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“Where have you been?” and Annabelle texts back “LOL at the library studying for two hours.” LOL signals basic empathy between texters, easing tension and creating a sense of equality. Instead of having a literal meaning, it does something — conveying an attitude — just like the -ed ending conveys past tense rather than “meaning” anything. LOL, of all things, is grammar.

All indications are that America’s youth are doing it quite well. Texting, far from being a scourge, is a work in progress.

‘Well, I’m not an engineer, but I think the bridge will stand up.’  ”

“Not just as a public figure, but as a human being, your fidelity should be to reality and to the truth,”

Among those agreeing that climate change is both real and a man-made threat are the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, NASA, the National Academy of Sciences, the Defense Department, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Meteorological Society

giving parents a “measure of choice” on vaccination is “the balance that government has to decide.”

murkiness of those comments caused alarm among public-health officials, who say the impact of the anti-vaccination movement is being seen in a measles outbreak in a number of states and Washington, D.C.

Climate change also sparks tension.

He said he was galled by U.S. Sen. Rand Paul’s recent assertion that the government should not require parents to vaccinate their children because it’s an issue of “freedom.”

“There is an unwritten litmus test for GOP officeholders” to express some form of skepticism about the phenomenon, he said.

However, Cruz, Rubio, Portman and Paul all voted against another amendment that said human activity contributes “significantly” to the threat. Cruz has asserted to the National Journal that climate change is “a theory that can’t be proven or disproven.”

In a separate vote, 98 senators — including Cruz, Rubio, Portman and Paul — acknowledged that climate change is “real and not a hoax.”

The group that denied climate change is occurring has pivoted, acknowledging that it exists. Still, the group questions whether it is a man-made phenomenon.

As for the caveat I’m not a scientist, “What they’re saying they implicitly think is that scientists don’t even know about climate change,”

Conservatives felt more negative emotions when they read scientific studies that challenged their views on climate change and evolution than liberals did in reading about nuclear power and fracking, but researchers believe that’s because climate change and evolution are more national in scope than the issues picked for liberals.

“The point is, to a very high level, scientists do know.”

Even those who agree that climate change is real and is man-made might not support government action

He said the disconnect between the public and scientists isn’t necessarily a bad thing

Such a slowdown “gives the science time to mature on some of these issues.”

most would-be candidates want to appeal to as many people as possible.

“And if you can sort of try to obscure your actual position but not offend anyone, that’s what I think they try to do,”

But it’s possible that their comments reflect a growing disconnect between the views of the public and the scientific community.

86 percent of scientists who are members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science said childhood vaccines such as the one for measles-mumps-rubella should be required, 68 percent of U.S. adults agreed.

larger gap on the subject of climate change: 87 percent of the scientists said climate change is caused mostly by human activity, while 50 percent of U.S. adults did.

The divide is not necessarily a conservative one

For example, while 88 percent of scientists said it is generally safe to eat genetically modified foods, only 37 percent of U.S. adults agreed.

And the vaccine issue is one that has united some liberals, the religious right and libertarians.

The study found that conservatives tend to distrust science on issues such as climate change and evolution. For liberals, it is fracking and nuclear power.

didn’t stop 39 Republicans — including GOP presidential contenders Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Marco Rubio, R-Fla. — from opposing an amendment last month that blamed changing global temperatures on human activity.

liberals showed some distrust about science when they read about climate change and evolution

“Liberals can be just as biased as conservatives,” he said.

Rosenberg said the Internet can provide affirmation of pre-existing beliefs rather than encouraging people to find objective sources of information, such as peer-reviewed journals.

