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Most people say “I’m sorry” many times a day for a host of trivial affronts – accidentally bumping into someone or failing to hold open a door. These apologies are easy and usually readily accepted, often with a response like, “No problem.”

But when “I’m sorry” are the words needed to right truly hurtful words, acts or inaction, they can be the hardest ones to utter.

apology can be powerful medicine with surprising value for the giver as well as the recipient.

Psychological research comparing women and men on measures of anger find that they are more alike than different. Men and women are equally likely to experience anger and the intensity of their anger is remarkably similar. Regardless of gender, we get angry when frustrated, criticized, betrayed, rejected, or disrespected. When someone behaves immorally or unethically it can also lead to our anger and outrage.

But anger is “gendered.” It’s perceived through gendered (and racial) lenses. While most emotion is identified as feminine, anger is considered more of a masculine emotion. Anger and its expression are contrary to traditional beliefs about women’s essential “nature” as compassionate, passive, and other-centered. Meanwhile, anger and its expression as aggression and violence, is viewed as naturally male, and masculine. “Boys will be boys,” so many people say.

Their apologies likely reflect an awareness that anger and assertiveness are generally more acceptable for men than they are for women, and that they must be careful not to appear “too emotional” as this is sometimes used to justify the exclusion of women from political leadership roles.

What is your definition of white privilege? A. I think people get tripped up by the word “privilege.” I’m talking about systematic institutionalized differences. I had a lot of people writing me emails saying, I’m not privileged. For example, this weekend I was with Martin O’Malley in front of progressive liberal activists. Responding to the “Black Lives Matter” protest at the conference, he said: “Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter.” And the audience, which was diverse, gasped. They actually booed him. Because institutionally, if you look at incarceration rates, if you look at the criminal justice system, black people are at a disadvantage. So the moment he said that, he took it back and apologized. And some people took offense to that. Why did Martin O’Malley have to apologize for saying white lives matter? And this woman on Twitter was genuinely hurt; her tweet to me was, “My white life matters.” And I tweeted back at her and I was like, “Of course it does.” Of course it does, but your life mattering has been a given.

to murder police on Monday. The chant went "we won't stop, we can't stop, 'til killer cops, are in cell blocks," according to C-SPAN footage. But WBFF cut the audio short and told viewers that the words were in fact "we won't stop, we can't stop, so kill a cop."

Jones called out the station several times for misrepresenting her words. "The interesting part that really gets to me is, where you guys edited it and stopped — like, how could that be a mistake?" she said. "Once you play that whole thing, you would know that's not something that's being said," she added. The interviewer apologized several times, and though Jones told the station she was grateful to come on, she also said she now fears for her reputation and her safety. Near the end of the interview she began to cry. "At the end of the day, people's lives are on the line," she said. "Now, even though we're doing this, I still don't feel safe because I still feel like the message is out there." "What if a crazed-out cop or a crazed-out supporter thinks I'm trying to get cops killed?" she later said, wiping tears from her face.

Erik Wemple argues in a very tough critique of Frum's claims for the Washington Post that imbalanced, one-sided skepticism was the main problem with Frum's apology. He was willing to believe the worst about the motives and standards of the nation's leading news organization, while accepting at face value some Pallywood-style fantasies about all-fronts fakery.

For all their blind spots and flaws, reporters on the scene are trying to see, so they can tell, and the photographic and video reporters take greater risks than all the rest, since they must be closer to the action. For people on the other side of the world to casually assert that they're just making things up—this could and would drive them crazy. I'm sure that fakery has occurred. But the claim that it has is as serious as they come in journalism. It goes at our ultimate source of self-respect. As when saying that a doctor is deliberately mis-diagnosing patients, that a pilot is drunk in the cockpit, that a lifeguard is purposely letting people drown, you might be right, but you had better be very, very sure before making the claim.

If you go to The Guardian’s website these days you can find a section that is just labeled “Protest.” So now, with your morning coffee, you can get your news, weather, sports — and protests.

In my view, this age of protest is driven, in part, by the fact that the three largest forces on the planet — globalization, Moore’s law and Mother Nature — are all in acceleration, creating an engine of disruption that is stressing strong countries and middle classes and blowing up weak ones, while superempowering individuals and transforming the nature of work, leadership and government all at once.

When you get that much agitation in a world where everyone with a smartphone is now a reporter, news photographer and documentary filmmaker, it’s a wonder that every newspaper doesn’t have a “Protest” section.

Why Did the Dean of the Most Diverse Law School in the Country Cancel Herself?

Was it the unfortunate use of a single word? Or something far more complicated?

