Ted Chiang Uses Science to Illuminate the Human Condition
I think science and religion could more peacefully coexist if we could agree that they are trying to answer different questions; science is investigating the question, “how does the universe…
George Orwell Reveals the Role & Responsibility of the Writer “In an Age of State Control”
Well, then what? Do we have to conclude that it is the duty of every writer to “keep out of politics”? Certainly not! In any case, as I have said…
I’m an Award-Winning Short Story Writer and I Don’t Know What I’m Doing Either
What I’d forgotten: the way I could hold a short story in my head for the entire composition of it, how the first mysterious intimations — a sentence, an image, an exchange…
Japan’s Prisons Are a Haven for Elderly Women
“Prison is an oasis for me—a place for relaxation and comfort. I don’t have freedom here, but I have nothing to worry about, either. There are many people to talk…
A Meditation on Forests, Life, and Art: Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Fir Tree”
“The Fir Tree” was originally published in New Fairy Tales, Second Collection (1844) next to another winter tale, The Snow Queen. It was swiftly overshadowed by that other story and…
For the First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works Will Enter the Public Domain
We can blame Mickey Mouse for the long wait. In 1998, Disney was one of the loudest in a choir of corporate voices advocating for longer copyright protections. At the…
Why Are Men So bad at writing sex?
Male authors dominate the Bad Sex in Fiction awards, and it’s no coincidence
Man tries to claim the Nazis were socialist and gets shut down by a history teacher
'Nazi' is the short name. The full name for the 'Nazi' party was the "National Socialist German Workers' Party" ("Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" in German). The fact that the far-right party…
Japan’s youngest female mayor takes on its oldest all-male sport
One of the most interesting parts of this story is how the city where this woman is mayor and cities where other women are mayors in Japan have higher birth…
A Japanese medical university lowered women’s test scores because it was a “necessary evil”
It’s always a meritocracy until a man doesn’t get the job.Instead the system is rigged for mediocrity …Japanese media reports said today (Aug. 2) that the university had since 2011…