Often, attacking science is the easiest way to justify inaction, Rosenberg said.

there was a kind of chaos. Reports from inside the synod have a medieval feel — churchmen berating each other, accusations of manipulation flying, rebellions bubbling up. Outside Catholicism’s doors, the fault lines were laid bare: geographical (Germans versus Africans; Poles versus Italians), generational (a 1970s generation that seeks cultural accommodation and a younger, John Paul II-era that seeks to be countercultural) and theological above all.

instead of a Vatican II-style consensus, the synod divided, with large numbers voting against even watered-down language around divorce and homosexuality. Some of those votes may have been cast by disappointed progressives. But many others were votes cast, in effect, against the pope.

the synod has to be interpreted as a rebuke of the implied papal position. The pope wishes to take these steps, the synod managers suggested. Given what the church has always taught, many of the synod’s participants replied, he and we cannot.

a reversal would put the church on the brink of a precipice. Of course it would be welcomed by some progressive Catholics and hailed by the secular press. But it would leave many of the church’s bishops and theologians in an untenable position, and it would sow confusion among the church’s orthodox adherents — encouraging doubt and defections, apocalypticism and paranoia (remember there is another pope still living!) and eventually even a real schism.

At the same time, the rise in protective committees and procedures (like trigger warnings) ensure that students will not be confronted with course materials that might upset them (even classics like Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”).

universities like Yale have given in to the implicit notion that they should provide the equivalent of the home environment.

But college is a different kind of community than a family, and its primary job is education of the student and adaptation to independent community living.

To prepare for increased autonomy and responsibility, college needs to be a time of exploration and experimentation. This process entails “trying on” new ways of thinking about oneself both intellectually and personally, which is possible only if a certain degree of freedom is allowed.

While we should provide “safe spaces” within colleges for marginalized groups, we must also make it safe for all community members to express opinions and challenge majority views. Intellectual growth and flexibility are fostered by rigorous debate and questioning.

It is not surprising that young people are prone to lash out, particularly when there are sociologic reasons to do so. Our generation rallied around clear issues: the war in Vietnam and governmentally sanctioned discrimination based on race and gender. ISIS, Newtown, a changing economy with fewer good jobs and stable career paths create anxiety without generating a unifying moral vision

The encroachment of behavioral guidelines into the social and even intellectual spheres comes at a cost. Every college discussion about community values, social climate and behavior should also include recognition of the developmental importance of student autonomy and self-regulation, of the necessary tension between safety and self-discovery.

Ms. Talgam concluded that she was looking at a three-dimensional depiction of the Temple of Herod, including its most sacred inner sanctum, known as the Holy of Holies.

But there would have been no need for a symbol of redemption in first-century Magdala, Mr. Mevorah said. “The Temple exists,” he said. “Everything is functioning. So why would there be a symbol of the Temple here? It raises questions about the role of the synagogue at that time.”

In contrast to the current tensions over the contested site in Jerusalem that is revered by Jews as the Temple Mount, where the ancient temples once stood, and by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, the Magdala project has emphasized religious harmony.

There will be disputes” of her interpretation of the stone, Ms. Talgam said. “But that is the way it should be.”

In 2014, according to the F.B.I., anti-Muslim hate crimes represented 16.3 percent of the total of 1,092 reported offenses. Anti-Semitism still led the way as a motive for hate crimes, at 58.2 percent.

Hate crimes may seem chaotic and unpredictable, a consequence of random neurons that happen to fire in the brains of a few angry young men. But we can explain some of the rise and fall of anti-Muslim hate crimes just based on what people are Googling about Muslims.

If our model is right, Islamophobia and thus anti-Muslim hate crimes are currently higher than at any time since the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

How can these Google searches track Islamophobia so well? Who searches for “I hate Muslims” anyway?We often think of Google as a source from which we seek information directly, on topics like the weather, who won last night’s game or how to make apple pie. But sometimes we type our uncensored thoughts into Google, without much hope that Google will be able to help us. The search window can serve as a kind of confessional.

It is not just that hatred against Muslims is extremely high today. It’s that it’s exceptional compared with prejudice against every other group in the United States.

“If someone is willing to say ‘I hate them’ or ‘they disgust me,’ we know that those emotions are as good a predictor of behavior as actual intent,” said Susan Fiske, a social psychologist at Princeton

Google searches seem to suffer from selection bias: Instead of asking a random sample of Americans how they feel, you just get information from those who are motivated to search. But this restriction may actually help search data predict hate crimes.

“Google searches answer a different question: What do people excited enough by an issue to comment on it think and believe about it? The answer to this question, just because it is unrepresentative of the public as a whole, may be a better bet to predict hate crimes.”

