Isles of the Left

Highly Contagious: Pandemic and ‘Pan-Panic’

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Why do COVID-19 updates skew so much towards death and not recovery? We need to be particularly cautious in letting numbers of death records beat us into fear. Or do we assume that people will not act responsibly unless they are shocked into a panic?

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Give Yourself a Break. Stop Making Sense of a Virus!

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 If you believe that COVID-19 was sent by divine providence to make this world a fairer, greener place, you are mistaken. It’s up to us to strive for this goal. A virus has no such mission.

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Fitness and Its Discontents: The Pursuit of the High-Status Body as Therapy. Part 2.

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We live in a culture that tends to define the self in accordance to the status of its body and the maintenance of a healthy lifestyle. The corporal self-identity of contemporary times frequently goes under the name of ‘fitness’. It is a measure of aptitude for life in consumer culture and a service economy.

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Education in Malta: a Beacon of Equal Opportunity or a Means of Segregation?

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Isn’t free and equal education for all the bastion of equal opportunity? Not if the education system segregates children according to the thickness of their parents’ wallets.

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