Pandemic may tip some institutions ‘over the edge’ financially, but others may be able to capitalise on increasing numbers of people ‘at home with a lot of extra time on their hands.’
More data is critical in understanding the virus in general and in particular its transmission in particular countries. Anyone who looks at rates of morality and lethality of influenza and related pneumonia, especially in the elderly and infirm, can be shocked at the wide variances between particular countries.
In the 1600s, self-proclaimed witch hunter Matthew Hopkins stirred public panic with his book “The Discovery of Witches,” as competing Catholics and Protestants sought to attract new followers by demonstrating their power to expose and capture “witches.”
As though the negotiations over Britain’s departure from the European Union are not complicated and contentious enough, a group of French historians have now made an official request to the British Foreign Office that the remains of their last monarch, Emperor Napoleon III—and presumably also those of his consort the Empress Eugenie—be repatriated to France as part of the post-Brexit deal.
Humanities courses in America’s best universities are apt these days to denigrate, or even deny the reality of, Western civilization. Rare are classes devoted to transmitting Western civilization’s leading ideas; examining its continuities and breaks; and cultivating the independence of mind that Western civilization prizes by exploring the several sides of fundamental moral questions and enduring political controversies.
