Opinion: Are You Charlie?

“Both Charlies, Hebdo and Kirk,” writes Lyonel Perabo, “played pretty much the same game: riling up people, both for laughs and to score political points. Kirk’s ideology was rooted in Christian conservatism, while Charlie Hebdo was staffed by left-libertarians. Yet they both met with the same fate: they were murdered because their speech was deemed dangerous.”

Reading the Kalevala

Elias Lönnrot, the folklorist, the traveler, the physician, the student, the ethnologist, the editor, and finally the rune singer, did birth one longer Kalevala, one which was as indebted to his creative process as it was to ancient songs and lore.