Free Republic

We all knew it was coming, and here it is - according to The Telegraph, one major lecturer's union has declared that people "should be allowed to identify as black no matter what color they are born." After all, if your genitalia doesn't tell us anything about your sex, your skin color obviously tells us nothing about your race. I'm a bit surprised it took so long for this to take off: The University and College Union (UCU), which represents more than 100,000 university lecturers and staff, set out its position on whether people should be able to self-identify as...

Last week, Beto O’Rourke, who in November lost his bid to be a U.S. senator from Texas, announced to America with great excitement that he’s running for president of the United States. A beaming Beto left the unmistakable impression that he could not wait to run — for our benefit as well as his. Here was a grandiose opportunity to bestow the gift of his person upon the eagerly awaiting masses. Beto O’Rourke’s announcement promised nothing less than a moment of truth — provided in the form of Beto O’Rourke. Practically hopping out of his seat, with his wife aside...

While browsing Twitter last week, I suddenly noticed a barrage of tweets hailing Dana Loesch’s performance at CNN’s town hall meeting on gun control. Curious, I headed to YouTube to see it. Loesch, indeed, defended the Second Amendment with tact and poise, but what struck me most as I watched the event wasn’t her performance but the vicious behavior of the crowd. Like a mob, the audience repeatedly heckled Loesch – and Senator Marco Rubio before her – for opposing gun control of any kind. It even booed Loesch for arguing that some rape victims would have loved to have...

The complaints are everywhere. Kids, young adults included, are incapable. Dumbed-down! Inept! They’re “snowflakes.” Drifting with the breeze, piling up to weigh down roofs and flatten fences, snowflakes melt at the slightest rise in temperature while more await being pushed aside so functioning adults can get to work. But nothing happens in a box. The modern snowflake didn’t arrive like a Currier and Ives Christmas card. Their existence owes in part to previous generations being either too busy working, or inventing methods to avoid work, that no thought was given to product quality at home. (Where the heart is, remember?)...

Seniors suffer the consequences of the way they are portrayed in the movies WASHINGTON, DC, Mar 3 – Hollywood’s entertainment elite appears to be increasingly dismissive of America’s aging population, according to a new study by Humana and the University of Southern California. “I came across the research and then it hit me: perhaps all of their incessant whining over the election of President Donald Trump has roots in the vanity that oftentimes goes hand-in-hand with being a so-called star.  The fact is that many of the movies produced in Tinseltown in recent years have indeed been increasingly disdainful of...

Kevin Netto, director of research at Curtin University's School of Physiotherapy and Exercise Science, says sex is akin to moderate level exercise. It causes heart rate rises, systolic blood pressure increases, diastolic blood pressure decreases and you sweat more. "It's exactly the same benefits as doing a full body cardio work but the caveat being that you have to maintain it for long enough," A/Prof Netto says. He says a French study found that the act of sex lasts for about 17 minutes on average "from whoa to go". "For most people it's not long enough and it's not often...

A teacher in Fort Worth has gone viral after she sent home a note to parents outlining her new homework policy for the year. In the note, Mrs. Brandy Young says, "After much research this summer, I am trying something new. Homework will only consist of work that your student did not finish during the school day. There will be no formally assigned homework this year." [Snip] The note ends: "Research has been unable to prove that homework improves student performance. Rather, I ask that you spend your evenings doing things that are proven to correlate with student success....

A woman upset about a haircut she'd gotten at a North Park barber shop on Wednesday returned a few hours later and allegedly tried to gun down the barber, who escaped harm only because the weapon jammed. Adrian Blanche Swain, 29, allegedly tried to open fire on the barber with a pistol at the barber shop in the 3900 block of 30th Street shortly before 12:30 p.m. She allegedly pulled the trigger three times to no avail, according to San Diego police Sgt. Ray Battrick. ``The gun had bullets but malfunctioned,''

In the event that there are more “Vester Lee Flanagans” out there in the Untied States of The Overly Offended who're ready to snap because the world won’t recognize them as God’s gift to humanity, and yet, you’re not completely sold on the murder/suicide option: herewith are six surefire points to move you back into reality and officially remove you from being The Mayor of Mangina-town and into the rarefied air of a combobulated human. 1. Drop the “poor you” crap, especially, if you live in America. If you live in the USA you ... are ... not ... suffering....

Something that should give would-be education reformers pause but probably won’t: when ephemeral education fads finally come in for much-needed criticism, they have already done their damage. Case in point: the self-esteem courses popular 15-20 years ago. “Raising it in isolation was counter-productive,” Martin West, an associate professor of education at Harvard said at the Brookings Institution on March 31, 2015. West is also a nonresident senior fellow with the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings. He was chairing a panel on “Incorporating noncognitive skills into education policy.” “Education is very faddish and there’s a danger that the fads...

