Free Republic

In 2015, a pair of economists received widespread attention for their study showing that since the late 1990s the death rate has been rising for middle-aged white Americans. Now a new analysis by the same Princeton University team has identified which part of that population was driving that trend: people without college degrees. White men and women in every age group between 25 and 64 who did not have college degrees saw their mortality rates increase between 1998 and 2015. Those with degrees saw their mortality rates decrease. “There are two Americas,” said Anne Case, who conducted the research with...

I was recently listening to radio host, Glenn Beck, and he proudly announced that he cries really often as if it is a badge of honor. I have noticed there are many men who like being seen crying in public: Bill Clinton, Schumer, Boehner, Anderson Cooper, my former pastor. I have not known many men to cry in public, well my former roommate in college, but we always made fun of him when he cried. I was raised that crying for something other than a death in the family for a man is not the thing to do. Perhaps I...

When the Supreme Court imposed phony marriage on the entire country, the LGBTs were left wondering what to do next, how to keep their issue boiling?Some of them, chief among them radio host/activist Michelangelo Signorelli, accurately predicted that the conservative Christian response would be to protect religious freedom, that the Christians would beg to be left alone, not forced to participate in morally objectionable religious services.Other homosexual power centers responded by pushing the transgender thing even though they had never really been interested before. A cursory look at the New York Times demonstrates that there were next to no stories...

Dr. Jordan Peterson discusses how to immunize yourself from a totalitarian mindset like communism.

When Becky Albertalli published her first young adult novel, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, with the HarperCollins imprint Balzer and Bray in 2015, she never expected it to be controversial. She’d worked for years as a clinical psychologist specializing in gender nonconforming children and LGBTQ teens and adults.* Yet her book—about a closeted gay kid whose love notes to a classmate fall into the wrong hands—contained a moment that rubbed readers the wrong way: Simon, the sweet but clueless protagonist, muses that girls have an easier time coming out than boys, because their lesbianism strikes others as alluring. At...

Gad Saad on Hysteria and “Collective Munchausen” around Donald Trump, Speaking Out as an Academic, and Evolutionary Psychology 101 Interviews, Religion | Politics January 23, 2017 | by Malhar Mali | “As somebody who escaped Lebanon and actually hid under desks to avoid death squads, I don’t take well to these idiots from Wellesley College who say, ‘I’m scared to go and buy my hamburgers now that Trump won,’ because it trivializes what true trauma is.” — Gad Saad Gad Saad (@GadSaad) is an outspoken social critic of the lunacies found in the extremes of both political sides. A controversial...

There’s no easy way to rate dog intelligence. As psychologist Stanley Coren wrote back in the 90s, there’s adaptive intelligence (i.e., figuring stuff out), working intelligence (i.e., following orders), and instinctive intelligence (i.e., innate talent) — not to mention spatial intelligence, kinesthetic intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, and more. Indeed, as animal behaviorist Frans de Waal has argued, humans tend to judge animal intelligence in limited and unfair terms and often bungle the experiment. While labs at Yale, Duke, and around the world are studying this question, for now we do at least have data on one metric: working intelligence. Coren, in...

Psychologist Michal Kosinski developed a method of analyzing people’s behavior down to the minutest detail by looking at their Facebook activity—thus helping Donald Trump to victory. On November 9th, around 8:30 in the morning, Michal Kosinski awoke in his hotel room in Zurich. The 34-year-old had traveled here to give a presentation to the Risk Center at the ETH [Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule or Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich] at a conference on the dangers of Big Data and the so-called digital revolution. Kosinski gives such presentations all over the world. He is a leading expert on psychometrics, a data-driven offshoot...

The Genetics of Politics | Liberals vs. Conservatives - the differences in the brains of conservatives versus liberals, as compared to K-selected/R-selected behavior Stefan Molyneux Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLlTW2Ie-_Y&t

When I was 7, I told my 4-year-old brother that his real sister was taken to “Land Kazoozoo,” and I was her replacement, a witch who could look like anyone she wanted. I can still remember the beat of fear in his big brown eyes, and to this day I’m not sure he’s fully dismissed the possibility that I’m an evil imposter. At 8, I called my older sister a “seed head”—an improvised jab at her shiny dark hair and the shape of her head. At the time, I thought the lame insult had died on contact, and I would...

