Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Last summer, the mayor of San Antonio, Ron Nirenberg, ordered all schools closed until September 7 as a mitigation measure against the spread of the coronavirus. Texas had a major outbreak this summer, one of the country’s worst hot spots. Texas has had over 800,000 cases and 16,444 deaths. Fundamentalist […]
How ExxonMobil’s plan to Surge its CO2 output is Like Trump’s plan to Deal with the Coronavirus
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump made a mad dash to escape his hospital room at Walter Reed, browbeating his military physicians into letting him go while he was pumped full of a cocktail of potions that included euphoria- and delusion-inducing steroids. His lungs laboring with broken glass syndrome, he vaulted up the stairs to […]
More Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: ‘With soul afire, words flowing like a sea’
In 1882 Edward Henry Whinfield (d. 1922) brought out a bilingual Persian and English edition of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, based on eight medieval manuscripts. It is really his own selection, since he admits he played down the wine poetry (!), and several of his manuscripts are late and Indian. Whinfield did not know […]
Trump Prospects Plummet as Public blames him for Illness, Independents desert him over Debate Bullying
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Those observers asking whether Trump would get a bounce of sympathy from falling ill with COVID-19, the way Ronald Reagan saw his popularity soar after he was shot and had to be hospitalized, now have their answer. No. An October 2-3 opinion poll conducted by Yahoo and YouGov from Friday-Saturday, […]
The Republican Party is Sick: Top 4 Ways it is Making You and Yours Sick, too
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Republican Party is sick. That isn’t a putdown, it is just the truth. The chair of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, is down with Covid-19, which she caught from hanging around with top Republican leaders. The head of the party, Donald Trump, is so ill he is in […]
Biggest Irony of 21st Century: Was GOP Elite sickened at Barrett fête while Plotting to end Americans’ Health Care?
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In the twenty-first century’s biggest irony so far, last Saturday’s ceremony for the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court may have been a coronavirus superspreader event among the Republican Party elite. So suggests Oliver O’Connell at The Independent. It is an irony because that gathering was a […]
Trump, who mocked Joe Biden for wearing a Mask, gets Covid-19
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Donald Trump and first lady Melania have tested positive for the coronavirus and have gone into quarantine, the president said by Tweet on Thursday evening. Even before the positive test, Trump and his wife had initiated a “quarantine process” after counselor to the president Hope Hicks, 31, fell ill with […]
Arab World, Alarmed at US Debate Debacle, Worries about Military Coup and ‘Banana Republic’ on Potomac
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Arabic press watched the Trump-Biden fiasco of a debate with alarm. The US is so involved in the Arab world that our elections are consequential for their lives. When we hear that Arabs are looking at America and thinking “this looks like a military coup waiting to happen,” we […]
On how there are no “Infidels” in the Qur’an, and how Christians and Jews are never Called That
My new article is out in The Journal of the American Oriental Society about the meaning of the root k-f-r in the Qur’an, the Muslim scripture. We’ve all grown up hearing about the Qur’an’s condemnation of “infidels” or “unbelievers,” but I think that this is for the most part a mistranslation. I argue that the […]
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