The life of an author — particularly an author of fiction – is necessarily connected to that which is most dangerous: our consciousness. It is often through the exploratory process of creative literature that we touch the exciting possibilities and subversive consequences of our capacities as a species. Yet for all of the grandiose ways […]
Continue readingPirates! They weren’t all Johnny Depp-swaying, dainty and witty denizens of the sea. Though they’ve been with us from the ancient world to the present wave of Somalian ship hijackings, most pirates were a 17th-century phenomenon whose short careers ended bloodily, leaving behind rumors of their fearsome beards as much as of their actual material […]
Continue readingLife’s toughest lessons are learned by making mistakes. It’s what we learn from our experiences, the good, the bad, the ugly, that matter most. Have some fun with these tongue in cheek common mistakes that (we think) everyone should commit at least once in a lifetime. 1. Getting married Everyone should take a trip down […]
Continue readingThe idea of the earth tearing itself apart is terrifying enough, but the devastation that earthquakes cause is only intensified by the huge waves that can follow a massive seismic disturbance in the ocean bed. Often, coastal inhabitants have just minutes to flee to higher ground, and any delay can cause shocking casualties. In the […]
Continue readingAside from catching chicken pox as a kid, nobody would ever go out of their way to get sick. Why would they? The best you can hope for is a few days off from work, and really, playing hooky isn’t as fun since Bob Barker stopped hosting The Price Is Right. However, there are a […]
Continue readingBefore everyone had a cell phone and the capacity to record video on the fly, a police beat down was, by sheer chance, caught on tape in Los Angeles on March 3, 1991. Public fury about racism and police brutality erupted when a portion of the video showing several LAPD officers Tasering, kicking, stomping and […]
Continue reading“In the theatre there are 1,500 cameras rolling at the same time- in the cinema, only one,” as quoted by Orson Welles, the prolific director of the most studied film of all time, Citizen Kane. Within the last century cinema has grown from pioneering silent films into orchestrated musicals, “spaghetti westerns” and has taken us […]
Continue readingThose who ask the difficult questions, like “Why are we here?”, “From where do we derive morals?” and “What does it all really mean, when you get right down to it?” have given humanity amazing philosophical insights and ethical guidance. Unfortunately, thinking too much about these issues can sometimes also lead to the brains of […]
Continue readingThe cliché goes that “a picture is worth a thousand words,” but some photographs eschew any such numeric limitation and go on talking to us forever; certain photo portraits have that rare power. Far more than pictorial representations of celebrated or instantly recognizable figures, they capture so much more, seeming to encapsulate not simply the […]
Continue readingWhen you run experiments, there’s inherently an element of the unknown. After all, we’re trying to figure out things we don’t know. And sometimes, things go wrong. FATALLY WRONG! Here are some of the most interesting, most intriguing, and sometimes most horrific, experimental deaths we’ve ever heard of. 15. Those magnificent men and their flying […]
Continue reading