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Gang of children - some as young as TEN - caught slowly roasting puppies over bonfire (See pic in URL) By Jaya Narain 04th February 2009 A gang of children aged as young as 10 were caught trying to roast a pair puppies over a bonfire. Passerby Melanie Johnson spotted them kicking the pups and holding them over the fire on a canal bank. The youngsters fled, abandoning the dogs, when she challenged them. Ms Johnson, 32, took the puppies home, then passed them on to an RSPCA centre where staff treated the dogs and are now looking to find...

It is widely reported that women suffer depression at twice the rate of men. Apparently, more women are clinically depressed than ever before. On the assumption that these assessments are true, the question anyone interested in the subject -- which means anyone who cares about any woman -- asks is, why? In a recent column I offered one explanation -- the impossibly high expectations for happiness that feminism created for many women. There are other possible explanations. One is the way in which many girls have been raised. As every wise person and wise culture in history has known, it...

In his essay, The Empire of the Ugly, the great Belgian Sinologist and literary essayist Simon Leys recounts the story of how, writing one day in a café, a small incident gave him an insight into the real nature of philistinism. A radio was playing in the background, a mixture of banal and miscellaneous chatter and equally banal popular music. No one in the café paid any attention to this stream of tepid drivel until suddenly, unexpectedly and inexplicably, the first bars of Mozart’s clarinet quintet were played. “Mozart,� Leys says, “took possession of our little space with a serene...

A recent AP news report has concluded, after compiling the results of numerous studies over the years, that there is a strong and disturbing link between severe child abuse and non-traditional family environments. In the article' words: "[Scholars and caseworkers] note an ever increasing share of America's children grow up in homes without both biological parents, and say the risk of child abuse is markedly higher in the nontraditional family structures."  Examples of "nontraditional family structures" include: o  Children living in homes with unrelated adults (these children are "50 times more likely to die inflicted injuries as children living with biological parents"); and...

As often as possible, I share time well-spent with America’s greatest humorists and philosophers. This week it is Mark Twain and Thomas Sowell. That combination is not as odd as it first seems. Philosophers dig down to basics, to find and state the truth. Think about it, humorists do the same, but faster. Humor is truth by surprise. Mark Twain wrote: “When I arrived in Virginia City, there were eleven saloons, five jails, and some talk of building a church. It was no place to be a Presbyterian, and I did not remain one long.” In those two sentences, he...

Decent people have sought to identify the roots of evil since the first indecent person inflicted cruelty on an innocent person. And people have come up with one or more of nine explanations, most of which are indeed valid. 1. The Devil (or whatever name the devil goes by in any given culture). I do not believe in a devil, but when one observes the seemingly inexplicable cruelty engaged in by some people, it is understandable that people have attributed it to some evil being that has taken over that person. 2. Genes. The contemporary term for devil is "genes."...

If you want your children to be happy adults and even happy children -- and what parent does not? -- minimize the excitement in their lives. The more excitement, the less happy they are likely to be. In both adults and children, one can either pursue excitement or pursue happiness, but one cannot do both. If you pursue excitement, you will not attain happiness. If you pursue happiness, you will still experience some moments of excitement, but you will attain happiness only if happiness, not excitement, is your goal. When we give our child a present, he experiences excitement, and...

With the recent charges that a major National Football League player had allowed cruel dog fights on his home property, the issue of cruelty to animals has been brought to national attention. Nearly everyone acknowledges the obvious -- that a person who is cruel to animals, who enjoys sees seeing an animal suffer, is likely to inflict suffering on human beings. Cruelty to animals is one of the very few predictors among children of later criminal behavior. So, aside from altruistic concern for animals, we human beings also have a selfish concern about people who enjoy making animals suffer. People...

RUSH: Heather in the Claremont, Oklahoma, welcome to the EIB Network. Welcome. CALLER: Hello. How are you? RUSH: Good, thank you, how are you? CALLER: Pretty good. Pretty good. I have a question for you. It kind of goes in line with your little diner with the nurses, the sexy nurses in the -- RUSH: Hey, hey, hey, hey! Don't call this place a diner. This is the Heart Attack Grill. CALLER: Heart Attack Grill, okay. Well, I live in a suburb of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and we have an issue where there's a haircutting place for men in Tulsa called...

Prehistoric tools, weapons discovered in Peruvian Andes AFP August 20, 2006 LIMA -- A team of Peruvian and US archaeologists have discovered prehistoric stone tools and weapons some 10,000 years old in an Andean town, the National Institute of Culture announced Friday. Stone axes, spearheads, and weapons were found in the main square of San Pedro de Chavin de Huantar, an Andean town some 400 kilometers (250 miles) north of Lima, officials said. "This discovery represents exceptional evidence of the presence of inhabitants in the Pleistocene era," the Institute said in a statement. The Pleistocene went from about 1.6 million...

We can all agree that Mel Gibson diplayed extreme stupidity, in making anti-semitic comments infront of a stranger. But the intense campaign in the mass media and on this forum to denounce Gibson, is, frankly, ridiculous. Even many on this forum who defended Trent Lott, have been hysterical in their denunciation of Gibson. Thinking or saying racist or anti-semitic things is a sin. So is engaging in, or thinking about, extra-marital sex. But given man's fallen nature, such things are common. People normally express their prejudices to close friends or to family members, not to total strangers. Remember Rev. Billy...

