Over the past few decades, Halloween celebrations have gained in popularity, not only with children and families but with all those fascinated with the spooky and scary.
As a scholar of myth and religion in popular culture, I look at Halloween with particular interest – especially the ways in which today’s Halloween tradition came to evolve.
The vampire is a common image in today’s pop culture, and one that takes many forms: from Alucard, the dashing spawn of Dracula in the PlayStation game “Castlevania: Symphony of the Night”; to Edward, the romantic, idealistic lover in the “Twilight” series.
In many respects, the vampire of today is far removed from its roots in Eastern European folklore. As a professor of Slavic studies who has taught a course on vampires called “Dracula” for more than a decade, I’m always fascinated by the vampire’s popularity, considering its origins – as a demonic creature strongly associated with disease.
On a cold winter’s day in 1980, a group of recreational cavers entered a narrow, wet stream passage south of Knoxville, Tennessee. They navigated a slippery mud slope and a tight keyhole through the cave wall, trudged through the stream itself, ducked through another keyhole, and climbed more mud. Eventually they entered a high and relatively dry passage deep in the cave’s “dark zone” – beyond the reach of external light.
On the walls around them, they began to see lines and figures traced into remnant mud banks laid down long ago when the stream flowed at this higher level. No modern or historic graffiti marred the surfaces. They saw images of animals, people, and transformational characters blending human characteristics with those of birds and those of snakes with mammals.
If the latest deluge of Facebook controversies has you ready to kick the app to the digital curb, you are not alone. There are plenty of good guides out there on how to do it right. Even Facebook makes it pretty easy to understand the nuances of saying “see ya later” (deactivating) or “never speak to me again” (deleting).
But before you go, you might want to consider this: What happens to your life stories?
When “Ms. Kyles,” a social studies teacher in a suburban district, heard her colleague scream in a nearby classroom, she ran to her aid. It appeared that a female student had attacked a classmate.
“I grabbed the student to restrain her, and I said to the teacher, ‘You go back to your students, I’ll take care of her,’” Ms. Kyles said.
After locking herself in an empty classroom with the student, Ms. Kyles – that’s a pseudonym to protect her privacy – learned that the student had stabbed a female classmate four times in the chest and back, killing her. Then the student threatened Ms. Kyles.
Social Security has grown far beyond its original mission. It now costs workers two and a half times what was originally planned, yet even so, the program faces a $19.8 trillion shortfall—the equivalent of $154,000 per household.
Propping up the program through benefit cuts or tax increases alone would be a raw deal for current and future workers. There's a better way.
Fear may be as old as life on Earth. It is a fundamental, deeply wired reaction, evolved over the history of biology, to protect organisms against perceived threats to their integrity or existence. Fear may be as simple as a cringe of an antenna in a snail that is touched or as complex as existential anxiety in a human.
Whether we love or hate to experience fear, it’s hard to deny that we certainly revere it – devoting an entire holiday to the celebration of fear.
More than 200 million U.S. residents have gotten at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine with the expectation that the vaccines slow virus transmission and save lives.
Researchers know the efficacy of the vaccines from large-scale clinical trials, the gold standard for medical research. The studies found the vaccines to be very effective at preventing severe COVID–19 and especially good at preventing death. But it’s important to track any new treatment in the real world as the population-level benefits of vaccines could differ from the efficacy found in clinical trials.
In 2021, Alabama’s state government took more money from taxpayers than ever before. The big question is, what will state government leadership do with it? It should be used to provide tax relief to citizens and businesses, not to continue to grow government.
According to end of fiscal year 2021 data from open.alabama.gov, the Education Trust Fund and General Fund budgets took in a whopping $11.2 billion in revenue last year. That’s nearly $1.2 billion (11.6%) more than the state collected in fiscal year 2020.
After being on the U.S. market for around 15 years, an e-cigarette has, for the first time, been authorized for sale by the Food and Drug Administration.
The government agency announced on Oct. 12 that three products from the vaping company Vuse had been given the green light to be marketed, along with one device in which the approved cartridges are placed.