While the vast majority of Muslim Americans won’t be victims of hate crimes, few escape the “constant sense of fear and paranoia” that they or their loved ones might be next, said Rana Ibrahem

What about the other side of the coin — compassion and understanding? Do they stand a chance against hate?Searches for information about Islam and Muslims did rise after the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino. Yet they rose far less than searches for hate did. “Who is Muhammad?” “what do Muslims believe?” and “what does the Quran say?” for instance, were no match for intolerance.

Google searches expressing moods, rather than looking for information, represent a tiny sample of everyone who is actually thinking those thoughts.

The search data also tells us that changes in Americans’ policy concerns have been dramatic. They happened, quite literally, within minutes of the terror attacks.Before the Paris attacks, 60 percent of Americans’ searches that took an obvious view of Syrian refugees saw them positively, asking how they could “help,” “volunteer” or “aid.” The other 40 percent were negative and mostly expressed skepticism about security. After Paris, however, the share of people opposed to refugees rose to 80 percent.

One idea might be to increase cultural integration. This is based on the “contact hypothesis”: If more Americans have Muslim neighbors, they will learn not to harbor irrational hate. We did not find support for this in the data — in fact, we found evidence for the opposite.

That’s evidence for the dominance of the “racial threat” hypothesis, which predicts that proximity breeds tension, not trust.

Another solution might be for leaders to talk about the importance of tolerance and the irrationality of hatred, as President Obama did in his Oval Office speech last Sunday night. He asked Americans to reject discrimination and religious tests for immigration. The reactions to his speech offer an excellent opportunity to see what works and what doesn’t work.

There was one line, however, that did trigger the type of response Mr. Obama might have wanted. He said, “Muslim Americans are our friends and our neighbors, our co-workers, our sports heroes and yes, they are our men and women in uniform, who are willing to die in defense of our country.”After this line, for the first time in more than a year, the top Googled noun after “Muslim” was not “terrorists,” “extremists” or “refugees.” It was “athletes,” followed by “soldiers.” And, in fact, “athletes” kept the top spot for a full day afterward.

On the whole, though, the response to the president’s speech shows that appealing to the better angels of an angry mob will most likely just backfire.

. Many of his themes coincide with those of Mr. Obama, but they also diverge in significant ways that could flavor the visit.

“The pope is a singular figure and he has really stirred the souls of people all around the world,” said Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary.

Pope Francis arrived here from Cuba, where he wrapped up a four-day visit on Tuesday morning in the country’s heartland of religion and revolution,

“Without family, without the warmth of home, life grows empty, there is a weakening of the networks which sustain us in adversity, nurture us in daily living and motivate us to build a better future,”

The president’s personal welcome was a sign of respect. Presidents rarely greet foreign visitors at Andrews, instead waiting for them to make their way to the White House.

The White House sought to highlight the alignment between the president and the pope, while de-emphasizing areas of discord.

abortion opponents were hoping that Pope Francis would boost their bid to impose new limits on the procedure and cut off federal financing of Planned Parenthood.

Yet Pope Francis may also make points that challenge both parties, particularly if he repeats his remarks against what he sees as the excesses of globalization and capitalism.

Mr. Serra is seen as a hero who spread the gospel to the New World. But Native American groups condemn him for harsh treatment of the indigenous population.

There were some expectations that he would raise the issues of human rights and political liberty with his hosts, but Pope Francis opted instead to be cautious.

The pope did not speak out against the American trade embargo against Cuba, either

Some analysts said Pope Francis’s restrained remarks worked to the advantage of Cuba’s leaders and the Obama administration. They saw the visit as a success because it allowed all parties to keep moving toward normalized relations.

secured these lines to guitar-tuner knobs that helped apply tension to the tendons

hold them open for slaps, weakly clench them into "unbuttressed" fists or strongly curl them into "buttressed" fists.

humans can safely strike with 55 percent more force with a buttressed fist than with an unbuttressed fist, and with twice as much force with a buttressed fist than with an open-hand slap.

fists can protect hand bones from injuries and fractures

reducing the level of strain during striking

evolution favored lengthening the big toe and shortening other toes so that humans could run more easily

improved understanding of who we are, of human nature, should help us prevent violence of all kinds in the future."

