“Anyone who has witnessed the steady rise of Trump, with the thumbs-up, thumbs-down swagger of an omnipotent Roman emperor,” knew this day was coming. Attorney General William Barr has just announced the end of the Justice Department’s unofficial, 16-year-long moratorium on executing federal prisoners. The department plans to put five inmates to death in December …
My life closed twice before its close; It yet remains to see If immortality unveils A third event to me. So huge, so hopeless to conceive As these that twice befell, Parting is all we know of heaven And all we know of hell.
The Queen, who by tradition does not comment on politics, is quoted as saying that the political class is incapable of governing. Amen to that. Robert Unger, a philosopher at Harvard, says that European politicians don’t know how to do anything apart from splitting the difference, and are incapable of facing up to fundamental problems. This …
Continue reading ‘The British political system is bankrupt (and in good company)’ »
Well-intentioned policies can have unintended consequences. For example, while the rate of new opioid prescriptions has fallen in recent years, a large number of physicians have stopped initiating opioids altogether. While that may sound like a good thing, it’s not clear whether this does more good or harm to patients in severe pain. This isn’t …
Continue reading ‘Drug deaths in the US and some unintended consequences. No. 2’ »
For the first time since 1990, the number of annual drug overdose deaths in the US has declined. The 5 per cent fall reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is almost entirely due to a drop in deaths from prescription opioid painkillers. Does this mean the opioid crisis has peaked? The …
Toxic for reefs As of January next year, visitors to Palau, an island country in the western Pacific, will be prohibited from buying or using a range of sunscreens. The country has classified products containing any of 10 commonly used sun filters and preservatives as “reef-toxic”, as they are thought to harm coral reefs. Other …
You will recall that when Notre Dame cathedral caught fire there was a huge outpouring of horror and concern. One of the few things about it that warmed the heart was the rapidity with which people offered money for the re-building , which President Macron pledged would be within five years. Most notable were the …
To lose one country is a misfortune. To lose both simultaneously looks like carelessness. I apologise for paying so much attention to the UK, when the system has become so dysfunctional in the US. But the US is not in danger of actually breaking up, and the UK is. The following from the highly respected …
Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Tories: no fan of the new PM From The Independent, The New Statesman, The Times, Daily Telegraph, and The Guardian and The Week: Boris Johnson professes to love the United Kingdom, said The Independent. He extols “the awesome foursome” and speaks of the UK as “the most successful economic …
From the Harvard Gazette: We are all too ready to judge the world though anecdotes, images and distorted reporting designed to sell news, rather than quietly studying the actual facts. Some examples: – Trump refers to American “carnage” in an era in which violent crime rates are close to historical lows. Bush created …
Continue reading ‘Collectively we are all guilty of perpetuating misleading “facts”.’ »
The migrants on the Southern border are treated as an army of feckless invaders. Families are being broken up , children are kept in hot, fetid disease-ridden camps, and no one in the government seems to know how many are in detention, where they are or which children belong to which parents. Common decency, and Epicurean …
One gets the impression that the US is the only country holding migrants in what amounts to jail. But a snapshot by The Guardian of 200 migrants held in seven British detention centres found more than half were suicidal, seriously ill, or. victims of torture, with 84% not told when they would be deported. Almost half …
Out of England’s 334 high-rise blocks of flats with the same cladding as Grenfell Tower, 69 have so far had it removed. ( U.K Ministry of Housing) (The cladding on Grenfell Tower turned out to be flammable. Scores of people were trapped in the burning high-rise apartment block on 14 June 2017 and were killed)
The American Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Thursday that it will resume capital punishment for the first time in nearly two decades. Only three federal executions have taken place since 1988, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. All five of the death-row inmates named in Thursday’s release were convicted for the murders of children. …
One survey of Amazon facilities showed that74% of Amazon workers skip going to the bathroom to avoid having their pay cut, and over 80% said they would never apply for another Amazon job again. I once worked for an American company doing contract document copying . The hours of work were 6 a.m to 6 …
