CROSS TALK
Iron grip of persecution, hunger and discrimination
Experts tell us that it should take another 150 to 170 years to close the gender pay gap around the world. Bad news for the mothers,
How can India win if Bangladesh does not?
Which between the two countries has gained more from Bangladesh prime minister's visit to India this month? The question appears no less intriguing than the long-standing debate over which came first between chicken and egg.
Who's going to save politics from money?
Bees make honey, but it's easier said than done. They have to fly 55,000 miles and visit roughly 2 million flowers to produce a pound of honey.
Cowards strung together in a daisy chain
Shame is thus the flipside of honour, and one can't exist without the other. Shameless people can't be honourable, and honourable people can't be shameless.
Terrorism was never in the DNA
The skein of yarn spun out of the Palestinian struggle, and then got twisted in the relentless Western maneuvering in the Middle East to defend Israel.
Great ideals are ghost lights at night
An increase in elevation lowers air pressure, which makes breathing difficult for a climber. The underwater world becomes increasingly blue and eventually black as a diver goes deeper.
Presidential humour and the irony of education
The President of the Republic went public with his academic records, while addressing the 50th convocation of Dhaka University on March 4.
Lies make us blind in full sight
If an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, what does a lie for a lie do to us?
When the bubble is convinced it's real
An average person measures three and a half times the length of his or her own forearm in height.
Will the World Bank eat humble pie?
It was once a familiar refrain amongst the restaurant-goers in Dhaka that even if one didn'teat or drink anything in a restaurant, one could still end up paying twelve annas for breaking a drinking glass. That saying embodied concerns over the costliness of eating out and its incidental hazards, but eventually acquired a deeper meaning of life. It implies a Kafkaesque helplessness when one has to pay for something without partaking in any of its pleasures.
Has the mountain brought forth a mouse?
The appointment of the new Chief Election Commissioner was an elaborate undertaking that had a curious resemblance to the
History is asking for an address change
In my student days I worked as a bartender in a nightclub in downtown Washington, D.C.,where my colleague was a bespectacled nerdy-looking Vietnam veteran.
A moving martyrdom on a trail track
An assistant technician of Bangladesh Railway did last Friday what nobody does these days. Not since those fateful days of 1971 and some of the political movements in this country when our martyrs laid down their lives for their countrymen. Dying for others has long
Tonu murder trial and the fate of hurricanes
The Observer Effect in science has it that the act of observing will influence the phenomenon being observed. If we're looking for an answer ten months after the brutal killing of a young girl named Sohagi Jahan Tonu, this effect comes closest to explaining what has happened since then.
Light things float and heavy things sink
After Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu came to power in 1965, he called himself "The Genius of the Carpathians". He had even
When ignorance is the pillar of knowledge
The recent textbook fiasco has been a textbook case of how a dot becomes a circle. First we ignored the quality of teachers. Then we
To live and die in surrogate democracies
Russian leaders Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, in their spare time, used to make fun of Western sympathisers who blindly supported them.
New Year revelry and our declining chivalry
As we stand on the cusp of another new year, many of us are preparing for the revelry of a boisterous night. Private clubs and posh