than 20% of transactions in Swedish stores, and total cash payments of all kinds are just 1% compared to 7% in most of the EU and the US. It is an increasingly common sight in Stockholm to see signs in shops and restaurants that [...]

Are We Addicted To Smartphones?

By Jerry Brownstein

You’ve seen it many times: A group of friends or a family take their seats in a restaurant, and one by one they pull out their smartphones until the food comes. They then take pictures of the food, and continue to check their phones repeatedly whilst eating. Another common sight is people scrolling their phones and paying little attention to their surroundings when walking on busy streets, riding bicycles or even driving cars! These scenarios have become the clichés of our dysfunctional relationship with technology. Yet most people are only vaguely aware that being so connected to their phones [...]

The DNA Myth

By Jerry Brownstein

Ever since the DNA molecule was discovered in 1953, conventional science has been focused on the theory of ‘genetic determinism’ which says that your genes control every aspect and characteristic of physical life. They tell us that if you have the gene for a certain disease or condition then it is highly likely that it will manifest at some point in your life. The culmination of this gene-centered materialistic viewpoint was the search for the ‘Holy Grail’: the human genome. By 1990 scientific methods had progressed enough for the launch of the Human Genome Project (HGP) which sought to sequence [...]

Freedom from stress

By Jerry Brownstein

The emotional stress of modern life is taking an enormous toll on our health, wellness and happiness. Research has shown that stress is a major factor in heart disease, digestive problems, autoimmune disorders, chronic pain, and many forms of cancer. When you feel stressful it raises your blood pressure, weakens your immune system, and speeds up the aging process. It’s easy to tell yourself to “calm down, relax and take things as they come”, but actually doing this is not so simple. In order to effectively deal with stress we first need to know where it comes from, and why it is so prevalent in [...]

Forbidden History

By Jerry Brownstein

How did human civilization really begin? Are we to believe the old story that we were taught in school, or is there a much more mysterious and fascinating history of humanity still to be discovered?  Conventional archaeologists say that the first civilizations arose about 5,200 years ago (3,200 BCE), in the ‘Fertile Crescent’ of the Tigris-Euphrates river valley of what is today Iraq. The most notable early society was called Sumer, and it later gave way to the great Egyptian dynasties that are supposed to have built the pyramids. This has been the ‘conventional wisdom’ for over 150 [...]

Happiness is a Choice

By Jerry Brownstein

All of us want our lives to be filled with peace, love and joy, so why do we get angry, nervous and worried? It should be easy to choose our moods and feelings, yet many times we are taken over by negative emotions and we feel powerless to change them. These negative patterns are buried deep within your subconscious mind, and they have a powerful influence over your emotions and your actions. The good news is that we have the ability to gain control over these patterns, and the solution begins with understanding how they work and where they came from.We [...]

The Future is Now for Elon Musk

By Jerry Brownstein

There are a few people in each generation who dramatically change the world, and Elon Musk is doing just that for the new millennium. He has a comprehensive vision of how the world needs to evolve, coupled with the unique ability to make those visions into present day reality. Over the past 14 years Musk has changed the course of an incredibly wide range of industries and activities: Aerospace, Automobiles, Energy Storage, Solar Energy, High-Speed Transportation, Artificial intelligence... and there is much more to come...Elon Musk was born and raised in South Africa, but at the [...]

The Mind Body Connection

By Jerry Brownstein

Have you ever heard of the placebo effect? In a typical experiment to test a new drug patients with the targeted disease are split up into two groups: one group gets the drug and the people in the second group are told that they are getting the drug but they actually get a sugar pill that has no active ingredients. In virtually every experiment the second group shows a great improvement in their condition, and at times they show as much or more than the people who took the real medicine. Remember, these were the patients who thought they were getting the real drug but actually took a meaningless [...]

Quantum Evolution

By Jerry Brownstein

Charles Darwin was a groundbreaking scientist who helped to expand our understanding of evolution. His idea that species develop over time through some form of natural selection was a significant step... but only that... a step. It was a theory that broke the logjam of out-dated religious beliefs about creationism, but it was by no means a final conclusion. Natural selection through random accidental mutations was a starting point... and it should have evolved as evidence disproved some of its details. Yet here we are over 150 years later, and despite many obvious flaws, it is still accepted by [...]

The strange world of Quantum Physics

By Jerry Brownstein

Many of the things that we take for granted in our daily lives would not be possible without the discoveries made over the past 100 years in the field of quantum physics. Nuclear power, lasers, computers, satellites, mobile phones, MRI machines and just about all of modern technology are the result of the application of the principles of quantum physics. Understanding how this works can be a challenge, but the basic principles are easy to grasp if we avoid scientific jargon and don’t get bogged down describing the complex experiments, so let’s give it a go.The traditional “old physics” [...]

Healing with Sound

By Jinny Throup

Some of the oldest surviving traditions of antiquity tell us that sound has been used as a tool for healing in many cultures throughout thousands of years. From the shamanic songs of the Amazonian Icaro, to the mantras of the original Hindis, to the vowel sound chants of the ancient Egyptians, sound as therapy has a long and rich history. Sound healing is rapidly gaining popularity in today’s world, and even modern science is getting on board with numerous studies about the power of sound waves. Geneticists have decoded the musical expression of DNA, and NASA has captured the sounds of all the [...]

