Stefany Anne Golberg at The Smart Set:

Imagine yourself in a small boat that has stopped midway between a river and a raging waterfall below. This is how the man with the tragic sense of life lives. It is, in any case, how Miguel de Unamuno lived — in a state of existential crisis, hovering over the abyss.

Nathan Schneider at Killing The Buddha:

From Medievalists.net:

Very few articles have been written on the topic of the Holy Foreskin, partly because in the year 1900 the Roman Catholic Church threatened to excommunicate anyone who did so. However, Robert Palazzo bravely did his research and his article “The Veneration of the Sacred Foreskin(s) of Baby Jesus: A Documentary Analysis,” offers some interesting details about this relic. He notes that apocryphal gospels, such as the The First Gospel of Baby Jesus, which was written sometime before the 6th century, described how the foreskin was kept and passed down from generation to generation.

Carl Zimmer in The New York Times:

You!

Yes, you, dear reader!

We need your help.

Step up, please!

Dear Reader,

In the last year we have been approached by several large and well-known media conglomerates who have offered to take us under their financially secure wings but, though the offers were tempting, we have decided that it is more important for us to be completely independent and not beholden to anyone.

But, we can continue only with your support and I have great confidence that you will provide it. (I hope I have not made a big mistake, otherwise Morgan will kill me!)

by Shadab Zeest Hashmi

Haji Habib-ur-Rehman, or Haji Sahib, who has been painting trucks, vehicles, and crafts since 1955, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

"They are everywhere. Those heavy-set Gods of the highway, those mammoth trucks in their entire jazzy splendor. The swirls, the motifs, the colours, the patterns, the tigers, the peacocks, the parrots, the lions, and the roses, the thick lashes on singular eyes, the lips, and (at times) the face of a politician, a star, thrown in for good measure ..." from Allah Rung Laave by Sonia Rehman.

by Jalees Rehman

by Madhu Kaza

by David V. Johnson

In "San Manuel Bueno, Martir," the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno tells the fictional story of a parish priest in Valverde de Lucerna, a small Spanish town, and his successful conversion of a sophisticated favorite son, Lazaro, who had left to seek his fortunes in America and returned an atheist.

"The main thing," San Manuel says, in summarizing his ministry, "is for the people to be happy, that everyone be happy with their life. The happiness of life is the main thing of all."

by Dwight Furrow

Human beings fight about a lot of things—territory, ideology, religion. Food fights play a special role in this fisticuff economy—they fill the time when we are between wars. Beans or meat alone in a proper chili? Fish or fowl in a proper paella? Vegetarians vs. carnivores. Locavores vs. factory farms. These are debates that divide nations, regions, and families. But they are nothing new. Taboos against eating certain foods have always been a way of marking off a zone of conflict. Kosher and halal rules have little justification aside from the symbolic power of defining the Other as disgusting.

Brooklyn Babylon, the album from the multimedia performance piece by graphic novelist Danijel Zezelj and composer and 3QD friend Darcy James Argue, has been nominated for a Grammy. Here is a excerpt: