Mind Horizon

Aside from making us laugh, lessening tension, and relieving stress, comedians play a much more integral role in society that usually goes unnoticed. They intertwine their humor with the truth, or at least some postulation of the truth, in order to make it more palatable to an otherwise inert audience. This phenomenon dates as far back as the appearance of the Court Jester, who was the one figure with enough leeway to criticize the King because he used comedy to do so. In the modern era, however, the archetype of the Court Jester manifests itself in numerous ways, from political talk show hosts like John Oliver, to stand-up comedians like Louis C.K. If you really analyze the content of their speech rather than consume it passively, you will sometimes pick up on the subtle lessons they are teaching us. I do not know if it is always intentional to push whatever message they happen to be pushing; it often seems as if it is unintentional. But regardless of intent, the veracity of their le...

A bidah Bin Salmen, an 11-year-old Muslim girl in Saudi Arabia, was forcibly married to an imam at her local mosque after he raped her. Once married, he often abused and raped her, impregnating her six times by the time she was 17. Except her name was not Abidah Bin Salmen; it was Sherry Johnson, and she was not a Muslim girl in Saudi Arabia. She was a Christian girl in Tallahassee, Florida who was forcibly married to her local churches deacon. After he raped her, Her parents made her marry him because they did not want to cause a scandal in their strict Apostolic Church. He did continue to rape and abuse her, giving her six children by the age of 17, and she was expelled from high school. Ask anyone in the West about child brides, and they will probably conjure images of repressive, conservative Islamic countries in the Middle East and North Africa. They might even point to some Hindu practices in India, but it is always somewhere else in a faraway land where nobody knows right fr...

Socotra Island Beauty Beyond Compare Socotra, deriving its name from Sanskrit for “Island of Bliss,” is the largest of four islands making up the Socotra Archipelago. Located in the Arabian Sea between Yemen and Somalia, it is officially part of Yemen. Some believe it to be the location of the Garden of Eden, and understandably so. The island and its population have been ecologically isolated from most of the outside world for millennia, resulting in an extraordinary ecosystem and biodiversity that earned it a place on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 2008. The most famous attraction is the Dragon’s Blood Tree, which looks like a flying saucer supported by an elephant trunk, and oozes a dark red sap that the locals use for medicine, varnish, makeup, and paint. From the Hajhir Mountains to the Hadibo Lagoon, the island is home to hundreds of exotic endemic species of plants and animals, including Bright reef-building coral, Socotran Chameleons, and Skinks, a reptile that lo...