Showing 1 - 10 of 10
The trouble with events in America
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 21/01/2024
» Harold Macmillan, British prime minister about half a century ago, was once asked what was the greatest challenge for a political leader. "Events, dear boy, events," he replied. The same is true in this US presidential election year.
The baby bonus just does not work any more
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 22/05/2023
» I was one of five children -- not seen as a particularly big family in Newfoundland at the time -- and there was one year when we allegedly beat Guatemala to have the highest birth rate in the world. (That's probably not true, but people were proud of it anyway.)
In Iran, all options to curb crisis are bad
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 25/10/2022
» 'Death to [fill in the blank]!" has been the slogan of choice chanted by Iranian protesters since the glory days of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. ("Death to the Shah!", "Death to America!", etc) It's now forty-three years later, however, and the content has become a bit more nuanced.
South Korea's gender politics getting ugly
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 10/03/2022
» Gender is not the only issue in this week's election in South Korea, but it's the hot-button topic. It's not clear if there was ever a successful sexual revolution in the country, but the counter-revolution is definitely doing well. The 'F-word' (feminism) is being used a lot by both major parties, and not in a good way.
When robots will be caring for humans
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 24/05/2021
» The birth rates are falling fast in all the world's more prosperous countries, but the generation now in their middle years have not yet grasped what that means for their later years. If they end up needing some sort of assisted living, either at home or in a care home, they will probably be looked after by a robot.
Someone like 'Bibi' can't lose in Israel
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 02/05/2021
» A tempest in a small teapot this week, as Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Israel of "apartheid".
Alexei Navalny and Dr Seuss' Mulberry Street
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 05/03/2021
» By now Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny will have reached Correctional Facility No.2 (IK-2), where he will be spending the next two-and-a-half years in one of the harshest penal colonies in the Russian prison system.
Playing football won't turn boys into manly men
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 12/02/2021
» It seemed innocent enough at the start: just a surge in the number of boys coming to school with notes from doctors saying they were excused from playing contact sports. But pretty soon high schools all over China were having trouble finding enough willing young men to make up a football team.
Are we ready for the first real automatons?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 30/01/2021
» They were planning to put on a play written by an artificial intelligence programme in Prague, capital city of the Czech Republic, this month, to mark the invention of robots (or at least the idea of robots) in the same city exactly one hundred years ago. The coronavirus pandemic got in the way of that, and it will now only be available free online late next month. Kind of symbolic, really: the future is quite different than what they expected.
Can Navalny change Russia like Lenin did?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 22/01/2021
» When Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny returned to Moscow on Sunday after convalescing in Germany from an attempted poisoning by the FSB domestic spy agency, the regime-friendly media loyally failed to mention his arrival. With one striking exception: Vremya, the flagship news show of Russian state television.