Free Republic

The anecdotal evidence that Americans are remaining single longer into their lives has more and more data backing it up. No longer is it merely the musings of worried relatives hoping to see that young man or woman in their life find a spouse. According to a recent story over at Bloomberg—Is Everybody Single?—we’ve reached a statistical, verifiable relationship tipping point as a society; one with far-reaching implications. Single Americans make up more than half of the adult population for the first time since the government began compiling such statistics in 1976.Some 124.6 million Americans were single in August, 50.2...

A ‘data alchemist’ has split music into over 1,000 bewildering microgenres. But what lies out there beyond witch house, and what on Earth does skweee sound like? (article excerpted, here's the list; descriptions at the link) ...Well, here are 10 genres (we could have nominated about 50) that even mouth-breathing indie record-shop blowhards (full disclosure: I used to be a mouth-breathing indie-record shop blowhard) would be hardpressed to help you find … 1. Vaporwave Check: Food Pyramidhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhBg9vAsDGk 2. Blackgaze Check: Alcesthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADIEAW65H5o 3. Duranguense Check: Reencuentro Musicalhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lmdVmmk-yk 4. Deep filthstep Check: Denis Mashhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hSQYhkLbYU 5. Skweee Check: Baba Stiltzhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq6KeQLCQpM 6. Fallen angel...

Rates of adult obesity increased in six U.S. states and fell in none last year, and in more states than ever - 20 - at least 30 percent of adults are obese, according to an analysis released on Thursday. The conclusions were reported by the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and were based on federal government data. They suggest the problem may be worsening despite widespread publicity about the nation's obesity epidemic, from First Lady Michelle Obama and many others, plus countless programs to address it. From 2011 to 2012, by comparison, the rate of...

San Diego, California (CNN) -- For many Americans, the scariest phrase in the English language is "changing demographics." It's never easy to adjust to change -- especially when the thing that is changing is nothing less than the complexion of the country. America is being transformed before our eyes. In the early years of the 21st century, many white Americans are trembling at the thought that -- within three decades -- they'll be the minority in the United States. The demographic "doomsday" is about 2043, according to the most recent projections.

Brain boxes had better brace themselves, because the latest bit of bad news is that the world is becoming a dumber place. IQs have not only plateaued in many developed countries around the world – including the UK, Australia, US and in Scandinavian countries – they are actually measurably dropping. It’s an important enough development for it to be the cover story of this week’s New Scientist magazine, which hits newsstands today. Throughout the 20th century, we were getting smarter and smarter – each generation brainier than the last. Scientists were not sure why but, at the rate we were...

The group that has shown the highest increase in suicide rates is middle-aged men and women, for whom the number of suicides has risen by a horrifying 28.4 percent in a mere decade. The sharpest increase has been among men in their fifties, for whom the number has risen nearly 50 percent since 1999. Now nearly 30 per 100,000 American men in their fifties kill themselves. Suicides are increasing across the board, from college students to the elderly, but the increases for the middle-aged are shocking.

Way way back, I think it was about 1998, I made a prediction in Radio Ink that talked about how one day all of radio would be digital and online and we would see a time when AM and FM stations were no longer the primary means of distributing our programming. I went so far as to say that some would sell off their properties because they were no longer needed. I got lots of hate mail on that one. Yesterday, Disney, one of the world's most respected media companies, sent a signal to the media and advertising world that...

KENNETT SQUARE, Pa. (AP) -- The cheerful sign outside Jane Cornell's summer school classroom in Pennsylvania's wealthiest county reads "Welcome" and "Bienvenidos" in polished handwriting. Inside, giggling grade-schoolers who mostly come from homes where Spanish is the primary language worked on storytelling with a tale about a crocodile going to the dentist. This poster and classroom at the Mary D. Lang Kindergarten Center are a subtle representation of America's changing school demographics. For the first time, U.S. public schools are projected to have more minority students than non-Hispanic whites, a shift largely fueled by growth in the number of Hispanic...

Bigotry: Thousands of angry Muslims, most of them Mideast immigrants, have taken to the streets to shout anti-Jewish epithets. Paris? Brussels? No, it's happening in U.S. cities. And it appears to be spreading at an alarming rate. You wouldn't know it from national media coverage, but militant pro-Hamas, anti-Israel demonstrations have broken out across this country, as well as European countries, in response to Israel defending itself against Hamas terrorists and rockets. In fact, according to the Anti-Defamation League, there have been more than 135 anti-Israel protests held in cities throughout the U.S. since July 8, when Hamas started the...

More Americans are enrolled in individual health insurance plans. In part, though, that’s because under Obamacare fewer are enrolled in group plans. And one health care analyst says this may be the beginning of a trend.WellPoint Inc., the Indianapolis-based health insurance giant, reported in its latest quarterly earnings that its small-group business fell more than expected.WellPoint said it ended 218,000 (or 12 percent) of those plans because employers dropped their group health coverage, and cited Obamacare’s tax credits as a reason for the shift,  J.K. Wall wrote in the Indianapolis Business Journal.Edmund Haislmaier, senior research fellow in health policy studies at...

