Bernie Sanders and the American Presidential election campaign

Epicurus warned us about getting involved in politics.  Ignore politicians, he said.  But I would nevertheless like to draw your attention to some interesting figures about Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, supplied by Owen Bell, who comments regularly on this blog. Poll data  from Fox News (see web address below) suggest that Clinton leads Bernie Sanders …

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Greece. Land of Epicurus, part 2

Yesterday I discussed Greece, which owes its creditors about $330 billion, estimated to be 177 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. This post is about a sensible outcome to the crisis. The euro should be wound up as gracefully as possible before the whole, great European project falls flat on its face, a victim …

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A surprise from the U.S Supreme Court

What is going on in the US Supreme Court? Most people glumly assumed that the conservative members called the shots, but yesterday the Court struck down marriage bans nationwide in a 5-4 decision, thanks to Justice Anthony Kennedy. The decision affirms that same-sex couples can indeed marry in every state in the union, and conforms …

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Humanity has been here before

In a book called “Global Crisis” Geoffrey Parker discusses the 17th Century, a series of world-wide humanitarian disasters, nowadays understood to be principally caused by climate change and over-population, with political unrest in Western Europe, the Ottoman Empire through to China, where the Ming dynasty collapsed.  When I studied this period the main influence was …

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