In mid-March, as the British government dragged its feet on implementing strict coronavirus lockdown measures that it would soon impose anyway, Patrick Vallance, the country’s chief scientific adviser, gave a series of interviews and discussed a concept with which many people were not then familiar: “herd immunity,” or the threshold at which enough members of a given population are immune to an infectious disease that the disease’s spread is controlled. Vallance—and, later, other officials—seemed to suggest that the government’s goal was to allow the virus to circulate while shielding only the most vulnerable against it. As The Atlantic’s Ed Yong put it at the time, the message appeared to be: “Keep calm and carry on… and get COVID-19.” That notion met with a swift, fierce backlash, including among sections of the press—it was inhumane, critics charged, as well as being scientifically illiterate. Vallance and his colleagues quickly backtracked, insisting that letting the virus spread in the name of herd immunity wasn’t their plan, but merely a scientific concept; Matt Hancock, Britain’s health minister, insisted as much in an (initially paywalled) article for a right-wing newspaper. More charitable observers criticized the episode as merely a messaging disaster. (As one expert told Yong, “It’s been a case of how not to communicate during an outbreak.”) Others claimed that herd immunity actually was, at one point, Britain’s plan: In late March, the Sunday Times reported... Continue reading at 'Columbia Journalism Review'
[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2020-10-21 12:30:20 UTC ]
Cultural Cross Sections Margaret Randall Children’s choir at the 2014 La Matanza Book Fair / Photo by Mauro Rico / Ministerio de Cultura de la Nación / Flickr When good engineers or scientists emigrate, they are able to continue their work. Novelists... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2019-07-10 21:07:28 UTC ]
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A new set of five poems goes live on London tubes on July 1st for four weeks. Some deal specifically with the urgent issue of climate change. Others reflect more generally on how human beings take solace and meaning from their living world of earth, sea and sky.The poems:Still Life with Sea... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2019-06-26 17:36:35 UTC ]
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Riots and parades have made LGBTQ people visible. But a new anthology of writings from before, during, and after Stonewall shows the inward changes as more essential. Continue reading at The Atlantic
[ The Atlantic | 2019-06-26 14:29:00 UTC ]
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They turned down Ulysses and Animal Farm, but still shaped 20th‑century literatureAll publishing houses have archives, but for anyone interested in 20th-century literature the archive of Faber & Faber is a fabled treasure house. This is the firm that was, as Toby Faber puts it, “midwife at... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-06-20 11:00:08 UTC ]
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An indie publisher has been forced to find a new venue to launch its anti-Brexit poetry anthology Bollocks to Brexit: An Anthology of Poems and Short Fiction after the church where it was due to be held refused to host the event, citing issues with political balance. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-06-20 07:09:36 UTC ]
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Intan Paramaditha will be appearing alongside Syd Moore to discuss re-writing old stories and myths with a contemporary, feminist slant at the Essex Book Festival on 15 March 2019 at 19.00. Find out more and book tickets here. What’s exciting about Indonesian literature at the moment, and... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2019-02-21 11:15:36 UTC ]
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Al Jazeera isn’t exactly the media brand that comes to mind as a top choice for today’s news junkies. And yet, a year after its launch, Al Jazeera’s AJ+ offshoot has emerged as a huge success story, thanks largely to Fac ... Continue reading at Editor & Publisher
[ Editor & Publisher | 2015-07-31 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Terms of Service ingeniously harnesses the power of comics to keep readers engaged.Terms of Service is a newly published digital graphic novel from Al Jazeera that explores the turbulent relationship technology users today have with services provided by big data companies.Read Full Story Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2014-11-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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