The book of Leviticus might seem to have little to offer by way of guidance to 21st century life. But there is one particular prohibition which might make us re-consider its relevance at this particular time. In Leviticus,Chapter 11, there is a long list of winged creatures that are described as ‘unclean and not to eat’ […]
Last year Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Catholic woman accused of blasphemy against Islam, arrived to make a new life in Canada with her family. After being convicted and sentenced to death, she had languished in jail for ten years. Her lawyers received death threats. But Asia Bibi is far from being the only Pakistani Christian […]
I remember reading headlines not too long ago, around the beginning of this year, that some virus had broken out in China and they were in the process of building a hospital to deal with the outbreak, and they built that hospital in three days! I remember being in awe at the thoughts of it, […]
Population density and the proportion of society that is elderly quickly emerged as significant factors in the spread of COVID-19. Social distancing has been widely used as an effective way to avoid transmission, but is complex to implement in a very densely populated city without draconian government action. More than 55 percent of the world’s population is thought to […]
It was once understood that the purpose of college, among other things, was to expose an individual to the wonderful world of academia, a place with a wide variety of beliefs and opinions. The pursuit of knowledge was best facilitated by differing viewpoints, and politics were either irrelevant to the discussion or a cause for […]
The fresh produce company Keelings has been at the centre of controversy on social media for more than 24 hours after it emerged that 189 fruit pickers from Bulgaria had arrived on a Ryanair flight yesterday chartered by the company. https://twitter.com/FF_Grassroots/status/1251052199276355584 Keelings said that “a very important part of our workforce for many years has […]
With the Covid-19 pandemic dominating headlines, many important issues have been forgotten or shelved. One of those is the plight of Uyghurs and other persecuted minorities in Xinjiang in northwestern China. I’d like to clarify the often-conflicting reports on Xinjiang and drill down into the demographic statistics to give an accurate picture of the balance […]
The two most powerful tools that we have in the fight against Covid -19 are lockdown and testing. Locking the country down is extremely costly in human and financial terms. Each month of lockdown costs the state billions of Euro in direct welfare supports and each week of lockdown sends more and more businesses into […]
Covid-19 is raising new moral issues for us to consider. What once were unlikely dilemmas in moral philosophy textbooks are now matters of urgent practical concern. Two matters seem to stand out: what we owe poorer countries in the context of a lethal viral pandemic where life-saving resources are scarce, and what we owe our […]
They’re averaging 2000 deaths a day, and five million new job losses a week, now. Here are the numbers for this week alone: "The modest decline in initial jobless claims to 5,508,500 last week, from 6,615,000, means that the unemployment rate is now on track to hit somewhere between 15% and 20% in April, well […]
The Guardian published the image above two months ago. A man lying dead in the streets in Wuhan, as people walk past. No wonder, then, that they missed so many dead people. They probably walked past another guy the very next day, and assumed it was just the same dead guy as yesterday. You have […]
An Irish Examiner story, for the record, not one of ours. We have higher standards, you see. Anyway, here’s what they wrote. It went super-viral online, as you might expect: “A number of TDs have raised the question of new allowances to allow them to purchase office equipment while they work from home during the […]