Terry Firma, though born and Journalism-school-educated in Europe, has lived in the U.S. for the past 20-odd years. Stateside, his feature articles have been published in the New York Times, Reason, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Wired. Terry was the founder and Main Mischief Maker of Moral Compass, a now-dormant site that pokes fun at the delusional claim by people of faith that a belief in God equips them with superior moral standards. He was the Editor-in-Chief of two Manhattan-based magazines until he decided to give up commercial publishing for professional photography... with a lot of blogging on the side. These days, he lives in an old seaside farmhouse in Maine with his wife, three kids, and two big dogs.
Humans of New York is a massive photo blog featuring the often-fascinating portraits of street photographer Brandon Stanton. Stanton, who has more than 7,000,000 followers on Facebook, also does quickie interviews with the strangers he captures. He knows how to get them to open up about things that matter. Take this one: That’s one of Stanton’s latest photos. His subject is a former pastor who lost his faith: Read more
Remember the Dayton, Ohio public-bus driver who, in February, was assaulted by three teenagers? Rickey Wagoner’s assailants supposedly fired three shots at him, point blank, and stabbed him for good measure. The story made national news because Wagoner told everyone his survival was a bona fide miracle: two bullets aimed at his chest never penetrated the Bible that he happened to carry there. Praise the Lord! Just like the bulk of the stories in Wagoner’s favorite book, his account of the attack turns out to have been nothing but a fanciful fabrication (I guess the man doesn’t believe in the Biblical commandment that prohibits bearing false witness). Read more
It’s fútbol time! If you’re a soccer fan like me, the next four weeks are going to be exciting. We’ll witness astonishing ball skills, tactical genius, lots of grit and feats of stamina, and the occasional on-pitch thuggery (four years ago, the Dutch team played a series of shocking anything-goes World Cup games so brutal they would’ve made Attila the Hun blush). But something else is going to be on clear display: superstition. Whether it’s players’ lucky underwear, their habit of kissing a cross-shaped pendant prior to kick-off, or, after scoring a goal, pointing to the sky in praise of the Creator, unabashedly irrational behavior will be rampant. (England’s Gary Lineker was famous for not shooting on goal during the pre-game warm-up, as he thought he’d be “wasting” perfectly good goal-scoring opportunities.) Read more
I just learned that in Ireland, Father Fintan Monaghan, a Catholic Church official in whose archdiocese the skeletal remains of almost 800 children were found in a septic tank, weighed in with an opinion on the matter. The bones, if you’ll recall, are those of babies who were born to unwed mothers, and who died under the awful neglect of Bon Secours nuns between 1925 and 1961. The child mortality rate in Irish Catholic institutions for “fallen women” was reportedly as high as fifty percent. Read more
When myths and superstitions take hold in impressionable minds, the results are sometimes deadly. Even brand new myths have that potential. Case in point: Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, two 12-year-olds from Wisconsin who, on Saturday, stabbed a friend multiple times “to please a mythological creature they learned about online,” according to the AP story. Read more
