RIFLE RANGE BOY

https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/old-town-in- stockholm-sweden-gm523395133-51237318 Stockholm Syndrome never really happened, at least not how they described it to us. A little background here... Back in 1973, in Stockholm, a convict on parole, Jan Erik Olsson, attempted to rob a bank with a gun. He took four bank employees as hostages. He held the hostages for six days in the bank vault, demanding that the police release his friend, a celebrity criminal, Clark Olofson, from behind bars, some money and free passage. The police did not budge, but they managed to smoke them out by drilling a hole through the vault and infusing noxious gas inside. The puzzling thing throughout the whole fiasco was that the hostages were said to have sided with the assailant. They viewed the police as the bad guys and did not take the opportunity to escape when the police purposely laid the plan for them. It is said that the hostages later crowdsourced funds for the robber's trial.  It was later revea...

Money Heist (La Casa De Papel, House of Paper) Spanish miniseries, Netflix Season 1-3; 2017- present It is no secret that countries which are secular in their politics perform better in economics. Look around. Nations who appear to showcase Roman Catholic in their day to day running of their lives, e.g. countries in the Iberian peninsula, in Latin America and the Philippines, perform worse off than their Protestant counterparts. We need not talk about Muslim nations or countries struggling to go all conservative to stay relevant.   It seems that nations that look at pleasing the Money God seem more progressive and advanced technologically and socioeconomically. By this, I mean these countries look at acquiring wealth at a level more important than to satisfy the imagined Man in the heaven or the intangible Forces of Nature. They feel money can solve their problems in this life and do not need to follow preset rules on Earth to receive its unassured retribution in another ...

Trance (2013) It is said that memory is a good thing. The memory of having the fingers' burnt, either by fire or the stock market, may act as a deterrent for one to repeatedly parboil his body parts. But then, the body also prunes its memories, to erase off some apparently too painful memories. Nature also becomes selfish by erasing the painful thoughts of childbearing just to continue progeny. If not for lactation and contraceptive measures, the business of baby making will never cease anytime soon. Are painful thoughts really detrimental to the development of a person? Franz Kafka would certainly say so. Almost throughout his short life, he could not come to terms with his father's abusive alpha male type of behaviour and helpless unhelpful mother. His unfulfilled career and failed marriages were attributed by him to the unresolved issues with his upbringing. Perhaps this chronically depressed state of mind must have made him susceptible to laryngeal tuberculosis. B...