Every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he's not, he's a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some, it takes an hour. For some, it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense...

When you think about a Muslim suicide terrorist, is "happy" the first word you think of to describe him? When you think about Nazis or Communists or Klansmen or child molesters, do you immediately think, "Now there are some happy people"? Of course not. It only takes a moment's thought to realize that while most unhappy people don't engage in evil, most evil is done by unhappy people. This is true on both the macro and the micro levels. We all know how much more likely we are to lash out at others when we are unhappy and how much...

Today, as is wont to happen from time to time, I overheard a hall way conversation at the headquarters of a major US based multinational that I simply could not avoid hearing. The topic of discussion was the current campaign to "help the poor Africans" being lauded by entertainment figures such as Bono and Bob Geldoff. Those conversing were two low level managers. It got me to thinking about the way in which globalist utopianism truly is a bourgeois, grass roots thing, which affects many highly educated, overall "respectable" and "normal" people across our society. How is it that the...

Murder is genetically programmed in the human mind ON May 11, 2005, a jury convicted Pete Terrazas of murdering his next-door neighbor, Miguel Ruiz. Terrazas had been dating Ruiz's housekeeper, Maria Santillana, whom he deeply loved. When she abruptly broke off the relationship, Terrazas concluded that she had begun an affair with Ruiz. Terrazas loaded his .410-gauge shotgun, went over to his neighbor's driveway, blasted Ruiz in the back and then took deadly aim at the man's chest.Pete Terrazas had never before been violent. Nor had Scott Peterson before he killed his wife, Laci. Nor had Clara Harris before she...

The new pope, Benedict XVI, is seventy-eight years old and, by conventional wisdom, it seems unlikely that he'll come anywhere close to matching the length of term of his immediate predecessor, John Paul II, whose twenty-seven-year tenure was the third longest in papal history. In order to do so, he would have to live to be a hundred and five years of age, a feat that no previous pope, and few men, have ever achieved. In fact, many commentators think that his advanced age (the oldest in over a century) indicates that he's meant to be a short-term, transitional pope,...

Harvard Chick Profs vs. the “Ice Princess” March 23, 2005 By Debbie Schlussel Oops. Lawrence Summers isn’t from Hollywood, and he’s not a sexy starlet from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” or “Sex and the City.” If only he underwent an “Extreme Makeover” to fit these characteristics, Summers might get away with his comments about lack of women in the sciences in academia. After all, the Harvard President--who continues to be under fire for attributing gender differences to a lack of women in the sciences--recently suffered a vote of no confidence by Harvard professors. Yet, this past weekend’s Disney movie, “Ice...

You do not know, and will never know, who the Remnant are, nor what they are doing or will do. Two things you do know, and no more: First, that they exist; second, that they will find you.” Albert Jay Nock – 1936 The Remnant has always existed, since the beginning of man and it survives today. It is not possessed with extraordinary intelligence, wealth or power. Those that comprise it are just ordinary human beings, average by-and-large and you will never recognize them for what they are when you meet them, see them or hear them. They are the...

Life Liberty and Property, but among these three, Property.

The debate about legal recognition of same-sex marriage is ultimately grounded in our understanding of human nature, values, and the role of human relationships in creating and defining the type society we desire. For the vast majority of Americans, these issues are understood in the context of the Bible and religious traditions, the “Instruction Manual” provided by our “manufacturer.”[1] This critical debate is not truly between homosexuals and heterosexuals; it is between two opposing worldviews, one secular and the other religious.[2] Approximately 80% of Americans hold a religious worldview,[3] but the secular left has done an excellent, yet nefarious, job...

"...They promised perpetual peace. They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease. But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe..." As the British Empire declined so too did the reputation of Rudyard Kipling. A great story teller, he was, as George Orwell noted, the poet laureate of empire. Gradually Kipling came to be viewed as anachronistic and archaic. A more liberal and supposedly more tolerant view became the dominant one amongst English speaking wordsmith intellectuals, so that by the time Kipling died in 1936, socialism, communism...

The Delusion of Darwinian Natural Law Marc D. GuerraIn a short, inconspicuous paragraph in the conclusion to the first edition of On the Origin of Species, Darwin speculates that "in the distant future … psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation." One hundred and forty years later, Darwin's eerie prediction about the revolutionary effect of his work on human beings' self-understanding seems all too prophetic. After a century of dissemination, the once-novel theory of evolution is widely accepted as established scientific fact. Given the quasi-religious hold...

At a recent news conference in London a reporter asked President Bush, "Why do they hate you, Mr. President? Why do they hate you in such numbers?" It's a rather embarrassing question to ask anyone, never mind the leader of the free world, and Bush in his reply shed no new light on this peculiar political phenomenon. Every president has his detractors, of course. If he did not there would be reason to wonder whether he was doing his job. But Bush hatred does seem to be sui generis. Bill Clinton was surely disliked by many conservatives, but even taking...

