Smart phones seem to be directly linked to a worldwide crash in the birth rate. It is “quite plausible that the modern digital media environment has had profound effects on society that have led to a decline in romantic coupling,” said Melissa Kearney, professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame. She has to […]
In 1953 Ray Bradbury, an American writer, published a book entitled simply ‘Fahrenheit 451′. It was a novel about an American fireman in a not-too-distant future who realised that he was doing his job all wrong – because his job was to burn books, which were banned in that future America. (451°F is the temperature
Today Tuvalu; Tomorrow the World By Gwynne Dyer Some big changes arrive with a bang, but usually they sort of sneak in and you barely notice them at first. Last week’s big change saw the creation of the world’s first climate-change visas. It’s a way of giving potential climate refugees some hope and some dignity,
800 words (700) 20 April 2025 Trump-Era Elections in the Anglosphere By Gwynne Dyer The dictionary defines a ‘horse whisperer’ as “someone who is skilled at training horses using gentle, non-violent methods based on understanding horse behavior and psychology.” By that standard, the only ‘Trump-whisperer’ in Europe is Vladimir Putin (although Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and
17 July 2023 Heat Waves and Tipping Points By Gwynne Dyer “What we’re seeing is climate impacts that scientists thought would accompany certain temperatures happening far more rapidly, with far more devastating effects than had been forecast,” said Dr. Simon Nicholson of the Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment at American University. “We didn’t think that
12 April 2023 Taiwan: Ignore China’s Conniptions By Gwynne Dyer China has been having conniptions again. President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan had a courtesy meeting last week with the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy. Beijing reacted by issuing a “stern warning” to the United States, and then “encircled” the island (its
Here’s an interesting fact. Only 14 per cent of people in England and Wales are ‘Black, Asian, Mixed or Other’ (i.e. non-white). Yet half the candidates vying to take the place of disgraced British prime minister Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative Party-and therefore the new prime minister-are non-white. Four out of eight. In
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27 December 2021 ‘Nuclear Twilight’: Something Else to Worry About By Gwynne Dyer As a dreadful year draws to an end and the Omicron variant turns out to be less lethal than its predecessors, premature outbreaks of cheerfulness have been spotted in many quarters. As I am under a contractual obligation to keep the readers
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20 July 2020 If you wanted evidence that reasonably competent government – not great, not corruption-free, just not awful – produces good results in the end, here it is. Back in 1971, when the two countries split apart, Bangladesh had 65 million people and Pakistan had 60 million. By the end of this century, Bangladesh
Something has gone wrong in the ‘Anglosphere’, as the English-speaking countries are known in some other parts of the world. Smaller English-speaking countries are coping with the Covid-19 emergency quite well. New Zealand’s coronavirus death toll so far is eighteen, and Australia’s is 83. Even Canada, despite being next-door to the United States, has only