Free Republic

A 51-second video clip shows a crowd of over a hundred students cheering as the 'pride' flag is tossed from an upper balcony by another student.PINCOURT, Quebec (LifeSiteNews) — A crowd of students recently protesting the LGBT agenda in a Quebec school tore down and trampled a rainbow “pride” flag. Last week, a group of teenagers from the Chêne-Bleu Secondary School in Pincourt, Quebec cheered as one of their fellow students tore down a flag representing the LGBT agenda, supporting the act of defiance by trampling the flag once it was no longer flying. A 51-second video clip circulated by...

SERKIT is officially coining two terms that it is hoped will catch on. "Americaphobia" and "Americaphobic".

In a bid which further delayed a vote on Judge Kavanaugh, Christine Blasey Ford's associates claimed earlier this week that Ford's too afraid to fly to Washington DC from California and instead needs to drive. As ABC News reported on Friday: [L]awyers for Ford are asking the Senate Judiciary Committee to schedule a hearing for her to be heard on Thursday, allowing time for Ford to make the drive from California to Washington D.C. Ford's friend, Kate Devarney, told CNN this week that Ford's fear of flying is directly related to her allegation of assault, and that an airplane is...

Spiders are quite literally all around us. A recent entomological survey of North Carolina homes turned up spiders in 100 percent of them, including 68 percent of bathrooms and more than three-quarters of bedrooms. There's a good chance at least one spider is staring at you right now, sizing you up from a darkened corner of the room, eight eyes glistening in the shadows.

; In order that we might all raise the level of discourse and expand our language abilities, here is the daily post of "Word for the Day". ERGOPHOBIA [ur goh FOh bee uh]hear it pronounced noun Literally, a hatred or terror of work. In 1905 in the British Medical Journal the word was coined describing "...it often pays better to idle and loaf about than to work, and the consequence is that a new disease has been engendered. which I (W.D. Spanton) have termed ergophobia"Erg" is a unit of work, Greek ergon plus the familiar suffix phobia.

Spiders are the most feared pest, although people increasingly have phobias about hornets, rats and wasps, a new study has revealed. Spiders topped a "fear index", with two-thirds of those questioned saying they were spooked by them, a survey of 2,000 adults by home emergency firm HomeServe found. Hornets and rats were closely behind, with foxes sneaking into the top 10 ahead of mice, fleas, slugs and snails, while moths, flies and ants were the least feared.

Most of us are scared of something - but imagine being too terrified to sleep in the dark. This week it emerged that five million people in Britain are spooked when the lights go off. Fears are often caused by childhood experiences or a traumatic incident. Some people are scared of dogs because they were bitten by one. But why anyone in Britain should be afraid of spiders is a total mystery. None of the native ones are harmful. Here are some of the phobias that make us tremble - and the fancy names doctors have given them.

A British woman who went to a Thai nature resort to conquer her fear of monkeys has been savaged by a pack of macaques. Dee Darwell, 56, lost consciousness after the monkeys surrounded her and sank their teeth into her arms and body. Many of the primates remained hanging from her limbs as she lay collapsed with blood spurting from a "deep, deep hole" in her arm. She was eventually rescued by Thai boatmen and was taken to Bangkok Phuket Hospital. The horrific attack happened on Monkey Island near to the popular holiday island of Phuket in southern Thailand. "I...

Well, I learned a lot from this video... We must be careful around each other. There's just no telling what we might do to cause another person distress. Funny stuff anyway, though. C

10 - The Dentist 9 - Dogs 8 - Frightful Flight 7 - Thunder and Lightning 6 - The Dark 5 - Harrowing Heights 4 - Other People 3 - Scary Spaces 2 - Creepy Crawlies 1 - Slithering Snakes

Enlarge ImageDéjà vu? Subjects were shown dozens of pictures like these and tested on whether they remembered them the next day.Credit: U. Rimmele et al., J. Neuroscience, 7 January 2009 The next time you spot an old friend from across the room, thank oxytocin. Researchers have shown that the brain hormone helps us sense whether a face is familiar. Oxytocin is a powerful social chemical. In voles, for example, the hormone is key to attachment behavior: Males with higher levels of oxytocin are more likely to be faithful to their mates. Humans also make use of the hormone. Oxytocin...

A terror of frozen peas, a fear of barns and a dread of kneecaps have emerged as some of Britain's most unusual phobias. Britain's weirdest phobias include a fear of peas and kneecaps. While spiders and heights are common sources of anxiety, many people's lives are blighted by phobias of seemingly innocuous objects. David Allison, a therapist based at Addenbrooke's hospital, in Cambridge, was filmed treating some of the worst sufferers in an ITV1 documentary to be shown next week. They included Sue Williams, 37, from Dudley in the West Midlands, who is so terrified of knees that she has...

Genes trigger phobias in kids and teens 21:00 07 April 2008 NewScientist.com news service Jim Giles Our response to the things that scare us, from threatening men on dark streets to hairy spiders in the bath, is programmed to become active at different times in our lives, suggest two studies on the genetics of fear. Scientists already know that fears and phobias are shaped in part by genes. Identical twins, for example, are more likely to develop phobias for the same objects, such as snakes or rats, than non-identical twins. But less is known about when the genes involved act...

Beth Wallace was stopped at a traffic light when a truck pulled up next to her. As she took a sip from her thermos of coffee, Wallace, 32, a San Francisco resident, glanced at the driver, who turned his head and returned the stare. It was then that she saw the ghostly white face and bulbous red nose. Wallace shrieked and scrambled to lock her car doors, barely noticing the hot coffee she spilled on herself. The driver was a clown. Wallace, a teacher, has been petrified of clowns since childhood. “I know it's irrational, but they scare the bejeezus...

Deactivating a specific gene transforms meek mice into daredevils, researchers have found. The team believe the research might one day enable people suffering from fear – in the form of phobias or anxiety disorders, for example – to be clinically treated. The research found that mice lacking an active gene for the protein stathmin are not only more courageous, but are also slower to learn fear responses to pain-associated stimuli, says geneticist Gleb Shumyatsky, at Rutgers University in New Jersey, US. In the experiments, the stathmin-lacking mice wandered out into the centre of an open box, in defiance of the...

You know the scene: A black dorsal fin slices through the surf toward a solitary swimmer. From the crowded beach come cries of "Shark!" But it's too late. That's vintage Jaws, of course, and it's become a staple of summertime pop culture since the first Jaws film, released 30 years ago, stirred up shark hysteria worldwide. Even in Canada, where there has never been a recorded shark attack fatality, swimmers looked at the water with new suspicion. Over the next 12 years, the studios churned out three progressively more terrible Jaws instalments until, in the final film, a descendant of...

Insanity and terrorism New insights show terrorists are young, with little education or money. And many suffer from mental illness Stewart Bell National Post March 27, 2004 The terrorists who blew up four packed commuter trains in Madrid on the morning of March 11 must have marvelled at their success. With 10 bombs, triggered with cellphones, they killed about 190 people and injured another 1,750. But how could they do it? What kind of person can coldly plan a terrorist attack, knowing it will result in the murder of hundreds of fellow human beings? What kind of person can condemn...

NEW ORLEANS - Scientists say a pill may help people overcome their worst phobias. In a small study released Monday, a drug already on the market for tuberculosis helped people who were terrified of heights get over that fear with only two therapy sessions instead of the usual seven or eight. The study, led by Michael Davis, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Emory University School of Medicine, was described at a session about unlearning fears at the Society for Neuroscience meeting. Davis based his work on research that had found the transmission of a certain protein...