Convincing your child that they really are special amongst their peers may risk turning them into a narcissist, with feelings of superiority and self-satisfaction, according to a new study. Narcissistic individuals think they're better than everyone else, live for personal success and expect exceptional treatment, explained the study's authors in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. When narcissists experience failure, they're not pleasant to be around, and can lash out violently. Evaluating 565 Dutch children, ages 7 to 12, for narcissistic tendencies, the investigators questioned the children's parents on how, when and...

So, what causes someone to pick up a gun, walk on to a school campus, and start shooting people? Well, that’s not a question I sit around thinking about very often. But a recent online article in Aeon magazine has some insights that I think are worth sharing. The article, entitled “Running Amok,” was written by Joseph Pierre, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA. In it, he surveys the clinical literature on the perpetrators of mass killings at places like Columbine High School and the University of California at Santa Barbara. Pierre notes that in the aftermath of these killings,...

Adapted from "Unworthy: How to Stop Hating Yourself" by Anneli Rufus “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” – Bertrand Russell Is low self-esteem all that bad? Self-loathing is. But between self-loathing and narcissism is a vast spectrum comprising infinitely various degrees of self-regard. Neither extreme is good. If only we could just reach medium. In 1986, California state assembly member John Vasconcellos proposed the State Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem. This ignited a new movement: Based on the notion that low self-esteem...

Breaking news: overpraising kids with low self-esteem might backfire. “While kids with high self-esteem seem to thrive with inflated praise, those with low self-esteem actually shrink from new challenges when adults go overboard on praising them.” So overpraising kids might be a bad thing? That’s something that every parent on the planet once knew instinctively before the sociologists, psychologists and other “ologists” grabbed the reins of childrearing. Does that mean everybody shouldn’t get an award? Nor is it surprising that the negative results of “overpraising,” aka false praise, effects kids with low self-esteem differently than their high-esteem peers. The kids...

Some defenders of Miley Cyrus' VMA performance don't understand what all the outrage is about. Justin Timberlake tweeted, "She's young. Take it easy on her." Lena Dunham worried about "slut shaming." Russell Simmons wrote "Just saw @MileyCyrus. What did I miss. She was having fun. #twerkmileytwerk." And Adam Lambert tweeted " ... Listen if it wasn't ur cup of tea -- all good but why is everyone spazzing? Hey -- she's doin something right. We all talkin." Cyrus seemed to endorse Lambert's any-attention-is-good-attention rationale. She boasted on Twitter that "Smilers! My VMA performance had 306.000 tweets per minute. That's more...

The First Baptist Church in Beckley, West Virgina, organized a conference to help young girls build self-esteem in defiance of a beauty culture which fixates upon superficial features. The Register-Herald reports: Contemporary Christian musical artist Karen Spurlock will be leading worship at the event.“Having three girls of my own, I am very aware of how early little girls begin to evaluate themselves and others in superficial ways,” said Carrico. “It occurred to me that so many women suffer daily by comparing themselves to others, and it all starts between the ages of five and 10.”Part of the reason girls are...

I never understood Barack Obama -- or even some of my friends -- until I read The Amateur by Edward Klein. But first you also need to remember the plague of "self-esteem" based education. And finally it all makes sense. The self-esteem movement hurt our public schools and degraded the curriculum. The self-esteem time bomb is now coming full circle, as the victims of our schools, colleges, and universities have moved into leadership of our country. Barack Obama is the ultimate "A for effort [D for performance] President." Obama's ineptness is exceeded only by his giant ego. Obama received a...

I never understood Barack Obama -- or even some of my friends -- until I read The Amateur by Edward Klein (Regnery Publishing 2012 -- paperback June 13, 2013). But first you also need to remember the plague of "self-esteem" based education. And finally it all makes sense. The self-esteem movement hurt our public schools and degraded the curriculum. The self-esteem time bomb is now coming full circle, as the victims of our schools, colleges, and universities have moved into leadership of our country. Barack Obama is the ultimate "A for effort [D for performance] President." Obama's ineptness is exceeded...

BOSTON — It was a blow the immigrant boxer could not withstand: after capturing his second consecutive title as the Golden Gloves heavyweight champion of New England in 2010, Tamerlan Anzorovich Tsarnaev, 23, was barred from the national Tournament of Champions because he was not a United States citizen. The cocksure fighter, a flamboyant dresser partial to white fur and snakeskin, had been looking forward to redeeming the loss he suffered the previous year in the first round, when the judges awarded his opponent the decision, drawing boos from spectators who considered Mr. Tsarnaev dominant. From one year to the...

I got a shout out a few days ago from Nicole Ostil, nee Gomes, who responded to a piece I wrote not so long ago in which I criticized the 24-year-old wife and mother for going on the Internet and asking strange men to help her pay for breast implants. “Thank you for your personal insights,” she wrote, adding, she is “actually quite flattered at all the controversy” stirred up by new media writers like yours truly. For some reason, Nicole felt it necessary to stress to me that the web site on which she solicited her cosmetic surgery, MyFreeImplants.com,...