In the zoo, the lions are denied the fundamental essence of their being, their chance to hunt prey, and bring it down and kill it, and to teach their cubs the skills they in turn will need to master. At meal time, they are thrown generous hunks of raw meat. But there is no hunt, no thrill, no skill, no challenge, no chance to be a real lion.

My uncle George was probably the most selfish, self-centered person I have ever met. I call him George because that was his real name, and I prefer to run his real name through the mud rather than a fake name. I'm sometimes accused of being cynical or negative in my thinking. But I want to assure you from the outset that this story has a happy ending. George dies.

When Barbie wonders, “Are they shtupping?,” “shtupping” is not likely to be a word that Barbie would’ve picked up from the family parties at Esther’s parents’ home

Then he went on, “And, sadly, there are budget constraints. As a Muslim, you would normally be eligible for up to four wives, but they only allow me the budget for one. You understand, at times like these, we must all be prepared to make sacrifices.”

“A fuck is just sex, but a head-fuck is art.”

“For you, if you get the flu, you know you’re going to feel like total shit for a week. Then maybe another week, and you feel like crap. But after that, you forget all about it. It’s gone. You’re bouncing around like it never even happened. But suppose the worst day with the flu, when you couldn’t even get the fuck out of bed, was the best you were ever going to feel for the rest of your life? Then you’d start to fucking understand.

In the end, “trans” leaves out some crucial information – specifically, how trans they are (or what kind of trans they are). It’s a term without nuance, that we are expected to accept without question.

You are single and unattached. You know someone who is in an open relationship. Through them, you meet their partner, who is quite attractive. At some point, you run into their partner alone and the partner asks you out. You agree, and you end up spending the night together. Everything is consensual and no “rules” have been broken. When you run into the other person again, what is the appropriate etiquette? Should you mention that, “Oh, by the way, I went out with your partn

There are families in our culture who commemorate the memories of loved ones with rituals such as lighting yahrzeit candles on the anniversary of a loved one’s death, or going out to visit the graves of parents and loved ones, sometimes on particular days or in some cases as a weekly picnic or whatever. If the loved one is frozen, resting in some unclear legal and religious limbo, what happens to these kinds of visits? You wouldn’t exactly be mourning a “loss.” But neither is

When my father was in his late 80s, he tried to commit suicide. My mother, who had been away for the day, found him and called me, and I called an ambulance, and he was “saved.” When he woke up in the hospital after having his stomach pumped, he was quite angry about being “saved.” Talk about no one listening to what he wanted.

My medical education has followed almost exactly the same path. I keep learning about what can go wrong when it does go wrong, one damn thing after another. I keep earning credits towards a wholly unasked-for medical degree. I have learned about so many things that can screw up, so many procedures and treatments, so many pills and injections. I accept my destiny as a human pincushion for shots, blood draws, and anything else they come up with. I am not an eager student, and t

It is argued that neither we – nor in reality even the creator – can truly “know” the intentions behind the text. Yet it is surely no more futile to cast for intention than to fish for meaning in a random sea of unsignifying signifiers.

Perhaps the most famous single line from Holocaust literature is Anne Frank's conclusion: “In my heart, I believe that people are good.” Do you feel that Kosinski would agree? Write out an imaginary discussion between Kosinski and Frank on the issue of the fundamental nature of man.

“If it can be done, it will be done. Ethics are no more than a fart in a windstorm.” ("Prolegomenon to our cryogenic future")

Cultural trends and corporate greed will doubtless continue to do battle over our nether regions until global warming and societal collapse render the question moot.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin is offered to us as a book full of insight, a new, fresh, and informed exploration of that stickiest of all human adventures—sex. Within the action of the book, however, we see proclaimed not the joy of sex, but the heroism of abstinence. Estraven, Genly Ai's closest native friend, normally a lusty sort of character (we gather), abandons his sexuality and suffers the tortures of the celibate in the name of the quest.

Hamlet – or the Case of the Bad Detective Peter A. Hempel The play Hamlet grows out of the tradition of the revenge tragedy, a great favorite of the Elizabethan audience. In the conventional revenge play, the focus is on the violent acts of revenge which spatter the stage with blood and make for predictable but fulfilling theater. In Hamlet, however, the central character is obsessed not with revenge but with detective work, and his self-indulgent over-scrupulousness is itsel

"Satan sends us temptations. God sends us opportunities." Dear pastor O, Last week while I was hiking out in the woods for fun, I found a...

My opening question was inspired by a well-intentioned idea on the part of the committee that organized my 50th high school reunion this...

Age is the money shot in an obit. Followed by cause of death as a close second. Peter A. Hempel My father, Carl G. Hempel, was a professor of philosophy of science (his specialty was how to establish scientific proof), and among non-specialists in the field he is especially known for the Raven Paradox. (Google it and you will find millions of hits.) The underlying question was, what kind of evidence would help prove a hypothesis? In the case of his example, what kind of