Picture by Depo Photos/ABACA/ABACA/PA Images. All rights reserved. Like every football championship around the world in which contenders compete for a title, many regional and international powers have entered the “Syrian playground” and the title in this case is called “leverage in Syria”. the United States and the Russian Federation have been the main players,…
Month: March 2019
Ice Out
From the three-second mark on the tape cassette: “For the record, my name is Brook Tyler, and I’m a detective sergeant with the New Hampshire State Police Major Crimes Unit. Today’s date is Monday, March 27, and the time is 9:05 a.m. With me in this meeting room at the State Police offices on Hazen…
Woman goes viral after sharing delivery guy's insanely creepy texts and company's terrible response.
Goodness gracious, why don’t some people understand that when you order takeout through a delivery service, you just want the food and not unwanted advances that make you feel violated and unsafe? Michelle Midwinter recently ordered food from Just Eat, a popular food delivery service abroad, and was harassed by a super creepy delivery guy. She…
Post Travels: Down the Shore — The Beautiful Beaches of New Jersey
Come summer, visitors flock to the Jersey Shore’s many boardwalks to eat salt water taffy, play mini-golf and take a whirl on beachside amusement rides. But the stretch of coastline known as Long Beach Island is bit different than sandy neighbors. Affectionately known as LBI to regulars, summer days here are spent on the beach,…
What’s in a name: the Macedonian question and the social question
Alexis Tsipras and Zoran Zaev in signing ceremony ending dispute over the use of the name Macedonia, June 17, 2018. Dimitris Tosidis/Press Association. All rights reserved. The accord crafted between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) resolving the name dispute has an energising social potential. It potentially undermines nationalisms in the Southern…
The Hula-Hoop Heart
Sammie’s Stand was a cobbled-together lean-to with faded paint that sat at the far end of the grounds shared by the Fillmore Middle School and Junior High. The stand straddled the property line between the school playground and the adjacent city park. That put it in a legal gray zone — both the teachers and…
People laughing at Lady's Gaga's wild outfit from last night are missing a very serious point.
Elle Magazine held its 25th Women in Hollywood event this month in Los Angeles. Those honored on the night included Shonda Rhimes, Sarah Paulson, Keira Knightley, Angela Bassett, and Lady Gaga. Never one to shy away from making a loud fashion statement, Gaga shocked fellow attendees and the press by appearing on the red carpet…
Floating Toward Ecstasy: How One Man Overcame His Scuba Fears and Learned to Let Go
The fish are fine and all that, but the epiphany is the sensation of floating, of weightlessness. After two days in dive school, I know the term is neutral buoyancy, the state in which you are neither rising nor sinking, but that’s just the science. It’s like explaining why a fish is luminously blue, which…
A People's Vote without a referendum
View of Athens from Pnyx, at dusk, 2015. To the left is Lycabettus, to the right Acropolis. Wikicommons/ C Messier. Some rights reserved. The recent publication of Theresa May's Brexit deal incited a number of zealots in Parliament to throw various toys out of their prams so fast that it is hard to believe they…
Gentleman in Blue: A Sentimental Sketch by Laurence Stallings
Laurence Stallings took up writing after being wounded in the First World War. On June 26, 1918, he led an assault on a German machine gun nest in Belleau Wood and was severely wounded. He eventually lost a leg because of his wounds, but was decorated with the Silver Star and France’s Croix de Guerre….