Free Republic

FULL TITLE: Another gift to Trump: Kamala Harris declares what her side wants to ‘change,’ and it’s not scary at all During her tour through South Carolina, Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Kamala Harris told a group that “we can change human behaviors.” That’s comforting. By “we,” she means the almighty power of the state can change your behavior. And we know how statists like to go about changing behavior.

In shipwrecks, children turn out to have the lowest survival rate, followed by women at 30% and men at around 40%, according to s Swedish study. In the Titanic shipwreck in contrast, more than 70% of female passengers survived, compared to less than 20% of men, with children in between.

The Ugly Side of Things By Ari Bussel The weather in Israel has not made up its mind yet – so, one day it is Spring, the next back to Winter, and we are already on the last day of April. Indeed, Mother Nature this year has been volatile the world over, from tornados to earthquakes, tsunamis to uncharacteristic rain or warmth. Shall we attempt to read anything into this unusual behavior, possibly an omen for us? Israelis are often compared to a cactus fruit, thorny outside and sweet inside. I was thinking about this description during the last few...

Demographic factors could be behind diverse aspects of social evolution. Did wars make us the species we are today?Wikimedia Commons Explanations of the evolution of human behaviour often invoke crucial biological changes and revolutionary cultural innovations. Now two papers in Science instead put demography — the size, density and distribution of populations — centre stage.Samuel Bowles, a behavioural scientist at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, tackles the puzzle of how humans acquired such unrivalled altruistic behaviour towards unrelated individuals — tendencies that allowed humans to cooperate as groups and, ultimately, to colonize the planet. The answer, paradoxically, could...

"My dear, let us hope that it isn't true!" the wife of the bishop of Worcester is reputed to have exclaimed 150 years ago, on hearing that human beings might be descended from apes. "But if it is true, let us hope that it doesn't become widely known!" When it comes to sociobiology - better known these days as "evolutionary psychology" - the bishop's wife has modern counterparts: The religious right and the secular and supposedly scientific left are remarkably on the same page, both sides inclined to dispute or misrepresent the relevance of evolution to human beings. The former,...

At first, AIDS appeared to be a disease of gay men. But by the time the virus responsible, HIV, had been identified a few years later, fear that sex, whether gay or straight, would kill millions of Americans shadowed every discussion of the topic. America’s sex life seemed poised for a dramatic change. But 25 years later, AIDS' true impact on the American sexual landscape has been muted, and, experts say, the changes that did occur were not always the ones we expected. Perception of what the sexual atmosphere was like before AIDS often relies on a convenient metaphor, like,...

We're going to get deep and serious here, and I'm going to ask you to reflect on a number of previous articles. We're not going to fulminate against George Bush, illegal immigrant-hiring businesses and the whores in the Senate they pay off, Democrats who see every illegal alien as a potential welfare recipient who will vote for them, or even Reconquista Mexicans attempting to recapture the American Southwest. No, we're going to get to the heart of the matter and figure out the fundamental cause of the problem. The problem that lies at the heart not just of the immigration...