Ancient Mayan city discovered

By Jerry Brownstein

Scientists using a high-tech aerial laser mapping technique have found tens of thousands of previously undetected Mayan houses, buildings, defence works and pyramids in the dense jungles of Guatemala. The discoveries, which included a massive fortress and huge agricultural fields with irrigation canals, were announced by an alliance of US, European and Guatemalan archaeologists. They estimate that roughly 10 million people may have lived within these Maya Lowlands. “That is two to three times more inhabitants than were thought previously,” said Marcello Canuto, a professor of anthropology at Tulane [...]

Earth’s ozone layer is healing

By Jerry Brownstein

NASA has confirmed that the hole in the Earth’s ozone layer, which first appeared above Antarctica in the 1980’s, is shrinking thanks to a ban on damaging chemicals. In 1989 the world came together in the Montreal Protocol, which banned ozone-depleting chemicals called chloro-flurocarbons (CFC’s). At the time these CFC's were widely used in aerosols, refrigerators and air conditioning. It was thought that they were the cause of the shrinking ozone layer because the chlorine gas that they give off damages ozone. Last year satellite images seemed to show that the ozone hole had begun to close [...]

Bitcoins & Bubbles

By Jerry Brownstein

The spectacular rise in the price of Bitcoin has brought it squarely into the public eye, and raised the spectre of previous speculative investments that rose to dizzying heights before crashing to earth. Bitcoin is a digital currency, also known as a cryptocurrency, that emerged after the financial crisis of 2008 as an alternative to the banks and other traditional payment methods. In 2010 each bitcoin was worth only about one dollar. Its value gradually rose, and stayed around $200 - $300 for several years... until January of 2017, when it made news by rising to $1,000... but that was just the [...]

New discovery in the Great Pyramid

By Carmen Loren

The mysteries and controversies surrounding the pyramids of Egypt have been followed passionately by scientists and the general public for ages. Now a recent discovery opens a new field of research into the Pyramid of Cheops (Great Pyramid), the largest of the pyramids and the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the World. An international team of archaeologists from Nagoya University (Japan) has used cosmic rays to explore the interior of the Great Pyramid. This technique uses muons (elementary particles of high energy) that are able to penetrate the rock to estimate the mass of the object and to [...]

A ‘Forest City’ to fight pollution

By Jerry Brownstein

The ecological vision of Italian architect Stefano Boeri is starting to take shape with two of his ‘vertical forest towers’ soon to be constructed in Switzerland and Milan. But it is in the Southern Chinese region of Liuzhou where he will realize his largest project ever – a ‘Forest City’ that is designed to soak up some of that country's infamous air pollution. What makes this project so unique is that the entire city will be covered in trees and plants – not just in the parks, gardens and city streets, but on the facades of all of the buildings as well.There will be a total of more than [...]

A More Progressive Education

By Jerry Brownstein

Many people question the effectiveness and the relevance of our current educational systems. It is felt that much of the time is spent learning things that are neither interesting to the students nor beneficial for what they will be doing in their lives. Many alternative methods have been created such as Montessori and Steiner schools, but perhaps the best example for a practical reform of education can be found in Finland.Students [...]

The Village of Memories

By Jerry Brownstein

The Dutch government has come up with an innovative way to take care of Alzheimer’s patients that is completely different from the clinical feeling of a typical nursing home. On the outskirts of Amsterdam they have created the “village” of Hogewey which opens new possibilities for the future of elderly care. On the surface it looks like any small village with a town square, shops, theatre, garden, post office, etc.. But there is one big difference... the village is not real and all of the residents are elderly people in various stages of dementia. They are part of a living experiment to [...]

Light therapy to treat Alzheimer’s

By Jerry Brownstein

An hour a day of light therapy has been found to break down Alzheimer’s-like brain deposits in mice. That’s a long way from it working on people, but because it seems to be such a completely harmless therapy, it could move quickly into human trials. “This is really intriguing because it’s such an unexpected and brand new method for tackling the disease,” says professor Ed Boyden of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US), who led the research team. The mice were exposed to a light flickering at 40 hertz for one hour a day, and this triggered brain cells to vibrate together. This vibration [...]

Vote with your wallet

By Carmen Loren

Many of us have reached the conclusion that choosing where and how we spend our money can create more political, social and economic impact than simply voting every four years. More and more of us are deciding to spend some of our precious time looking into the facts about what we buy. In a globalized world it is easy to feel impotent and confused because it is difficult to put a face on those who make the decisions that affect the lives of millions. Empowerment comes from being aware that through our small every day purchases we can express disagreement with the many injustices that are [...]

The rise of the sharing economy

By Jerry Brownstein

Last night about 40,000 people rented accommodations from a service that offers 1.5 million rooms in 35,000 cities throughout 194 countries. They chose their rooms on the internet and paid for everything online… but these beds were not booked by a hotel chain nor a travel service. All of them were provided by private individuals using Airbnb – a San Francisco based company that matches up hosts and guests around the world. It is the most prominent example of a huge new “sharing economy”, in which people rent beds, cars, boats and other assets directly from each other via platforms that are coordinated [...]

Living Consciously

By Jerry Brownstein

Be the change you wish to see…This inspirational phrase echoes an emerging awareness that the way to create positive transformation in our lives and in the world around us is by elevating our individual consciousness. That means learning to choose our thoughts, words and actions so that they are a clear reflection of our highest ideals. To reach this level of expanded awareness you must first travel within to connect with your true authentic self, and then bring that unique inner beauty into the world – through you and as you. There are many obstacles to overcome on this journey [...]