Free Republic

Despite their similarities, being pursued and being simped for couldn’t be more different. We’ll be honest: We, as women, really enjoy being pursued. We like knowing that the guy we’ve had our eye on is interested. We love feeling like the object of someone’s affection. We enjoy the thought of him deciding to ask us out, planning a romantic date, and opening a door for us. More than anything, we like to be pursued because it lets us know that we’re special, chosen, and sought after. But maybe you’ve experienced a guy who was a little too eager to get...

Most moderate-sized American cities are dominated by two structures: bank buildings and hospitals. The former are often large and new because it’s where we like to put our money. The latter are large because we’re afraid to die and don’t want to be sick. Both are particularly modern structures. You could travel to ancient Pompei, were it to be completely reconstructed. You would find neither bank nor hospital. Of the two, hospitals came first. Ancient Greece and Rome had doctors. They worked with herbs, and even performed fairly simple surgeries. The “Hippocratic Oath,” sworn by modern doctors as part of...

So much for chivalry. Venmo, a peer-to-peer payment app owned by PayPal and popular with millennials, isn’t just letting 20-somethings split cab fares and utility bills — it’s turning guys into really stingy dates.

I’m a fan of old movies, the black-and-whites from the 1930s and 1940s, in part because of what they reveal about how American culture has changed. The adults in these films carry themselves differently. They don’t walk and speak the way we do. It’s often hard to figure out how old the characters are supposed to be—as though they were portraying a phase of the human life-cycle that we don’t have any more. Take the 1934 film Imitation of Life. Here Claudette Colbert portrays a young widow who builds a successful business. (Selling pancakes, actually. Well, it’s more believable if...

... Why did you become a pagan? ‘Oh,’ Steve leant back and stretched. ‘When I was young, I was a Christian, but I couldn’t take the idea that good people like Buddhists, for instance, are going to Hell. Then I met someone who was involved in the Fellowship of Isis, and the idea of the goddess just started making sense to me. But everybody finds their own way,’ he said. ‘I mean, 9,000 teenagers became Wiccan witches in England because of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.’ What!? ‘It’s true,’ said Steve. ‘When Buffy’s friend Willow became a lesbian witch, the WiccaUk...