Updated: 8am GMT -- 2006/12/29

Features

Relax and have fun, but be safe
These general safety tips may help ensure your holiday is accident and tragedy free THE holidays are here and while we all look forward to happy, fun-filled holidays, the risk of road accidents rises considerably during this time. Then, there a...

Making environmental message an easy sell
By JOHN DONNELLY MICHAEL Hirshfield has long struggled to get across his earnest but wonky message: global warming and overfishing are killing off the oceans’ food supply. Then, along came the animated movie Happy Feet and, voila, tens of mi...

From vaudeville to race riots
Performer, human rights campaigner and French darling Josephine Baker is immortalised in her centenary year, writes Cheryl Wittenauer At a 1952 homecoming speech, Baker said that her impoverished childhood had made her ‘remain human’ and ‘underst...

Oldest bartender still working at 90
Hoy Wong has been tending bar in New York since 1948 serving celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe and Bob Hope, writes Karen Matthews Once, Wong recalled, a woman sitting at the bar next to Anthony Quinn got so nervous she shook MARILYN Monroe ...

Size up your competition
By BRENDA GOODMAN HUMANS spend a lot of time sizing each other up – a fact long known to social scientists. But a new study has pinpointed the brain areas that appear to be involved in this process of social comparison. The study, led by Caroli...

Old man, new mind
By MARK HENDERSON THE ancestors of modern human beings were painting their bodies as early as 300000 years ago, according to research, suggesting that the origins of symbolic thought and possibly language are much older than believed. Traces of m...