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This article was too good to pass up. Does the punishment fit the crime? Will it work?

Brandon Keim recounts the essence of a talk by neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran given at the World Science Festival.

The essence of art is, arguably, metaphor, and its practitioners are especially prolific — and metaphor is just a convenient shorthand for the connection of unlinked cognitive phenomena. That’s exactly what appears to happen in the minds of synesthetes. Far-flung parts of their brain have unusually high levels of cross-wiring.

George Saunders has written an entertaining short piece for the New Yorker about an Amazon nun and a supposedly gay preacher he catches French kissing in the sacristy. If you don’t question your religious practitioner, it might be time to start.

Now here she was, French-kissing Father X, while Father X pinned her against the black-topped counter, one leg riding up between hers. Something about their position suggested a mother bird feeding her young. She was reaching down to give him something; he was reaching up to take it. Behind them, aghast, sat the holy implements.

Father X, it had been rumored, was gay. He was pale, slight.

Hereby that rumor was refuted.

Or at least complicated.

I just discovered the marvelous Spherical Cow website today, a collection of thoughtful and funny comics. There aren’t a ton of them but what there is, is great.

I really like this one on “Many Worlds.”

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