Left Out

How do children respond to stereotypes about race, religion and gender? A child-development expert looks at contradictions in kids’ behavior.
Child-development experts have spent years studying geekdom: what it is that makes one child more likely to be rejected by another. But University of Maryland professor Melanie Killen took a different approach. Instead of focusing on [...]

A presidential cybertour

Presidential candidates have the opportunity to set the national agenda by bringing forward new proposals and innovative policies. Some do this: Bill Clinton in 1992, George W. Bush in 2000. Others don’t. Like most or all of the 2008 candidates. Click through their websites, and what you find is pretty thin gruel. Especially so from [...]

Funny phone calls are no laughing matter

That Rory Bremner, he’s a card. Imagine ringing up Margaret Beckett pretending to be Gordon Brown. The incident reminded me of Bart Simpson phoning up Mo’s Tavern in a grown-up voice and asking for “Homer Sexual”. The difference being I laughed when Bart did it. Snickering schoolboy humour works so much better when delivered by [...]

The Road to Reformation

Al Qaeda had hoped to rally the entire Muslim world against the West, but now it is in the middle of a dirty sectarian war within Islam.
For those in the West asking when Islam will have its Reformation, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that the process appears to have [...]

What the West Can Learn From Islam

In late September, I finally received a response to the question I had been asking the Bush administration for more than two years: Why was my work visa revoked in late July 2004, just days before I was to take up a position as a professor of Islamic studies and the Henry Luce chair of [...]

Murderous jealousy — it’s in our genes

Should we take a pill to quell jealousy, the urge that compelled an astronaut to plot murder?
WE BECAME ODDLY ENERGIZED when Lisa Marie Nowak, an astronaut with a sterling record, drove nearly 1,000 miles to attack Colleen Shipman, a woman Nowak believed was a rival for the man she loved. Nowak was charged with attempted [...]

Eros Unbound

Valentine’s Day seems an appropriate occasion to honor the late Gershon Legman, who is said to have coined the slogan “Make love, not war.” Odd to think that saying had a particular author, rather than being spontaneously generated by the countercultural Zeitgeist in the 1960s. But I’ve seen the line attributed to Legman a few [...]

Beyond punishment

A considerable body of research shows that corporal punishment can never make a child learn or behave better. Yet, the practice is widely prevalent.A YOUNG achiever charting out a meaningful career in human rights initiatives after a prestigious academic stint in the U.K., remembers, “Every other day in school I was caned by teachers who [...]

Legal wrangle puts India’s generic drugs at risk

Tens of thousands of people being treated for AIDS will suffer if Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis succeeds in changing India’s patent law, the humanitarian agency Medecins Sans Frontieres warned on Monday.
Novartis is challenging a specific provision of India’s patent law that, if overturned, would see patents being granted far more widely, heavily restricting the availability [...]

The Truth About Beauty

Cosmetics makers have always sold “hope in a jar”—creams and potions that promise youth, beauty, sex appeal, and even love for the women who use them. Over the last few years, the marketers at Dove have added some new-and-improved enticements. They’re now promising self-esteem and cultural transformation. Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty,” declares a press [...]