From the extended family to the nuclear family and now quite often the single family, the core structure of our society has been undergoing a metamorphosis for some time now. What will the future concept of modern families look like?

American TV series appear to have a fascination for families. For decades they espoused ‘family values’ and how family is one of the cornerstones of life, but more recent hits such as Modern Family indicate just how much the goalposts have moved even in the US.

The popular sitcom follows a familiar feel-good approach in tracking the lives of an all-American family – but this is a family with its feet firmly rooted in the 21^st century. The patriarch of the family is not only remarried, but his younger wife is a gorgeous Latina with a teenage son from an earlier relationship, while his son is married to a man and only his daughter’s family still fits the mould of what once, not so long ago, would have been as a typical, desirable heterosexual nuclear family. At heart not that much has changed, for the underlying message is that – different, diverse and with warts and all – family remains an important anchor in one’s life, and in a way it’s hard to argue with that. (more…)

Cat Gaa and Hayley Salvo met in Spain, having left the United States to embark upon new lives in the country. They found they had a great deal in common, amongst others just how complicated and challenging it was to tackle the paperwork, bureaucracy and the official documentation before they could relax into the laidback Spanish way of life. To help others avoid the same pitfalls, they decided to work together and compare an e-book guide to moving to Spain. (more…)

Do Sphinx-like monuments and water irrigation systems point to the existence of an ancient civilisation on Mars? Among a great many other conspiracies, NASA is being accused of ‘covering up’ what it really knows about the red planet, reports Michel Cruz.

In July 1976 NASA’s Viking 1 spacecraft was put into orbit around Mars, on a seemingly standard mission to look for suitable landing sites for the impending Viking 2 mission. As its cameras scanned the red planet’s surface, however, they suddenly came across a feature so incredible that it would not only spark off a sensation, but also a legion of fanciful hypotheses about life on Mars. The images beamed back to earth by Viking Orbiter 1 were of a land form that so strongly resembled a human face, complete with eyes cast in shadows, a narrow nose and frowning mouth, that to many it had the unmistakable appearance of an Egyptian Pharaoh. And so the mysterious ‘Face on Mars’ was born, capturing the attention of millions across the world and completely overshadowing what had started as a scientific probe into the mysteries of our nearest planetary neighbour. (more…)

July 20^th 1969, the day ‘the eagle landed’ and Neil A. Armstrong took his famous “one small step for a man and one giant leap for mankind”, was humanity’s proudest moment—or was it? So incomprehensible was the news that we had landed a manned craft on the moon, that it temporarily brought together a world steeped in political conflict. The moon landing was born out of the space race—in itself yet another manifestation of the cold war—and it was certainly a major coup for the USA, but the sheer accomplishment of it had a profound effect on people the world over. For a brief moment, the world came to a standstill as images were beamed from the moon in a testimonial to what humans are capable of. (more…)

For over a century the name Montblanc has stood for style, elegance and quality, its pens and stationary items among the best that money could buy. Though built on a classical tradition, the brand has continued to remain in vogue and is now being discovered by a whole new generation.

Today Montblanc ranks as one of the top luxury brands in the world, but as is often the case its origins are quite humble. Founded in 1908 by Claus-Johannes Voss, Alfred Nehemias and August Eberstein, the firm then known as the Simplo Filler Pen Company could count on the skills of a stationer, a banker and an engineer respectively. Moreover, this Hamburg-based company is German, not French or Swiss, as one might have deduced from the name. (more…)