Free Republic

A luxury grocery store frequented by wealthy Californians has been mercilessly mocked online for charging ludicrous prices for the most basic, everyday items. Erewhon Market has eight locations in Los Angeles' most affluent neighborhoods, all with a focus on locally sourced, vegan and organic food catering to niche diets. Products on its shelves include $20 raw milk, a $26 bottle of 'oxygenated' water and hot sauce costing as much as $40. It's also known for selling upmarket prepared foods, like its popular buffalo cauliflower and collard green wrap, which sells for $15.95. The premium grocery store started in Boston in...

Historian and linguist Andrew Dalby is challenging the accepted gender of one of the most influential writers of all time -- the poet who created the Greek epics The Iliad and The Odyssey in the seventh century BC. Dr Dalby said: "There is no direct evidence of the poet's identity and therefore no justification for the customary assumption that the two epics were composed by a man." Women have a long tradition worldwide as makers of oral literature, he said, citing Sappho, the best-known female poet of ancient Greece, and Enheduanna, the woman mentioned on a Sumerian tablet who thus...