The Iconoclast
Umayr of Somalia and His Assassin Namesake
by A. Human Being (December 2015) January 1, 2014, New Years Day: Mogadishu, Somalia Umayr, named after the famous butcher of Asma bint Marwan, raised his arms without a twitch […]
Arthur Miller @ 100
by Richard Kostelanetz (December 2015) We were all going slightly crazy trying to be honest and trying to see straight and trying to be safe. Sometimes there are conflicts in […]
A Pragmatic Approach to the Conceptual Tangle of Caste
by Ankur Betageri and Ateeth Betageri (December 2015) What Population Genetics Tells us about Caste Though caste is defined as an endogamous social unit its historical existence as an endogamous […]
Correspondence with a Quaker
by Ardie Geldman (December 2015) At any given moment during the year an estimated minimum of 2,000 foreign visitors, having entered the country as tourists, travel throughout Israel and the […]
Culturist Debating Techniques Concerning the Refugee Crisis
by John K. Press (December 2015) My friend, Chuck, recently enthused, “Utlitarianism is popular in the Silicon Valley and Washington DC,” (the center for his tech industry and where he […]
Letter to a Young Philosopher
by Michael Flood (December 2015) Dear Student, Congratulations on choosing philosophy as your major. I hope you will find it a rewarding and life changing field of study. It has […]
Shakespeare’s Alleged Drug Use
by David P. Gontar (December 2015) When the media began recently to belch forth accounts of Shakespeare’s use of drugs, many aging Hippies sat up and took notice. It […]
First Sunday in Advent
The Boys Air Choir, a chamber ensemble of young choristers drawn from such cathedrals as St Paul’s, Salisbury, Winchester, and Westminster Abbey, perform a simple arrangement of the traditional Advent […]
Pius XII and Received Wisdom
by James Como (December 2015) Some months ago I attended a dinner party that included a man who had worked for Zbigniev Brzezinski when he was Jimmy Carter’s National Security […]
“Yes, Mr Dennett, qualia are unscientific… and real”
by Paul Austin Murphy (December 2015) [Others] note that my “avoidance of the standard philosophical terminology for discussing such matters” often creates problems for me; philosophers have a hard […]
Is it Safe to Fly?
by Jerry Gordon with Amb. R. James Woolsey and Lisa Benson (December 2015) Saturday morning, October 31st, 2015 Flight 9268 a Metrojet Airbus A321 with 224 largely Russian tourists, and […]
As if and Adam Smith
by G. Murphy Donovan (December 2015) “… every man must be supposed a knave.” – David Hume Adam Smith (1723-90) is memorable for things he was not. He wasn’t […]
Jacob Riis – The Story of America’s Most Famous Immigrant of the 19th Century
Stranger than a Hans Christian Andersen Fairytale by Norman Berdichevsky (December 2015) Jacob A. Riis became the most celebrated European immigrant to the United States in the period of mass […]
Population and the True Number of Converts to Islam
by Ibn Warraq (December 2015) Immediately after 9/11, many journalists in the United States, and Europe, came out with several glib generalisations that I found, and still find, irritating, because […]
“No War Against ISIS Without the Kurds”: an interview with US Army Brig. Gen. (ret.) Ernie Audino
by Jerry Gordon (December 2015) On the morning of November 13, 2015 combined Peshmerga and Yazidi forces, with US Special operators and USAF tactical support, successfully cut off the occupied […]
The West and the Rest: Agnostics vs Believers
by G. Murphy Donovan (December 2015) “Faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just how you believe.” – M. Albom Political leaders, East and West, are […]