Most people aren’t looking to self-segregate, but the abundance of choice made possible by technology, alongside military privatization, makes it too easy ___ It’s a fact: while Americans have countless tools with which to connect with one another, we are also watching fragmentation, polarization, and de-diversification happen en masse. The American public is self-segregating, tearing at the social fabric of the country. Many in the tech world imagined that the internet would connect people in unprecedented ways, allow for divisions to be bridged and wounds to heal – a Kumbaya dream of sorts. Today, those same dreamers find it quite...

The U.S. Supreme Court has been handed a bombshell: An appeal of a lower-court ruling that banned Christian counselors from talking with teens about the biblical standard for sexuality. The case challenges laws that force licensed counselors to affirm homosexuality, prohibiting them from helping clients overcome same-sex attractions. Such laws have been adopted in New Jersey, where a biased judge used it to shut down a Christian ministry, and in California and other states. The case already was presented to the Supreme Court several years ago, but it did not get a ruling. Now a new appeal has been submitted...

Research has found that being attractive influences many things in a person's life -- their salary, their popularity and grades in school, even the prison sentences they receive. So why not their politics? A recently published study in the Journal of Public Economics concludes that the attractiveness of a candidate does correlate with their politics. They find that politicians on the right are more good looking in Europe, the United States and Australia. The research also suggests that voters correctly see candidates who are more good looking as more likely to be conservative.

Full Title: Any woman who claims her son's better off without a dad needs her head examined: As actress January Jones says she is GLAD her little boy doesn't have a father, a guilt-ridden single mother blasts her comments Chatting to my teenage daughter over a family dinner the other evening, I paused to reprimand my nine-year-old son for slurping his spaghetti and making a terrible mess in the process. 'You can't tell me off,' he spat back. 'I'm the man of the house.' Of course I was cross with Charlie for being so impudent, and told him so in...

As we watch the rise of the Snowflake Generation with a mixture of bemusement and horror – you know, the young people unable to use a can opener but who are certain they’re qualified to dictate business and social policy, the generation who can work a smartphone like a brain surgeon but can’t figure out what gender they are – it should come as no surprise that manhood and masculinity have come under fire. If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to be a man, look no further than the University of Wisconsin-Madison. There you’ll find the answer: Real men...

Leadership consultant Simon Sinek has been told that millennials – people born after 1982 – are 'entitled, narcissistic, self-interested, unfocused and lazy' - but he believes it is not their fault. The author's response to the 'millennial question' on Inside Quest 'broke the internet' after he revealed why many young people may display the undesirable qualities listed by their bosses. He explained millennials grew up in an environment where 'every child wins a prize' only to find the 'real world' after school is much different. Where they were told they were special all the time, they were told they could...

A man calling himself “One Hand Jason” cut his right arm off because he felt like he was really disabled. His hand was more or less a “birth defect,” according to body modification website ModBlog. Jason trained in first aid for months and eventually severed his arm with a power tool. He also allowed people to think it was an accident for years. If you think this is wrong in any way, you’re a bigot — at least if you follow trans-logic to its natural conclusions.

Although most couples have experienced a long and awkward period of silence after a row it is unlikely to compare to a husband and wife who have not spoken for two decades - but continue to live with each other. Otou Katayama, from Nara, southern Japan, continues to live with his three children and wife, Yumi, who perseveres in making conversation with him but has only ever received a nod or a grunt in response for 20 years. The Japanese couple's silence was revealed by their 18-year-old son Yoshiki, who wrote into a TV show asking them to fix the...

More than twice as many minors as expected have expressed a desire to change their gender this year. Since January, the Sexology Clinic in Copenhagen has offered hormone treatment to minors who feel like they were born in the wrong body. […] In Denmark, children as young as 12 can receive hormone suppressors, also known as puberty blockers, to stunt the growth of sexual organs and suppress developments like facial hair for boys and menstruation for girls. The effects of the blockers are reversible. Once minors reach the age of 16, they can receive full hormone treatment that is largely...

I am not a Trump supporter, to say the least. And I don’t agree with most of his policies and rhetoric. That being said, as an entrepreneur and researcher on the subject of fear and rejection, I see all people through the lens of their relationship with rejection. As a result, I found Trump's candidacy fascinating. In my newly published TED talk on rejection, I discussed this phenomenon: that the people who changed the world, against overwhelming odds, were not the people who avoided rejection, but those who embraced it and used it as their power. Unfortunately, the power of...