Posts Tagged ‘terrorism’
Sunday, November 8th, 2009 by Mel Konner
Thank goodness for a brave woman with character to spare
Five feet and four inches of pure skill and courage, Kimberly Denise Munley, at lunchtime Thursday, saved an unknown but large number of people from injury and death. She did it by running straight toward a terrorist armed with two guns blazing at her and she kept walking into that deadly barrage until both of them fell with serious wounds. Around them were the bodies of the twelve people the terrorist had murdered and at least thirty he had injured—one, it turned out, also fatally. (more…)
Tags: Fort Hood, gender, heroes, heroism, human nature, Kimberly Munley, terrorism, violence, women's roles
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Monday, March 9th, 2009 by Mel Konner
If you want to go forward send girls to school; to regress, try sending them home again.
For many years now, a growing number of authorities on aid to the developing world have come to the conclusion that there is no better way to spend an aid dollar than in underwriting schools for girls.
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Tags: affirmative action, developing world, economic development, education, family size, gender, gender gap, health, inequality, male dominance, Pakistan, patriarchy, poverty, religiosity, Taliban, terrorism
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Sunday, December 21st, 2008 by Mel Konner
Why we need a science of war and terror
Today I will try to address some of the comments about biology and violence that were provoked by my recent postings, and perhaps clarify how I think about these things. It is right to ask whether we gain anything from saying that humans are innately violent,
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Tags: ethnic conflict, fear, human nature, nature, sociobiology, terrorism, violence, war
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Sunday, November 30th, 2008 by Mel Konner
Is terrorism really “unnatural”?
I watched in sadness but, alas, not in shock, as India suffered its own 9/11. Casualties were far fewer but the impact was similar because the action was brilliantly as well as savagely executed.
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Tags: ethnic conflict, evolutionary psychology, human nature, India, Mumbai, Sex differences, terrorism, violence
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Saturday, June 14th, 2008 by Mel Konner
Obama and McCain have different ideas about war. Neither may be able to prevent it.
Is war a permanent part of the human condition?
I’ve been interested in this question since high school, when an inspiring teacher named Dora Venit spent two years confronting me with the grotesque facts of history. It was not very long after the Holocaust, and the height of the Cold War.
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Tags: ethnic conflict, human nature, Presidential election, terrorism, war
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Saturday, April 26th, 2008 by Mel Konner
When men get together, dangerous things can happen
A recent talk about terrorism sent me back to 1969, when a classic in sociobiology was published. It was called Men in Groups, and it had a straightforward thesis: “The behavior of men in groups in part reflects an underlying biologically transmitted ‘propensity’ with roots in human evolutionary history.”
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Tags: Politics, Sex differences, sociobiology, terrorism
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terrorism 
Thank goodness for a brave woman with character to spare
