The Evolving Travel ‘Experience’: Virtual, Actual and In Between–New York Times, November 12, 2020 Guided excursions have long been at the heart of travel, but like everything else, the pandemic disrupted such experiences, and many went virtual. But as travel begins to tick up, tour companies are adapting to social distancing in numerous ways. Some are complementing virtual experiences—for instance, guided chocolate tastings with chocolate shipped…
Culture—a defining element for containing the pandemic—explains why East Asian nations (where community acts as a collective agent for the common good) have done much better than individualistic countries characterized by a “to each his/her own” mentality. The reason is the following: the lower the level of social cohesion (or the higher the level of social inequality), the stronger the incentive for individuals to compete…
Are mushrooms the future of wellness?–New York Times, September 18, 2020 No, not another article on the booming magic mushroom research and market, but rather how that vast “other” world of fungi—whether reishi, lion’s mane or chaga—is one of the biggest trends in wellness. Eastern cultures and medical systems (including TCM and Ayurveda) have long used mushrooms to boost health, and this looks at key…
The Main Street Manifesto – Project Syndicate, June 24, 2020 The economist Nouriel Roubini argues that the historic protests that have swept the US were long overdue, not just as a response to racism and police violence but also as a revolt against entrenched plutocracy. But this phenomenon is not limited to the US. In most countries around the world, a growing number of people…
(Really understanding) The first modern pandemic – The Blog of Bill Gates, April 23, 2020 This is a great read by Bill Gates to make sense of the overabundant information about COVID-19. The epidemiological situation changes every day and makes it incredibly hard to grasp all the ideas and policy proposals we read and hear about. Some parts of the article are fairly technical, but…
The Cluster Effect: How Social Gatherings Were Rocket Fuel for Coronavirus – Guardian, April 9, 2020 This article explains how social gatherings of different sorts (religious, social, cultural, etc.) helped spread the virus. This is the so-called “cluster-effect” that turbo-charged the spread of the pandemic. It begs the fundamental question of whether governments, when they start relaxing social distancing measures, will allow large social, cultural…
