Category Archives: Science

The Next Thing, Ukraine now being sidelined because Russia is winning and many countries are refusing to play ball with the suicide sanctions, is of course the next pandemic, of a rare and generally mild disease called monkeypox. It does, however, have the psychological edge over COVID-19 of looking like a real plague, with yucky blisters and all.

Imagine that, in a journal with a name like “Climate Science,” you saw a paper which began, “Before the widespread use of fossil fuels much of the earth was covered with vast ice-sheets thousands of feet thick. But through the use of coal, oil and gas we now have a climate that, for most, is warm, productive and pleasant.”

You’ve heard of “compassion fatigue,” that phenomenon whereby frequent graphic depictions of human misery worldwide compete to be more graphic and frequent until the public eventually becomes saturated, and ceases giving to anything any more. I’m beginning to get a similar sense of saturation at the pervasive deception and corruption in our society.

Perhaps the most perceptive description I’ve seen recently of the national (for which read “Western”) zeitgeist is that the population has just received a software update.