Joan Silber (http://joansilber.net/?page_id=18) is an American novelist and short story writer. She is the author of Household Words (Penguin Books, 1981), which won a PEN/Hemingway Award, and Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories (W.W. Norton, 2004), which was a finalist for both the 2004 National Book Award and the Story Prize. She has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National […]
A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital. A boy named David sits beside her. She is not his mother. He’s not her child. Together, they tell a haunting story of broken souls, toxins, and the power and desperation of family. Fever Dream is a nightmare come to life, a ghost story
In southern California, over 50 years ago, a small band of researchers were pursuing a not inconsequential goal – to uncover the origin and fate of the universe. They were equipped with the new 200-inch telescope. Their quest would eventually engulf all of physics and astronomy, leading not only to the discovery of quasars, black
Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos Read More »
It has been understood at least since Wittgenstein (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/) that there are varieties of human thought and discourse, and that they intersect in interesting ways. They have been described as ‘language games’. Each game in a school playground has its own set of rules. These are absorbed and complied with by the participants for the
The Rhetoric of Religion by Kenneth Burke Read More »
In 2013 Charlie Smith and Tonya Bundick were convicted of 86 arsons in Accomack County, Virginia. Reporter Monica Hesse (https://www.monicahesse.com/) tells the story of their motivations and communities living through fear, confusion and danger. Hesse spends a chapter comparing Charlie Smith and Tonya Bundick to Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Tonya was a showoff with something
American Fire by Monica Hesse Read More »
The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Humanism presents an edited collection of essays that explore the nature of humanism (https://humanism.org.uk/humanism/) as an approach to life, and a philosophical analysis of the key humanist propositions from naturalism and science to morality and meaning. It looks at humanism not just in terms of its theoretical underpinnings, but also
The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Humanism Read More »
Ideas about the gene, genetics and genetic engineering get splashed around in the media routinely now. Often the gene is cast up as a simple determinant of behaviour, such as a ‘criminal gene’, or a ‘homosexual gene’. Not many subjects have occasioned as much confusion and misunderstanding. A clear, accurate, and up-to-date popular science
Flim-Flam! explains that not one shard of evidence exists to prove that the Bermuda Triangle poses any special menace to ships and planes, that earth is being visited by alien spacecraft, that the unassisted power of mind can read closed books, predict our future or induce levitation. It shows that the ‘psychic surgeons’ of the Philippines have relieved their
Flim-Flam! by James Randi Read More »
Elif Batuman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elif_Batuman) is a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. Her 2017 novel The Idiot concerns a college undergraduate, Selin, attending Harvard. The title is a conscious echo of the novel by Dostoyevski. Selin has a conversation with her university friend Svetlana about whether or not one’s life should be thought of