Science is reshaping the argument about whether nature or nurture is decisive in determining human destinies and about what the answer means for social policy. Consider a fascinating new report arguing the scientific evidence for the importance of "authoritative communities" -- groups, religious or secular, devoted to transmitting a model of the moral life. The report is from the 33 research scientists, children's doctors and mental health and youth services professionals on a commission jointly sponsored by the Dartmouth Medical School, the Institute for American Values and the YMCA of the USA. The report's conclusion is in its title: Human...

Guest Essay Albuquerque artist Wilson Hurley is New Mexico's Renaissance man. Widely acclaimed for his Western landscapes, he also has had a successful law career, served in the National Guard, was an enginer at Sandia Corp. and a banker who helped organize Citizens Bank. He is a graduate of West Point and George Washington University Law School. He too takes a look at the future. The year 2000 is unusual because of its number. Outside that singularity, it marks no watershed in our lives or culture. All through history we have changed as technology advanced. Thus the 20th-century culture started...

A new report argues that chimpanzees are so closely related to humans that they should be included in our branch of the tree of life. Chimpanzees and other apes have historically been separated from humans in classification schemes, with humans deemed the only living members of the hominid family of species

From the Washington Politics & Policy Desk Published 2/5/2003 6:45 PM HIGHLANDS, N.C., Feb. 5 (UPI) -- This here's the 336th Report ta the Folks Back Home from the (More er Less) Honorable Billybob, cyberCongressman from Western Carolina. The main subjeck ov las week was, ov course, the loss ov the Shuttle Columbia, with all hands. So I wanna rat about it. However, ma able assistant, J. Armor, Esq., wazza student ov history n lit'rature, way back when. So I'll turn this over ta him. Those in Peril on the SeaThe Navy Hymn was written in 1860, by a man...

A decade ago, the psychiatrist Peter Kramer published a book called Listening to Prozac, which claimed that our understanding of neurochemistry was so advanced that we would soon be able to design- and no doubt to vary- our personalities according to our tastes. Henceforth there would be no more angst. He based his prediction upon the case histories of people given the supposed wonder drug who not merely recovered from depression but emerged with new, improved personalities. Yet the prescription of the drug (and others like it) to millions of people has not noticeably reduced the sum total of human...

Andrew Norton: You are unusual amongst contemporary political theorists in that an explicit theory of human nature is central to your thought. Do you think political theories can do without a view of human nature? Francis Fukuyama: I think most social scientists and a lot of post-Kantian philosophers have tried to do without human nature. The only reason that I feel you can raise the human nature argument again is that over the last 30 years in the life sciences there has been a lot of empirical work that has made the concept respectable to scientists again. I think social...

Although it would seem that Marx himself was equivocal on the matter (Geras, 1983), it has long been a major Leftist doctrine that there is no such thing as an inherited "human nature". This root and branch rejection of heredity was of course what underlay Stalin's support of Lysenko's otherwise thoroughly discredited theory of evolution -- the idea that characteristics acquired in one's lifetime can be passed on to one's offspring. Leftists reject the importance of heredity in order to justify their frequent claim that "education" can change almost anything in human behaviour. Even Leftists in the “Western” world claimed...

Lecture Archive DOES HUMAN NATURE HAVE A FUTURE? by Peter Augustine Lawler October 26, 2001 at Fordham University Dr. Peter Lawler is Professor of Political Science at Berry College. He has written over one hundred articles, reviews, book chapters, and a recent book entitled "Postmodernism Rightly Understood: The Return to Realism in American Thought." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Does human nature have a future? The question, to tell the truth, is full of ambiguities. First off, the phrase "human nature" assumes that human reality is natural. But philosophers from the time of Rousseau have distinguished between subhuman nature and human freedom. What is...

ACTION Look at a man's acts; watch his motives; find out what pleases him: can the man evade you? Can the man evade you? - Confucius, Analects, 400 b.c. ADVANTAGE Do not be desirous to have things done quickly; do not look at small advantages. Desire to have things done quickly prevents them from being done thoroughly. Looking at small advantages prevents great efforts from being accomplished. - Confucius, Analects, c. 400 b.c. ARGUMENT A gentleman can see a question from all sides without bias. The small man is biased and can see a question only from one side. -...

It is by no means certain to thinkers today that there is such a thing as human nature. And it goes without saying that this uncertainty or denial is fraught with weighty consequences. If there is no human nature, what and who are we? From the sky we do not look terribly significant. Ants on an apple. From the moon even less so, regardless of the telescopic technology. Moreover, if there is no universal human nature, can we talk meaningfully and convincingly about human morals and human rights? Rights that are not merely the legal devices of some social contract,...

Who says education has improved in 2000 years? You couldn’t prove it by this man. ACHIEVMENT For the excellence of an achievement is not the same as that of a possession: the possession that we prize most is that which is most valuable, e.g. gold; but the achievement is the one that is great and splendid (because the contemplation of such a thing excites one's administration, and magnificence is an object of administration), and magnificence is an achievement is excellence on a grand scale. - Aristotle, Ethics. c.334-23 B.C. ACTION Just as at the Olympic Games it is not the...