There is a funny thing about writing fiction and legends. Things that are unimaginable in real life, become quite normal in fairy tales (the fairies themselves, to name one – no sexual meaning is intended here).
Perhaps the most striking attribute of a legend is to assign human-like behaviors to other “things”. These can be animals, [...]

In the movie “Annie Hall”, Woody Allen plays the character Alvy Singer. In one scene he is standing in line near a guy who is pontificating about the media. The screenplay goes like this:
Man: It’s the influence of television. Yeah, now Marshall McLuhan deals with it in terms of it being a-a high, uh, high [...]

“Wise men make proverbs, but fools repeat them.” – Samuel Palmer
How do we know God wants us to refrain from stealing from others? How can we be so sure the Almighty is against adultery? After all, it’s kind of difficult to pinpoint any individual meeting with him (her? them?) recently. Yet, millions of people seem [...]

Things get worse when they are imprinted in our minds with strong emotional context. Usually, when someone says bad things about our parents, children or loved ones, we tend to first react irrationally, even if some of the things said may be true. Many times in such cases, we don’t even bother to verify or [...]

“It ain’t what a man don’t know that makes him a fool, but what he does know that ain’t so.” – Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
The workers of San Diego’s Wild Animal Park were facing a strange kind of problem. While promoting the California condor breeding program, they reached a point in time when they [...]

Do you belong to the PC-DOS generation? Have you ever played Lemmings? Many people have speculated about the suicidal behavior of these small rodents, which are known to deliberately run in large numbers over high cliffs to their deaths. The Lemming Suicide Plunge was granted interesting evolutionary explanations. Some said it was a natural impulse [...]

“The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.” – Henry Havelock Ellis
We’ll start this little fascinating research with three different short stories. One of them is somewhat fictitious. The other two are based on fact. Two of them (not necessarily the same two!) have [...]