We’d like to think we’re objective. We’d like to believe that we’re like judges, who weigh the evidence for and against before deciding what is the right answer. We’re wrong on both counts. We’re not objective. We are – as the Nobel prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahnemann explains in his book Thinking fast, thinking slow […]
35 countries where fathers raped daughters
The alarming rise in the incidents of child rape, gang-rape, and even rape of daughters by their fathers in Bangladesh and many other countries will shock any conscious person at any part of the world. On the other hand, the sex perverts will be inspired – thanks to lax enforcement of laws and rise of […]
What is Your Stress Type?
Stress is the silent killer of the modern age, yet historically stress has saved the human race from extinction. Could history be changing humanities fate just because we have been unable to manage the stress caused by our hectic, fast- paced lives? Stress threatens damages our bodies and eventually causes us to become ill. Or […]
"I Dream About You Baby" by Lester Afflick
Being alive, I have learned, means bearing a certain responsibility to the dead. I didn’t know Lester Afflick well; I saw him occasionally at parties in the East Village in the 90s. Then suddenly Lester died, in 2000. Since then, I had forgotten about him, until I ran into Ruth Siekevitz at a party last […]
"John Wilkes Booth: A Sister’s Memoir" by Asia Booth Clarke
This book (which really has no title — the editor, Terry Alford, supplied one) is the best guide to the inner life of John Wilkes Booth, yet was only published in 1938! Asia’s family discovered the manuscript in 1888, realized a sympathetic portrayal of John Wilkes was too unsavory for America, and waited 50 years. […]
Indian Sex Workers Tell Stories of Hardship and Poverty
Meet Kalaivani, a Tamil woman with short hair, plump figure and dusky looks, who was trafficked from Chennai to Singapore in 1997, when she was 24 years of age. She was promised a job, but ended up as a sex worker, soliciting customers on the streets to support herself in the island nation. However, she […]