Hugh Ryan

Freelance writer

We Can End AIDS Without a Cure

First published in Slate, November 29, 2013. Read the original here.
This Dec. 1, as we mark yet another World AIDS Day without a cure, a vaccine, or an intelligently interdependent global response to the crisis, I’d like to propose a thought experiment based on a radical—yet commonsense—proposition: We can end AIDS without [...]

“Red Dawn”: Dumbest ’80s remake ever?

First published in Salon, November 20, 2012. Read the original here.
If I told you I was making a movie about a small group of child soldiers, who use IEDs and scavenged weapons to fight a guerrilla war against a larger occupying force, what would you picture? The war-torn sands of Gaza? The refugee camps of [...]

A Teenage Mutant

First published in Brain World Magazine, April 2012. See the original here.
When I was 12 years old, I developed superpowers. I went to bed a normal middle-schooler and awoke to find my senses heightened. My alarm clock sounded like a siren, the sun burned my eyes, and my cereal milk tasted like a cereal milkshake. [...]

Dining Dilemma

First published in Westchester Magazine’s August 2011 issue. Read the original here.
My parents’ dining room table is early 20th-century mahogany, with solid columnated legs and comfortable seating for six—eight if necessary, 10 on desperate family occasions. In the morning, it’s newspaper sprawl and pots of coffee. In the afternoon, laptops and lunch. Family dinner, whether for [...]

Not for Navigational Purposes

First published on The Morning News on April 27, 2011. Read the original here.
Present
Lenni and I take turns changing in the shelter of the bus stop outside the Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport, in San Juan. It’s August, we’ve been friends for two decades, but this is the first time Lenni and I have traveled [...]

How to do Astrology

First published on The Morning News on October 20, 2010. Read the original with comments here.
“I’m not at all psychic. Any astrologer who says they’re psychic you must run away from, because it means they don’t want to do the math.”
This is one of the first things astrologer and writer Susan Miller says [...]

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