How do you process a tragedy like the one that unfolded last night in Aurora, Colorado? Well, at this early time, you don’t. We here at The Fourth Wall won’t pretend to come to any major philosophical revelations as regards the shocking tragedy, but we’ll join the rest of the world in grieving and struggling [...]

This article is filed under Anthropology, Horror, Movies, Movies & TV, Thrillers, Video Games.

I asked them why they, unannounced, wished to meet with the director and they told me that they had just discovered Noah’s ark in Turkey. As I had met a few others along the way conning people with this ark stuff I asked to see the proof. He immediately pulled out a black and white photo showing what looked like a rock cliff and asked, ‘What do you see?’ I looked at it closely and replied, ‘All I can see is that someone took a ballpoint pen and drew a photo of a ship on the rock face’. They replied, in that charming Tennessee accent, ‘Well, it’s a bit hard to see so we’all took a ball point pen and highlighted it for ‘y’all.’

This article is filed under Anthropology, Archeology, History, Mythology, Non-Fiction Reviews, Religion.

Readers can now receive our latest postings through our new Twitter account, calitreview.

This article is filed under Anthropology.

Jaynes, a psychologist who taught at Princeton up until his death in 1997, showed how ancient peoples from Mesopotamia to Peru could not “think” as we do today, and were therefore not conscious. Unable to introspect or contemplate metaphor-driven scenarios, they experienced auditory hallucinations — voices of gods actually heard as the Old Testament or the Iliad — which, emanating from the brain’s right hemisphere, told an individual what to do in circumstances of novelty or stress.

This article is filed under Anthropology, Non-Fiction Reviews, Psychology, Science.

Femi-lit doesn’t make as many headlines as its younger sister, but it shares certain familial traits. The protagonist is usually a woman in her thirties or forties, intelligent, independent, and confronted with the crises that arise in one’s middle years – the aftermath of a divorce, the death of a parent, a loveless relationship, the seesaw of work and family, the lack of a child. And as with chick lit, it is often love or a change of place that proves the catalyst for change.

This article is filed under Anthropology, Fiction Reviews, France.

It is scarcely news that in a vast, pluralistic country like the United States, minorities should feel themselves threatened with absorption into the larger society, and that they should cling to some form of cultural identity. It begins poignantly when school children pledge allegiance to “ … one nation, indivisible, with freedom and justice for [...]

This article is filed under Anthropology, Education, Literary Themes, Non-Fiction Reviews, Sociology.