Is your spouse neglecting your physical needs again, since he is once again engrossed in a heap of books? Is he ignoring the fact that you have, for once, brushed your teeth tree times a day, just for him? And you are quite sure there are no dirty magazine or titillating romance novels hidden in…
Platonic love vs physical love

Gaddafi’s Death: a Realpolitik-Solution?

Last Friday The Sun wrote: “That is for Lockerbie, Gaddafi” and “Rot in hell with Hitler, Gaddafi.” Less provocative, but still a symbol of public opinion other newspapers like The Telegraph ran the headline “Col Gaddafi killed: no mercy for a merciless tyrant.” While most of this flat earth is celebrating Gaddafi’s death, I ask myself whether…
Same River, New Poet

There are not many authors who understand how to unite poetry of more than two millennia, serval cultures and seven languages into one contemporary work of poetry. Vikram Seth is one of the few who succeeded doing it in his new book, The Rivered Earth.
Thanatos and Eros

The stage is drenched in darkness. You can only see the feet of the protagonist and her lover, who move, like Thanatos and Eros, in a graceful pas-de-deux of a passionate sexual encounter. The naked, vulnerable feet move together as if they were dancing the pirouettes of love, or even death, which seem to be two…
Freedom Does Not Exist

Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, the 22-year-old Pakistani who was involved in the 2008 Mumbai attack, was sentenced to death earlier this year. But what if he never had a chance to act differently? What if there is no freedom of will and every deed we do is an imperative of space and time? Would we…
How to Be Good?

If you were questioning an abductor, and you knew the hostage might die without the necessary information from the kidnapper, would you threaten him with torture, even if you knew that you would never actually execute it?