A Skype exorcism: The modern way to rid yourself of demons

I tend to fight demons by grinding my teeth and sipping a glass of wine! I understand, though, that some prefer a religious representative to confront the evil spirit and, well, curse it out.

This isn’t always an easy arrangement. So I’m

Gender, Race, and Rape During the Civil War

Slavery, the value of chastity, and laws that favored men all made it difficult for women to find justice during the chaos of war.

Camp of 31st Pennsylvania Infantry, 1862 (Library of Congress)

While researching a fictional trilogy about the Civil War, Kim Murphy kept coming across the assertion that it was a “low-rape” war. At first she didn’t question the idea, she says, but after finding official records that mentioned rape in the same sentence as pillaging and burning—crimes generally accepted to have happened—she started to suspect there was a hole in the history that needed filling. She did more digging, and what she uncovered became her new, nonfiction book, I Had Rather Die: Rape in the Civil War.
Historians, Murphy says, largely had the idea that the Victorian era was characterized by restraint, and therefore there was little rape. For example,

South African Pastor Tells Congregation to Eat Grass to Be Closer to God

Pastor Lesego Daniel, of Rabboni Centre Ministries, is a highly unusual person. In order to be closer to God, the South African preacher is encouraging his congregation to eat grass. He also tramples on them for added effect.

The pastor is said to have claimed that humans can eat anything they choose to sustain themselves. When he put up pictures of the grass-eating event on Facebook, he faced severe criticism from thousands of people across the world. Rabboni Centre Ministries is now a trending topic on social media. But none of that has bothered Mr. Daniel’s followers; they defend their pastor and swear by his methods.

21-year-old law student, Rosemary Phetha, said that the grass instantly cured a sore throat that she had been battling for over a year. “Yes, we eat grass and we’re proud of it because it demonstrates that, with God’s power, we can do anything,” she said.

Doreen Kgatle, 27, has