Texas Male Anti-masturbation Bill Moving Closer to Law

Texas Representative Jessica Farrar (D-Houston) has written a bill that mimics the intrusive laws generally written by males that hurt women's freedom of choice and control of their bodies. Will this bill become law in Texas? It is clear that if men could get pregnant, there wouldn't be the constant attack to take their freedom of…

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Why Our Brains See the World as 'Us' versus 'Them'

What are your in-groups and out-groups? ksenia_bravo/Shutterstock.com By Leslie Henderson , Dartmouth College Anti-immigrant policies, race-related demonstrations, Title IX disputes, affirmative action court cases, same-sex marriage litigation. These issues are continually in the headlines. But even thoughtful articles on these subjects seem always to devolve to pitting warring factions against each other: black versus white, women versus men, gay versus straight. At the most fundamental level of biology, people recognize the innate advantage of defining differences in species. But even within species, is there something in our neural circuits that leads us to find comfort in those like us and unease with those who may differ? Brain battle between distrust and reward As in all animals, human brains balance two primordial systems. One includes a brain region called the amygdala that can generate fear and distrust of things that ...

The World on a Billionaire's Budget

Originally posted at theconversation.com The world’s wealthiest are prospering. As of February 2017, there were about 2,000 billionaires in the world. This micro-elite controls over US$7.6 trillion, an increase of 18 percent from 2016. A billionaire’s spending power is difficult to grasp, both because most people do not correctly intuit large numbers, and because a billion dollars far outstrips most people’s experience. What does a household budget look like to a billionaire? To find out, let’s scale down a billionaire’s income to $50,000, the median American income, adjusting budget items proportionally. A year in the life of Joe Billionaire To start, we need to estimate a billionaire’s annual income. In the 30 years from 1987 to 2016, Bill and Melinda Gates amassed about $120 billion. This figure represents $80 billion in net worth and $40 billion controlled by their charitable foundation. The Gates’ average annual income for these years is $120 billion divided by 30, or $4 billion. ...

Jared Kushner’s Grandmother Bemoaned the “Closed Doors" That Faced Refugees to America

This article was co-published by ProPublica and The Washington Post Way before Jared Kushner became internationally famous by moving into the White House to work for his father-in-law Donald Trump, those of us who live in New Jersey knew the family was an amazing story of immigrant success. Jared Kushner’s paternal grandparents, Holocaust survivors Joseph and Rae Kushner, came to the United States in 1949 as impoverished Eastern European refugees and begat a family whose office buildings, apartment complexes and philanthropic efforts are important parts of the business and social landscapes in New Jersey and elsewhere. Yes, there are scandals and feuds besetting parts of the family, and Jared’s father Charles racked up some prison time. But the family’s rise from refugees to titans is an example of what can happen when people are admitted into this country, work hard and prosper. I got curious about the Kushner history after Jared invoked his immigrant forbears in his recen...

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