Posts Tagged ‘ violence ’

The response to trauma is instinctual, even if our instinctual responses are wired individually. God evolved our species’ instincts to do something fast –flee, fight, or freeze — because the lethal nature of most of the dangers that killed humans throughout history is immediately perceptible and requires immediate response. Instincts don’t do as well when [...]

A friend of mine found this note on her car this week with a Starbucks gift card:  ”To honor the 26 people who died in Newtown, CT, my family is doing 26 acts of kindness. You are number 3. We hope you have a wonderful holiday season. God bless!” What a great way to take [...]

It’s been a rough few weeks. 1.  Dec 1, 2012.  (Left photo) Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Javon Belcher killed his girlfriend, drove to the Chiefs’ Stadium, talked to his coaches and then killed himself in front of them. 2.  Dec 11, 2012.  (Middle photo) Jacob Tyler Roberts, 22, entered a crowded Portland, Oregon mall and killed [...]

Not the program you might think. Rather, the kind of program some people had in mind for Salman Rushdie when he pointed out the contradictions of “The Satanic Verses”. Or, perhaps that should be pogrom, since there are death penalties involved. Certainly, Mark Steyn is one who has had his proverbial skin in the game, [...]

I have been personally (and later professionally) interested in the extent to which mathematics could help forecast historical trends ever since I read the fiction of Isaac Asimov way back in the 1960′s. When I shared my first office at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory with a staff meteorologist working on air quality dispersion [...]

The laws that govern normal behavior on earth (e.g., “Thou shalt not kill”) do not apply in heaven, because there they are unnecessary. The laws that govern normal behavior on earth also do not apply in hell, because there no one can hope to keep them. I am not the first to notice that “war [...]

“Only two of the 18 launched lifeboats rescued people after the ship sank. Lifeboat 4 was close by and picked up five people, two of whom later died. Close to an hour later, lifeboat 14 went back and rescued four people, one of whom died afterward. Other people managed to climb onto the lifeboats that floated off [...]

Since spring, women worldwide have taken to the streets to protest rape culture in several “SlutWalks.”  So, for the uninitiated, what is “rape culture”?  According to Wikipedia: A rape culture is a complex of beliefs that encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. It is a society where violence is seen as sexy [...]

New York is a city composed of five Boroughs that include dozens of neighborhoods with histories often unrecognized by their modern residents. As the city grew from its origins on the southern tip of Manhattan Island over several centuries, it enveloped and altered what had been separate communities and erased the reasons for their original [...]