Subterms
You pay little attention to the systems of your body — circulatory, digestive, pulmonary — unless something goes wrong. These automatic systems ordinarily go about their business, like unseen clockwork, while you think about a vexing problem at work, drink your morning cup of coffee, walk up and down the stairs and head out to […] More
The catalog of omissions in the British government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic is well known. The decision to lock down was taken far too late in the day. Scientists have been too slow to criticize one another and too sure of their assumptions and methods. Shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) are killing nurses, […] More
Phillip Roth’s 2004 novel, “The Plot Against America,” has been made into a six-part TV series and shown recently on HBO in the United States and Great Britain. David Simon wrote the script for the television version and directed the production. Simon’s earlier credits include “The Wire,” “Treme” and “Murder: Life on the Streets,” all […] More
“Can we please go back to talking about Brexit?” For the past few weeks, I got used to seeing this message on Twitter at least once a day, breaking the monopoly of news about the novel coronavirus. For some, it was a joke, half-nostalgically taking us back to the days when we couldn’t wait for Brexit to be over and the […] More
The COVID-19 pandemic is dominating the news, and rightly so. This pandemic is a human rights crisis, and millions of people are at risk. However, it is crucially important that the media continue to report on what else is happening in different countries around the world. In the midst of the coronavirus crisis, a journalist […] More
Last week, on William Shakespeare’s 456th birthday, US President Donald Trump — presumably under the influence of James Joyce, whom The Donald undoubtedly remembers as the author of “Finnegan’s Woke” — let the stream of his semi-consciousness guide his thoughts along a meandering medicalized path traversed by rivers of ultraviolet light subcutaneously striving to bleach […] More
April has been a hard month for the largest and most populous Latin American country. While the whole world is engulfed in the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed over 200,000 globally to date and unleashed an unprecedented economic crisis, Brazil has also been going through political upheaval. The combination of health, economic and political emergencies […] More
Fear, in the globalized sense of the word, had largely dissipated ever since the height of the Cold War, when the world stood by as the two superpowers stared each other down with nuclear weapons. Largely absent since the days of brinkmanship seen during the Berlin Airlift and the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world has […] More
