The Psychopathic Chicken (and Other Lessons of Evolution)
In the fifth chapter of his 2007 book Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin’s Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives, David Sloan Wilson writes: “It turns out that something very similar to my desert-island thought experiment has been performed on chickens by a poultry scientist named William Muir.” That probably sounds odd. It will likely sound even odder when you find out what the desert-island thought experiment is: a set of three hypothetical situations to explore human morality through the lens of evolution.
The unfathomably fashionable torture film has spun off a welcome girl-power subgenre, in which determined, attractive young females facilitate the agonizing dispatches of men who have committed atrocities against youth. But two early entries – Hard Candy and Lady Vengeance – are misguided.
As a member of the choir, I ran screaming from the church because of Michael Moore’s preaching in Sicko. Plus: the equally inept Infamous.
The narrator of The Little Stranger would tell you that this tale is about grave misfortune, not a haunted house. His name is Dr. Faraday, and in Sarah Waters’ agonizingly patient gothic novel set in post-World War II Britain, he has a dismissal available for any odd happening at Hundreds Hall. You’re tired. It’s an old house. Those must have been there for years. He seems the opposite of the classic unreliable narrator – he’s too reliable, and at points in the book he so tediously rules out the supernatural that you want some apparition to shove a hot poker up his ass. If this sounds like a criticism, it’s a mild one, as this is surely the effect that Waters sought, anatomical specificity aside. Faraday is so sane and logical that he has no credibility in the context of this story.
(An experiment in theft [or fair use] and editing as part of 
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