We have a whole lot of extremely complicated problems on our hands these days. The COVID-19 pandemic, for example, is a hellish enigma of epidemiology, pharmacology, virology, social psychology, medical ethics, regular ethics, macroeconomics, microeconomics, supply-chain logistics, and more — and that’s
Today, I’m writing about something that was first used by the Ancient Mesopotamians. It used to be illegal to export under weapons trafficking treaties, and it is frequently bemoaned by law enforcement. It’s also a critical component of almost every electronic device,
Two weeks ago, a large chunk of the Swarthmore student body fanned out across the country for Fall Break. We crammed into planes, trains, and buses; we hugged people we hadn’t seen for months; some of us let off steam at crowded
So, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know that Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp all went down for about five hours starting at around noon Eastern Time on Monday. Online services have outages sometimes, usually due to a cascading system
We’re entering a new phase of the pandemic. We’re always entering a new phase of the pandemic, to the point that I’m getting sick of the phrase “new phase of the pandemic.” As a matter of fact, we should probably retire that
Back in January, you may have noticed articles floating around the web with headlines like “Subway’s Tuna Is Not Tuna” or something else along those lines. These all stemmed from the initial filing of a lawsuit against Subway in federal court with
Modern society runs on electricity. It lights our cities, runs our factories, and powers the computer that I’m typing this on right now. And it will only become more necessary as we electrify various parts of society that still use oil and
Last week I wrote an Opinions piece about vaccine hesitancy and the need for Swarthmore to require vaccinations for all its students. This was a short piece, written more or less off-the-cuff after seeing a news article about vaccine exemptions. Unfortunately, this
Editor’s Note: The Phoenix Editorial Board and the author of the piece have issued apologies regarding the editorial process of this article. Since the original publication of the piece, mentions of Orthodox Jews in this article have been modified to ultra-Orthodox Jews
Why do grandparents always text … kind of like this … with the dots … and use them to separate phrases? Why does everyone feel the need to type “lol” even when they’re not laughing? And why does a period at the