When the fight for gay marriage began to gain traction back in the early years of the last decade, social conservative critics usually went beyond denying that marriage could be redefined to include same-sex couples. Many of them argued that homosexuals were much less inclined than heterosexuals to valorize the ideal of monogamy. Allowing gays and lesbians to marry would therefore introduce a polyamorous option into the institution, and adultery would come to be viewed as an acceptable option for all marriages.A spate of recent articles explicitly making the case for polyamory would seem to vindicate those conservative predictions and...

Corporate America can learn a lot from a chicken burrito. As many companies struggle to boost prices without alienating consumers, they may want to study Mexican-food chain Chipotle, which has managed to do both. Companies including Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc (CMG.N), Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and PepsiCo (PEP.N) have shown they're able to take advantage of quality, trendiness, and, in the case of Pepsi's snack foods, market dominance, to maintain high prices or even raise them faster than the inflation rate, now at about 2.1 percent in the U.S. Chipotle raised chicken-dish prices by 5 percent this year after leaving them...

This recount, found on The Meta Picture, tells the story of one restaurant’s quest to find out why they kept getting bad reviews despite serving the same number of customers on a daily basis. It took a look into their past to discover exactly what has changed in the last ten years – and their findings tell more about how we as a country have changed – possibly, for the worse. Now, although this particular instance may or may not be true, it tells a story that is all too common today in America. We are so engrossed in ourselves...

While only about 18 percent of Gen X women were married by 40, the number of their Millennial counterparts waiting till age 40 to tie the knot could now almost double, according to a recent study. Using data from the American Community Survey to estimate age-specific marriage rates, Washington, D.C.-based Urban Institute finds that the percentage of Millennials marrying by age 40 will fall lower than for any previous generation of Americans, even in a scenario where marriage rates recover considerably. In the early millennium period, from 2000 to 2004, the peak first marriage rate for single U.S.-born women at...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Fertility rates in the United States are plummeting, driven primarily by non-Hispanic white women and Hispanic women who are bearing fewer children. In a report released on Thursday, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that non-Hispanic white Americans are dying at a faster rate than they are being born for the second time in American history. Hispanic women are having fewer children, partially due to how economic weakness has slowed immigration. Hispanics and whites make up approximately 80 percent of the nation's population, and their childbearing patterns weigh heavily on the nation's overall picture. Hispanics have seen their...

There was the man inspired by the written words of Pope Francis. There was the agnostic professor. And there was the widow of a Baptist preacher. All of them Tennesseans, and all of them recent converts to one of the world's oldest Christian faiths. In the South, Catholicism is growing. The Diocese of Knoxville was recently ranked among the top 10 in the nation for its rate of adult conversions. All Southeast Tennessee Catholic parishes, including Chattanooga's, fall under the umbrella of Knoxville's diocese, one of 195 in the United States. A diocese is a geographic collection of parishes grouped...

The nation’s capital is filled with huge, sanctuaries waving rainbow-colored banners outside proclaiming the congregations’ affirmation of homosexual lifestyles. Yet they are, largely, empty on Sunday mornings. On the other hand, new conservative churches-some with liturgy and others with praise bands-are busting at the seams with Millennial attendants. Trying to uncover the reason for this disconnect between affirming liberal churches and welcoming conservative churches, IRD is interviewing pastors of these new conservative churches. Our biggest question raised to each pastor is, “How do you balance traditional Christian teaching with a youth culture?” In case you missed it, there is a...

The median age declined in seven states between 2012 and 2013, including five in the Great Plains, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates released today. In contrast, the median age for the U.S. as a whole ticked up from 37.5 years to 37.6 years. These estimates examine population changes among groups by age, sex, race and Hispanic origin nationally, as well as all states and counties, between April 1, 2010, and July 1, 2013. "We're seeing the demographic impact of two booms," Census Bureau Director John Thompson said. "The population in the Great Plains energy boom states is becoming younger...

Is there an epidemic of school shootings? Parents are understandably fearful, but their fear is unjustified. Schools are relatively safe places, and they have gotten much safer. While even one death is too many, the number of children killed in school shootings has declined over the last couple of decades. The drop is even larger than the overall decline in the murder rate.

In 2012, the average New York Jew looks a little less like Jerry Seinfeld and a little more like Tevye the Milkman. New York’s Jews are poorer, less educated and more religious than they were 10 years ago, according to a landmark new study of the city’s Jewish population. They’re also less liberal: More than half of the Jews in New York City live in Orthodox or Russian-speaking homes, both of which lean heavily conservative. The study, conducted by UJA-Federation of New York, counted 1.5 million Jews in New York City, Long Island and Westchester, up from 1.4 million just...