Defunding UNRWA: From Containment to Destruction / Laura Robson

As the crow flies, so shall it stop flying and settle down in a tree to watch the Romans dig a mass grave. Only a few miles north, as the crow flies, of Cambridge, England. As the crow flies, so shall it caw, and eventually fall to Earth, its feathers carried off by ants to build their ant-bowers, its flesh fattening the Cambridge worms, its bones turned to tinker-toys for Iron Age toddlers out of which to build tiny bone-henges.

But let us leave the subject of that tragic Iron Age crow that didn’t survive the Roman occupation. Few did, and not just crows. In point of fact, not a single person, crow, worm, nor it matters not what animal species, living or dead, today survives from the Roman occupation of Britain. Yet a certain song survives. A song of frogs. So, that is something.

Let us also leave aside all those dead humans, crows, and other species, and observe the Romans digging. What are they digging, here in Iron Age Cambridge? Why are they not enjoying the sunrise with a bowl of Romantic porridge flavored with borage and sorrel? Because they have their orders. They have gone from hut to hut in hamlet after hamlet, interrogating the occupants. They threatened to rape the women, cut parts off the men, or break the bones of babies to get at the truth.

They needn’t have bothered with threats. The humble Iron Age Britons, most of whom would have admitted to still being in the Stone Age, and proud of it, readily gave up the “guests” they’d been harboring.

In total, about five hundred fugitive frogs were discovered and arrested that day. The frogs were frog marched out to the village square, to where a mass grave was dug in view of the roundhouse, and were, one by one, executed by dagger and thrown into the pit.

Astonishing: there really was a mass grave of frogs in this area dating from the Iron Age. It’s both SuperTrue® and regular true. Really. Look it up!

What’s SuperTrue® about it is, of course, the story behind the remains, the conspiracy behind the tangible evidence, the rumors and innuendo by which an overactive imagination can make sense of the random clues. For example, there’s the possible fact that there were rumors the Romans believed to be true, about a frog prophet, King of the Frogs, whose army of followers – and, yes, the collective noun for frogs is indeed “army” (again, look it up!) –... read more

“If you’re right-brained, you’ll see a fish. If you’re left-brained, you’ll see a mermaid.”

Myrtle Adelweiss looked at the assemblage of gestural lines in the picture. In the image they formed, she saw no fish. Neither did she perceive a mermaid. What she saw was the head of kangaroo.

What did it mean? Was she right-brained or left-brained?

One day, Myrtle was at work, at Nordnik High School, coaching the varsity football team. While demonstrating to her beefy players the correct way for a linebacker to plunge ahead at the snap of the ball, she received a concussion from a slab of gristle named Artie Snigginbotham. Myrtle was rushed to the emergency room at Sleater-Sinai-Sloater-Kinnering, unable to recall her own name.

The attending physician, Dr. Elaine Bryant O’Brain, did an MRI of Myrtle’s skull. Then an ultrasound. Then a spectrograph. Then an encephalo-shmeffalograph. Then a spirograph. Then a titration test. Then a Ph test. Then an EEG. Then a BB King. Then an insufferabullitis portmantobleronagraph.

Every image, regardless of what test was done, showed one miraculous fact: between the two hemispheres of Myrtle’s brain lay a third lobe, nestled between them like a summer sausage between two napping, hairless, Sharpei-wrinkled guinea pigs. Dr. O’Brain called it “The Third Lobe.” It became known in neurological literature as The Adelweiss-O’Brain Lobe. “The Third Lobe” was cooler, though.

But what was the function of this extra loaf, or lobe, in the brain of Myrtle Adelweiss? How had this “third loaf” been acquired? How long had it been in amongst the payload of Myrtle Adelweiss’s cranium? Did it confer any other advantages to her besides the obvious one of allowing a third interpretation of an ambiguous figure meant to elicit one of two specific interpretations? What good was this third loaf, if any?

For the next three years, O’Brain conducted a wide-ranging study of people who saw a kangaroo head instead of either a mermaid or a fish in the picture that had given Myrtle Adelweiss a bit of agito. Various types of brain scans revealed that the majority of these specimens had the summer-sausage-shaped third loaf.

What else did they have in common? There was no single phenotype, genotype, ethnicity, religion, or economic class they shared,... read more