Little Big Things

Imagine this: you spend your entire adult life searching for your mother's killer only to discover that the murderer is, in fact, your own future self. Not only that, but this outcome, abhorrent and appalling as it is, has been predetermined to be your Fate before you were even born. If this sounds like something so far-fetched as to be straight out of fiction, that's because it is.  This strange series of events forms the climax of the 2020 Korean drama, Alice . Billed as a science fiction story, it combined both scientific concepts from quantum physics and high fantasy tropes relating to Fate and prophecy to tell a story about the unintended consequences of scientific advancements that would allow humans to "time travel" - in reality, travel to parallel universes representing alternate versions of their pasts - by the year 2050. Perhaps it is this eclectic mishmash of genres that led Alice , ultimately, to flounder. Although the cast members received widespread prai...

I don't know about you, but I find it easy to take for granted just how widespread Christmas is as a holiday. There are websites and infographics devoted entirely to how it is celebrated all over the world: the music, the food, the specific person who brings presents to the good children or punishment to the bad. Even places and cultures that were not historically Christian - nor subject to widespread European colonization - seem to have gotten in on the action by now. And nowhere is that clearer, I think, than in global versions of the Nativity . Every year, for instance, the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. puts together a curated display of just some of its hundreds of crèches - figurines depicting the Nativity scene - from all around the world. And while many of these sets have the conventional figures and features many of us will have come to expect, others offer a more culturally-specific rendition, with subtle changes to the characters' faces, dress, or belongings ...