What’s the point of the hijab? A common explanation is that the headscarf is there to protect women from being pestered by men. Try telling that to any woman who lives in Tehran. To walk down the street alone in the Iranian capital as a female is to be subjected to a near constant barrage of whistles, hisses, and aggressive ogling, regardless of dress. A full-length chador makes little difference: men still pester and abuse them on a daily basis. And Iran’s moral police – who make such a big deal of their duty to “protect women’s bodies” and enforce suitably modest attire – do absolutely nothing about it. There is, in fact, only one way for women to ward off unwanted male attention, and that’s to be escorted by another man: only then do you become invisible. The idea that Islamic dress laws protect and liberate women is a pernicious myth.  (An anonymous Tehran Bureau correspondent of The Guardian).

Epicurus treated women as equals, welcoming them into his garden.  By now, after over two thousand years, we should all be feminists.  Why is it that some parts of the world are so culturally backward in this respect?

“Maybe this world is another planet’s hell”.
(Aldous Huxley, quoted on United Press International)

Were there little green men observing Earth from some other distant planet, they would note the thousands of refugees fleeing violence, the general political instability, the unpleasant, repressive regimes, the over-population, the poverty, the degradation of the environment, and the seeming inability of mankind to get on together.  This is clearly why they haven’t bothered to visit our planet.

Lost among  the disagreeable people and their doings are still those who try to live pleasant lives, harming no one, respecting all and tilling their Epicurean  gardens.  Unfortunately, they are the relatively few and may not register with little green men light years away. Things are not as bad as they might look from outer space.

The New York Times recently ran an article about a  62-year-old pharmaceutical pill whose price has skyrocketed from $13.50 to nearly $750 after it was acquired by Turing Pharmaceuticals.

The increase in the price of Daraprim, a drug that “is the standard of care for treating a life-threatening parasitic infection,” will  have a huge effect on patients.  Doctors reacted with shock, forecasting, at best, treatment delays, if not worse.

Instead of relying on standard PR procedures, Martin Shkreli, Turing Pharmaceuticals’ founder and chief executive, took to Twitter, sending out 125+ tweets to the “haters” calling out his company’s operations, clearly showing that he couldn’t care a toss about the patients who can no longer get Daraprim. One tweeter told Shkreli: “You don’t care . But there are middle class people out there who will be in debt for decades just to pay”.  To which Shrekeli replied “bp4Christ ain’t my fault”.

This is a man who started a foundation earlier this year under his own name, dedicated to helping underprivileged people!  He now seems to believe that  those rightly criticizing him are simply raging socialists and liberals. Actually they are  simply disgusted. It is possble that some level of autism is at work here.  One should sympathize with those afflicted, but should they be in charge of corporations?

(Edited:  washpost.com and others)