Tag: own choices
The Monk Who Thinks the World Is Ending
The monk paces the Zendo, forecasting the end of the world.
Soryu Forall, ordained in the Zen Buddhist tradition, is speaking to the two dozen residents of the monastery he founded a decade ago in Vermont’s far north. Bald, slight, and incandescent with intensity, he provides a sweep of human history. Seventy thousand years ago, a cognitive revolution allowed Homo sapiens to communicate in story—to construct narratives, to make art, to conceive of god. Twenty-five hundred years ago,
In Defense of Saying ‘Pregnant Women’
Who can get pregnant? It sounds like a trick question. For centuries, English speakers have talked about “pregnant women” without a second thought, but a vocal and growing movement wants to replace that phrase with the more inclusive pregnant people. And because the United States hasn’t yet found an issue it can’t turn into a polarized debate, a partisan divide has already formed. The received wisdom is now that a good liberal should always say “pregnant people,” if
FDA Delays Carry a Death Toll
This morning, the FDA granted full approval to the Pfizer vaccine for use in people 16 and older. Although “the vaccine approval was the fastest in the agency’s history,” as The Washington Post noted, serious side effects have proved extremely rare. Nevertheless, anti-vaccine activists—and the politicians and pundits pandering to them—have criticized the accelerated approval process as rushed. Yet the problem with the FDA is precisely the opposite: The agency too often fails to recognize the danger of being
Arkansas’s COVID-19 Cases Are Undoing Unvaccinated Places
At a county health department near my hometown in rural Arkansas, almost everyone who comes in for a COVID-19 test is congested and short of breath, with a sore throat and muscle aches. They might have the flu, except for the added telltale symptom of this coronavirus: the loss of taste and smell. Many of the patients now are younger than those in previous months; a nurse who works there told me she saw two cases of young children in