Section 5: The Death of Tragedy: Tragedy has had a long history and has always been, and indeed continues to be, of great cultural significance.  Who has not heard of Shakespeare ?  Even my own mother, who left school when she was 15 in 1932 had studied Julius Caesar (not ranked as a trage...

Section: Mr Nobody: With this heading I am reminded of the famous song of The Beatles from the 1960s called Nowhere Man . The opening lyrics of this famous song, written by the late John Lennon , are: He's a real nowhere Man, Sitting in his Nowhere Land, Making all his nowhere plans for nobody. Does...

Well, we’ve been getting a lot of new readers lately, so we decided to put together a post about our favorites here at Brat-halla… episodes, storylines, and characters.  This is mostly a jumping off point for everyone to discuss their faves here because we’d really like to hear ab...

There were countless messianic prophets in and around the middle east during the time of the Roman Empire —Mithras, Simon Magus, Apollonius of Tyana, Jesus, Simon Bar Kochba, and Isis were among the best known. So how did Jesus, and......

Chapter 2 of John Gray’s book is divided into 15 subsections. Section 1: At The Masked Ball In popular psychology we read about all the different masks we wear as we go about our daily business, e.g., that of parent, teacher, bus driver, patient, student or whatever, and, indeed, we change those m...

I’VE been fascinated by the story of Tam Lin ever since I heard English folk band Fairport Convention’s rendition of the old Scottish ballad. Tam Lin is a knight who becomes the Queen of Elfland’s lover for seven years. The queen has to pay a tithe to hell every seven years and plans to sacrif...

I was quite pleased to see the Ottawa Citizen run a huge article today on the fact of Evolution and a related article.  It's pleasing because even in Canada, the forces of stupidity would have us believe that some magical sky fairy bleemed everything into existence and gave humans domain over every...

Many years ago when this author was at college he had a wonderful director for his master’s thesis, one Rev Dr. Brian McNamara, S.J .  Brian was an inspiration as he taught me how to read with an extra edge, or, if you prefer with purpose and focus.  He was a wonderful scholar to whom I ...

This one isn't about weird American evangelists.  This is much more mainstream. What the fuck is wrong with these religious yahoos? I really find it hard to believe that in the 21st century, there still exist medieval cement-heads that actually believe that a pregnant 9-year-old who was raped and w...

So, like, you just have to take this exam. Some highlights: A deeply devout Catholic couple has just returned from their fiftieth anniversary celebration, when suddenly the husband falls to the ground, clutching his chest. What is the most productive action for the wife to take? 1. Call 911 2. Put h...