Maria Katsounaki

If words had a smell, you can bet that it would be an unpleasant one for many of them. The stench, however, would not really emanate from the words themselves, but from the manner in which they are delivered, from the attitude of the person using them. It might be macho and threatening: “You're trash… Get lost…” The person who spoke these words recently in a social media post referring to a retired police officer also had the look to match the verbal swagger: a tight T-shirt showing off his biceps, an angry frown, a slightly bored demeanor, resting a cheek in the palm of his hand.

This time there's an additional incentive to the Education Ministry's regulation for banning the use of cellphones in classrooms and that's the threat of specific penalties for the violation. We'll assume that such punitive measures will have the power to trump the addiction that children and teenagers have to their cellphones. After all, similar rules have existed since 2002, but the situation is only getting worse and smarter and smarter smartphones are now everywhere, all the time, in the courtyard, the playground and the classroom.

Road accidents in Greece are increasingly taking on the characteristics of a war between the pedestrian and the driver. Data from the traffic police confirm what we experience every day.

A bulldozer is a statement of determination; it is even reassuring somehow when it appears in a news story on our television screens. It is a statement that the laws of the land are being upheld, whether it is demolishing illegal constructions or removing trash and debris from our streams and culverts.

“A line appears, the order wanes, the Family falls and Kaos reigns.” This prophecy runs through all eight episodes of Netflix's “Kaos,” a British dark comedy that has been topping viewers' preferences for the past three weeks and prompting to end of commentary.

Greek politics is not just revisiting the past; it's living in a bygone world. You cannot cure old-school political mentalities and pettiness with spin alone, try as you might.

Let’s agree that for years private education was demonized and that vested interests held public education hostage to the fixations of unions and civil servants. The decades that passed consolidated a specific reality in primary and high schools.

Nothing can really be regarded as “news” when it comes to corruption. Corruption is so ubiquitous, that nothing comes as a surprise anymore, nothing shocks us.

It is simply impossible to overlook the devastation in Valencia, Spain. Even if you were to try, the rivers of mud, the piles of cars, the rising number of victims, remain etched in your mind.

What is on the mind of an apartment owner who rents a 70 sq.m. flat, in an old building in Athens' central Pangrati district, for 800 euros? It is renovated, but it is squeezed in a narrow street, with a tiny balcony. It is not the only egregious example. Dozens of such ads for rentals are published daily or recycled in groups with desperate people looking for an apartment and telling their stories.