An expert explains how to assess risk when reconnecting with friends and family.
Perspective
Posted inPerspective
Here’s how to stay safe while buying groceries amid the coronavirus pandemic
Wear a mask, but skip the gloves. Don’t sanitize the apples. And if you are older than 65, it’s probably best to still order your groceries online. As a food virologist, I hear a lot of questions from people about the coronavirus risks in grocery stores and how to stay safe while shopping for food […]
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Posted inOp-Eds, Perspective
The Year with No Summer: How the hardships and the politics of 1816 compare with today’s
The snow storm that invaded Maine a few days ago along with equivocal prospects for both our health and the economy have brought to mind the question of whether Maine has ever confronted other problematic seasons such as the one that is about to unfold. Though a familiar point of comparison has been the 1918 […]
Posted inOp-Eds, Perspective, Politics
Congressional candidates campaigning for Donald Trump’s approval
It’s become a truism that President Donald Trump, once shunned by the Republican Party establishment as a crude, clownish political dilettante of uncertain principles, has hijacked the party, intimidating incumbents who don’t demonstrate fealty to him by threatening primary challenges while dangling endorsements before candidates who fawn over him. Still, it must be uncomfortable for […]
Posted inPerspective
Are we living in a dystopia?
Dystopian fiction is hot. Sales of George Orwell’s “1984” and Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” have skyrocketed since 2016. Young adult dystopias – for example, Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games,”Veronica Roth’s “Divergent,”Lois Lowry’s classic, “The Giver” – were best-sellers even before. And with COVID-19, dystopias featuring diseases have taken on new life. Netflix reports a spike in popularity for “Outbreak,” “12 Monkeys” and others. Does this […]
Posted inMark LaFlamme, Perspective
Coronavirus has turned ordinary Americans into snitches
The snitch culture is a side effect that is far more terrible than anything coronavirus could ever do to us.
Posted inPerspective
Cellphone monitoring is spreading with the coronavirus. So is an uneasy tolerance of surveillance.
More than two dozen countries are tracking cellphones to help stem the spread of the coronavirus.
Posted inPerspective
Maine nurses went from ‘industrial morality’ to ‘angels of mercy’
Employers of the 19th century easily justified the policing of the moral and social behavior of their workers by arguing that they were engaged in a larger social mission by magically giving birth to solid character traits and law abiding citizens. Such rules governing the workplace were accompanied by long hours of toil which served […]
Posted inPerspective
Ohio primary marks a major test for mail-in voting
Ohio held its primary election almost entirely by mail in what could be a model for the rest of the nation in November. The contest is a canary in the coal mine for more than a dozen states still planning presidential and state primaries this year. They’re aiming for either a fully vote-by-mail elections or […]
Posted inPerspective
A very interesting number on GOP support for vote-by-mail
Republicans who actually have lots of vote-by-mail in their states overwhelmingly support it.