Opinion

From the Rhine to the Tigris, rivers are warnings

You can’t step into the same river twice, the philosopher Heraclitus said in a different context. If he were alive in the era of anthropogenic climate change, he might add that you may no longer even have that river to step into. And even if you do, you might not want to, because its fluids co...

Opinion

Germany’s Anti-Digital Law: A case study in stunting progress

If you want to know why Europe’s largest economy is a digital laggard — indeed, if you want to know why progress is difficult anywhere — regale yourself with a trip into the fine print of a new German law governing employment contracts.The occasion for the anecdote is a directive f...

Opinion

Germany should make English an official language

Here’s a great idea that unfortunately won’t become reality any time soon: Germany should recognize English as a second official language. So should most countries, in fact.The idea popped up this month in a 10-point program put forth by the Free Democrats, the business-friendly and libe...

Opinion

The secret to creative breakthroughs, hot streaks and success

“There’s no value in digging shallow wells in a hundred places. Decide on one place and dig deep.” This advice comes from the ancient Yoga Sutras as interpreted by Swami Satchidananda, an Indian guru who died in 2002.The trouble is, the insight is only half-true, and therefore in n...

Opinion

Wordle is the word: A logophile’s paean

“In the beginning was the Word.” John was exaggerating in his Gospel — there had been rather a lot going on even before words. But he was on to something. Whenever humanity took a leap, words weren’t far.They first became the Next Big Thing during the Stone Age. Once we start...

Opinion

As Omicron overwhelms hospitals, we must talk about triage

At some point after he became chief surgeon in Napoleon’s army, Dominique Jean Larrey started walking across blood-soaked battlefields to pick out those among the wounded who could still be saved, usually by instant amputation of limbs. In time, he developed a system of sorting and separating ...

Opinion

What’s worst about Omicron so far is the uncertainty

So here we go again. The coronavirus has mutated, as we’ve always known it would, and the new variant, called omicron, is spreading fast.Should we be scared or sanguine? Should we change our behavior and plans or carry on? To answer these questions, we need three pieces of information that we ...

Opinion

New German Chancellor Olaf Scholz deserves a chance

Olaf Scholz clinched the deal of his life this week. Less than two months after leading his Social Democrats to a narrow victory at the polls, Germany’s outgoing finance minister got himself the coalition he needs to be sworn in as chancellor, probably within two weeks. The 16-year era of Ange...

Opinion

Germans shouldn’t overreact to 6 per cent inflation

Just as Olaf Scholz, Germany’s finance minister, is getting close to becoming chancellor of a new government, all sorts of numbers are going the wrong way in his country. One is the rate of coronavirus infections and hospitalizations. Another is that historic bugaboo of the German psyche: infl...

Opinion

In post-Merkel Europe, what is ‘Conservatism’?

Reinventing conservatism sounds like an oxymoron. How exactly would you reimagine a political philosophy that — as its intellectual father, Edmund Burke, expounded more than two centuries ago — largely consists of opposing radical reinventions?And yet a drastic rethink is what center-rig...

Opinion

Mass migrations could yet bring Europe down

There must be no repeat of 2015. That’s been the refrain from politicians across the European Union as they watch the unfolding humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan, which can be expected sooner or later to cause renewed mass migration. These European politicians include candidates for ch...

Opinion

The case for personal carbon allowances

To mitigate a huge problem like climate change, we need to be open to big ideas. One of these has been around since the 1990s but may only now be ready for prime time: the issuance of tradable carbon allowances not only to companies (as in existing cap-and-trade systems) but to all of us individuall...

Opinion

The European Union should be able to kick out Hungary

Tempers were flaring at a recent summit of the European Union when Mark Rutte, prime minister of the Netherlands, looked straight at Viktor Orban, his Hungarian counterpart, and said what everybody was thinking: If you don’t share our values, you should take Hungary out of the EU. Rutte&r...

Opinion

Why simplifying is hard and complicating is easy

Why is everything so darned complicated? And I really mean everything: our taxes, schedules, bureaucracies, machines, algorithms, org charts, our school and welfare and health care systems, you name it.Even — and I say this as an oft culpable columnist — our diction. “If it is poss...

Opinion

We must start planning for a permanent pandemic

For the past year, an assumption — sometimes explicit, often tacit — has informed almost all our thinking about the pandemic: At some point, it will be over, and then we’ll go “back to normal.”This premise is almost certainly wrong. SARS-CoV-2, protean and elusive as it...

Opinion

Let’s get rid of time zones, not just daylight savings

This is one of those weeks when, sitting here in Berlin, I feel much closer to my place of birth, New York. By one hour, to be precise. Most of the U.S. switched to daylight savings time last weekend, whereas Germany — the first country to introduce “summertime” about a century&nbs...

Opinion

Germany drew the wrong nuclear lesson from Fukushima

Ten years ago, an earthquake triggered a tsunami that caused a meltdown. It wasn’t a mixed metaphor. Starting on March 11, 2011, people across the world watched agape as three nuclear reactors in Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture broke down and spewed ionizing radiation far and wide into...

Opinion

A primer on Germany’s election year: Watch the palette

Two regional ballots next month will mark the unofficial start of Germany’s campaign sprint to the federal election on Sep. 26. That in turn will be the occasion for a new leader to take over from Angela Merkel, after her 16 years as chancellor of the European Union’s largest country and...

Opinion

Smell in the time of Covid

Researchers estimate that about four out of five Covid-19 patients suffer a partial or total loss of smell, a condition known as anosmia. Many have no other symptoms. And no, it’s got nothing to do with stuffy noses; it’s all about the havoc the coronavirus wreaks on our nervous systems....

Opinion

Promise of messenger RNA vaccine: Will it treat other diseases too?

The night is darkest just before dawn, they say. Dark it certainly is right now. The more contagious variants of SARS-CoV-2 coming out of the UK and South Africa will make the pandemic worse before mass vaccination can make it better.But take another look at some of these new vaccines. And then cont...