There are different ways in which people choose to interpret the Covid-19 pandemic. Is it simply another epidemiological “event” – one that was an inevitable eventuality of our globalized world? Or is it a pandemic which we signally failed to anticipate because of ‘bias’ in our thinking and policy making – the kind of bias […]
Polling over the last few months in the US election has been fairly consistent: Donald Trump’s goose is well and truly cooked. It’s not just one pollster either – it’s been all of them. An approval rating stuck in the very low forties, and states like Texas and Georgia, which have always been rock solid […]
The numbers are in and it looks as if JK Rowling has defied her critics in the best way possible – by increasing her book sales. Her books have been a “lockdown hit” according to publisher Bloomsbury, and their sales have pushed revenues at the children’s division of the group up more than a quarter in the […]
My background is in investment risk management, particularly in the quantitative analysis of defined benefit pension scheme assets and liabilities. To put that in English: I’m a spreadsheet monkey. When I have a problem, and if I have enough time on my hands, I usually start with Microsoft Excel. Well, I’ve had a lot of […]
Popular U.S. Bishop, Robert Barron has described the attempt to erase the memory of catholic saint Junípero Serra is “from a historical standpoint ridiculous and from a moral standpoint more than a little frightening.” He made his comments after been informed that the government of Ventura in California was debating whether to remove the image […]
It’s only been a few months, but it sure does feel like the Covid crisis is dragging on forever. Anything that can bring it to a relatively swift conclusion sometime next year would be a tremendous victory for the world, and a monumental scientific achievement. And our neighbours over at the University of Oxford certainly […]
As The Guardian UK runs a whole series on being childfree, I wonder where they’ve put all the articles that make the case for having kids. Of course there are many reasons for choosing not to have a baby, but somehow we live in a world where that opinion seems more educated and high-minded than the choice to […]
Saturday’s arson attack on the Cathedral at Nantes whose construction began in the 15th century has taken place amid an escalating series of anti Christian violence and desecration. A person has been arrested but it is too early to attribute any definite motive. No-one was arrested or charged following the April 2019 burning of Notre […]
Dubbed “deaths of despair”, opioid deaths are a significant reason why the life expectancy of Americans is falling. In 2017, the rate of drug overdose deaths (21.7 per 100,000) had increased to 3.6 times the rate in 1999. The demographic of America’s opioid epidemic is non-Hispanic white Americans, Native Americans and the working class, and […]
India is about to overtake China as the world’s most populous country (if it hasn’t already done so). With around 1.4 billion people and a population density of nearly 400 people per kilometre, one often associates population explosion with Indian demographics. Indeed, the sight of India in the 1960s was one of the major influences […]
One would imagine that the discovery of up to 10,000 slaves in a European city might have provoked a major response. Seemingly not, for following on from the Sun and Sunday Times exposure of such an abomination, there has been surprisingly little media or political attention devoted to it. On July 1 the Sun reported […]
A grotesque report out of Kansas City drew attention to a problem that has begun to grow nearly unnoticed: The sexual assault of children—by other children. The Children’s Mercy hospital says that they are seeing “a disturbing trend in child sexual assault cases,” and that pornography has a lot to do with it. Heide Olson, […]