Playwright Sees Blatant Racism in ADL Ad About Israel’s Killing of Children in Gaza

Wallace Shawn translated an ad by the Anti-Defamation League into “plain English” and he found a disturbing message; a Chinese chef meets his end when cooking with a dangerous ingredient; meanwhile, a binational Israel-Palestine state may not be as far off as many think. These discoveries and more below.

Playwright Wallace Shawn Translates ADL Ad Justifying Israeli Child Murder into Plain English Playwright and actor Wallace Shawn has responded to this Anti-Defamation League(ADL) ad blaming Palestinians for Israel’s mass slaughter of children in Gaza.

Did the Rebbe Identify Himself as the Messiah—and What Do His Hasidim Believe Today? Twenty years after his death, the legacy of the Lubavitcher leader—‘the Prince of our generation’—is still a matter of heated debate.

Snake Soup A chef in China was preparing a soup that required a dangerous ingredient — an Indochinese spitting cobra — when the serpent attacked and killed him.

Could I Have Been Steven Salaita? Could You? Probably not. Of course. Maybe? Sure! Look at the number of distinguished people who have signed the general letter of support vowing not to engage with the University of Illinois until Steven Salaita is reinstated as an associate professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

The 10,000 Hour Rule Is Not Real The 10,000 hour rule—first proposed by a Swedish psychologist and later made famous in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers—states that exceptional expertise requires at least 10,000 hours of practice.

You Want Institutions? The answer, to paraphrase Jack Nicholson, is: you can’t handle institutions!

Israel-Palestine, a Binational State in the Making Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is contemplating an important policy change on the Palestinian issue.

Chirps, Whistles, Clicks: Do Any Animals Have a True ‘Language’? From ultrasonic bat chirps to eerie whale songs, the animal kingdom is a noisy place.

Dogs Play Dumb for Our Sake Our domestication of wolves, and our own dominant nature, has resulted in dogs that are so submissive that they suppress their independence and intellect, new research finds.

Primetime TV Is More Diverse Than It’s Ever Been. Why Now? “Black-ish,” a sweet, likable sitcom premiering on ABC next month, doesn’t take very long to declare a thesis statement: “Sometimes I worry that, in order to make it, black folks have dropped a little bit of their culture and the rest of the world has picked it up.”

Elvis Was Our Shabbos Goy Some people lean on neighbors for a cup of sugar. The Fruchters, of Memphis, Tennessee, needed theirs to help them keep the Sabbath.