‘People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof, but on the basis of what they find attractive.” The truth of these words, by the philosopher Blaise Pascal, can be tested against our attitudes and responses to global warming. The effects are all around us. Six of the 10 warmest years […]

To the Editor: Re “Putting the Glam in Mammogram” (Thursday Styles, June 6): While massages and goody bags are nice inducements to get a mammogram, as you report some clinics are doing, it is more essential to provide culturally competent staff members to increase mammogram rates among those with less access to care. Look at […]

After watching Bernie Sanders try, for at least the second time, to defend himself as a “democratic socialist” by defining “democratic socialism” as something that is not actually socialism, I’m struggling to understand the purpose of it all. What does he gain from this? What is he trying to do? Here’s how Sanders talked about […]

Editors’ note: This is part of a series, “Op-Eds From the Future,” in which science fiction authors, futurists, philosophers and scientists write Op-Eds that they imagine we might read 10, 20 or even 100 years from now. The challenges they predict are imaginary — for now — but their arguments illuminate the urgent questions of […]

It’s not the policies of the various Tory candidates currently vying to be the UK prime minister that are striking; their policies don’t differ all that much, and anyway, a PM is always constrained by circumstances, global events and the decisions of others. What’s interesting is their back stories, and how surprisingly varied their backgrounds […]

There will be carrots and there will be sticks in this long-awaited Government strategy to confront climate change. Carrots will include a scrappage scheme to encourage the switch to electric cars and a promised big increase in the lamentably few charging points available at present. The sticks will include phasing out the price differential between […]

Cycling aimlessly around Dublin this weekend, it was impossible not to sense the atmosphere of fear and loathing stalking the city. As the ominous threat of destruction draws ever closer for hundreds of mature trees, the urge to croon a few bars of Tony Orlando’s ‘Tie A Yellow Ribbon’ seemed entirely appropriate as a soundtrack […]

In the discourse of the upper-upper, don’t-call-us-rich middle class, an old stereotype of fatherhood — the dim, affable, useless-for-housework Pop — has lately been supplemented by a new one: The credit-hogging, pleased-with-himself Good Dad, who does just enough housework to pretend that he’s an equal partner, and swans about in a BabyBjorn reaping applause from […]

Housing is one area of American life where government really is the problem. The United States is suffering from an acute shortage of affordable places to live, particularly in the urban areas where economic opportunity increasingly is concentrated. And perhaps the most important reason is that local governments are preventing construction. Don’t be misled by […]

CERES, Calif. — Last weekend, 3,000 miles west of the marble edifices of the nation’s capital, Cindy Quezada, the field research leader for the San Joaquin Valley Census Research Project, was wending her way past false-eyelash vendors, mountains of chiles and peanuts, bright jumbles of farm-worker bandannas and triumphal displays of booty-lifting jeans. She and […]