Mary Lu Bilek, who has spent 32 years at the law school at the City University of New York, the past five of them as dean, sent an email to students and faculty with the subject line: “Apology.”

Ralph Lauren has ended its sponsorship of world No. 3 golfer Justin Thomas after he used an anti-gay slur during the third round of the Sentry Tournament of Champions last Saturday.

"There's just no excuse. I'm an adult. I'm a grown man. There's absolutely no reason for me to say anything like that.

I deeply apologize to anyone and everybody who I offended and I'll be better because of it."

he story of Amy Cooper, the white woman who called the police on an African American man who was bird watching in Central Park and who asked her to leash her dog in accordance with park rules, is about racism, yes. But it's also about how racism is more than just whites' hostility toward people of color. Racism is more than a feeling; it's a system in which white people can and do exploit their own social positions, assumptions about their innocence, and the presumption that they're telling the truth.

That a black man has to rely on videotaped wrongdoing to be believed -- to protect himself from an agitated stranger advancing up on him, and to ultimately see something resembling justice

She refused to leash the dog, and, according to Christian Cooper's account on Facebook (where he posted a video of part of their encounter), he told her "Look, if you're going to do what you want, I'm going to do what I want, but you're not going to like it."

Dr. Tyson implied that President Bush was prejudiced against Islam in order to make a broader point about scientific awareness: Two-thirds of the named stars actually have Arabic names, given to them at a time when Muslims led the world in astronomy — and Mr. Bush might not have said what he did if he had known this fact.This is a powerful example of how our biases can blind us. But not in the way Dr. Tyson thought. Mr. Bush wasn’t blinded by religious bigotry. Instead, Dr. Tyson was fooled by his faith in the accuracy of his own memory.

When he was first asked for the source of Mr. Bush’s quotation, Dr. Tyson insisted, “I have explicit memory of those words being spoken by the president. I reacted on the spot, making note for possible later reference in my public discourse. Odd that nobody seems to be able to find the quote anywhere.” He then added, “One of our mantras in science is that the absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.”

We recall events easily and often, at least if they are important to us, but only rarely do we find our memories contradicted by evidence, much less take the initiative to check if they are right. We then rely on confidence as a signal of accuracy — in ourselves and in others.

Candidates accordingly believed that being caught in an outright lie could damage their careers. (As Daniel Patrick Moynihan reportedly said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”) They tended only to bend the truth, not break it.

At least four factors since the 1970s have lowered the cost for politicians who lie and, more important, repeat their fabrications through their attack ads. First is the overall decline in respect for institutions and professionals of all kinds, from scientists and lawyers to journalists and civil servants.

Second are changes in media regulation and ownership

Brown is a bestselling author and research professor who studies "vulnerability, courage, worthiness, and shame,

I recognized the culture she described in which institutionalized, nagging shame can cause people to put on so much emotional armor that they can't connect with others or access their authentic selves. I might have called those repressive forces "fear," or "self-doubt," or "insecurity," but, yeah, "shame" kind of covers all the bases.

the antidote to crippling shame is vulnerability. We tend to think of vulnerability as weakness; but in fact, she argues, it is the highest form of courage. To admit fear and pain, to reach out to others for help, to quiet the "gremlins" that tell us to keep our mouths shut and soldier on: this is how we become engaged, make human connections, and live "wholeheartedly."

We are told that this is the era of the empowered consumer:

Better information means more competition, which means lower prices — all features, of course, of an open marketplace ostensibly presided over by a regulatory authority that, while distant, exists to protect our safety.

This vision is a lie. Air travel is the most concentrated version of an essentially authoritarian experience that can be found throughout today’s economy. We live, work, shop, and travel under a system of grossly asymmetric power relationships, in which consumers sign away most of their rights just by purchasing a ticket and companies deputize themselves to enforce contracts with hired goons.

bloggers in Egypt and Tunisia are often approached online by people who are state security in disguise.

The most sought-after bounty for state officials: dissidents’ address books, to figure out who they are in cahoots with, where they live and information about their family. In some cases, this information leads to roundups and arrests.

A person’s contacts are so sensitive that Alec Ross, a senior adviser on innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, said the State Department was supporting the development of an application that would act as a “panic button” on a smartphone, enabling people to erase all contacts with one click if they are arrested during a protest.

Gov. Chris Christie insisted during his latest trip to New Hampshire that the fallout from the George Washington Bridge scandal wouldn't have been as nearly as intense if he were a Democrat.

argued to early-primary voters Hillary Clinton escaped scrutiny for clearing the private server housing emails from her tenure as secretary of state because she's a Democrat and he declared "bias is on full display" when that's compared to his own controversy.

"Could you imagine if my response the day after