Indeed, his writing often exhibits a tension between the contemporary, culturally engaged, tolerant intellectual and the moral rectitudinarian. Even his moralizing has two sides: that of the peace-loving Catholic, nourished by the mysterium tremendum of the Mass, and that of the crusader, certain that abortion is murder and masturbation is a vice.

in Douthat’s cultural criticism, one senses a preference for lost communities—the Old West, prewar England, isolated villages—but never a heavy-handed, New Criterion-style disgust for mass culture.

“I would say he differs from mainstream American conservatism in not having a ‘la-di-da’ attitude toward the continued existence of serious social problems in the United States,” liberal blogger Matthew Yglesias said in an email.

In the end, he admits the intellectual life of the GOP is pretty bleak. “We haven’t seen very many Republican politicians who are interested in moving beyond slogans.”

It is this faith in people that trumps his sense of sin just when we need it most—to call to account a dissembler like Palin or a warmonger like Cheney. In fact, Douthat can be almost Unitarian in his agnosticism. Sometimes that’s a virtue: He quit blogging for a time after concluding he was unqualified to comment on the Iraq War.

If we look back over the past 100 years, perhaps the lowest tolerance for academic freedom has coincided with war and global tensions. The enemies of dissent frequently invoked menaces from abroad as they clamped down on speech.

With the dawning of the 21st century, arguments against free speech as such became commonplace, and passions rose to the point of outright violence.

Before this year, I doubt that we would have seen an opinion editor of Berkeley’s Daily Californian maintain, in defense of violent “black bloc” protests against right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, that “asking people to maintain peaceful dialogue with those who legitimately do not think their lives matter is a violent act.”

The intense hatred of racial “microaggressions” is flourishing on campuses just as state and national Republican officials are zealously practicing macroaggressions: infringing on voting rights, affirmative action and progressive advances in criminal justice.

While shortsighted activists focus on slights (real, imagined and arguable) at hand, the political powers that be are indisputably rolling back equal rights directly and profoundly where most people live — off campus.

When defenders of racial equality take the bait and obsess about a few loathsome provocations, they plunge into their adversaries’ trap, diverted from the political arena where democracy and equality badly need them.

“But it turns out that what their face is doing is actually profoundly influencing what you are perceiving.”

The brain asks itself: “Is it likely that these two things go together or not?”

“In science we’ve assumed that people do that, always put together everything,” Dr. Beauchamp said. “It turns out that might not be right.”

brain most likely processes information about lip movements and sound in a part of the brain called the superior temporal sulcus.

clinicians understand and improve your hearing as you age, Dr. Magnotti said.

Freedom of expression became a flash point in this shift.

Then as now, both liberals and conservatives were wary of the privileging of personal experience, with its powerful emotional impact, over reason and argument, which some fear will bring an end to civilization, or at least to freedom of speech.

“The Postmodern Condition” of how public discourse discards the categories of true/false and just/unjust in favor of valuing the mere fact that something is being communicated, examined the tension between experience and argument in a different way.

Lyotard focused on the asymmetry of different positions when personal experience is challenged by abstract arguments.

The rights of transgender people for legal equality and protection against discrimination are a current example in a long history of such redefinitions.

The idea of freedom of speech does not mean a blanket permission to say anything anybody thinks. It means balancing the inherent value of a given view with the obligation to ensure that other members of a given community can participate in discourse as fully recognized members of that community.

which aim to educate students in how to belong to various communities — should not mean that someone’s humanity, or their right to participate in political speech as political agents, can be freely attacked, demeaned or questioned.

Feeling a little tense before a big game is appropriate and may even improve your performance. Having a panic attack on the sidelines means your anxiety has gone too far.

It’s more often a friend than a foe, one that will help you notice when things are on the wrong track.

psychologists agree that anxiety becomes a problem if its alarm makes no sense — either going off for no reason or blaring when a chime would do.

That odd feeling in the pit of your stomach will help you to consider the situation carefully and be cautious about your next step.

At the physical level, the amygdala, a primitive structure in the brain, detects a threat and sends the heart and lungs into overdrive getting your body ready to fight or flee that threat.

Though it can sound like a daffy approach to managing tension, breathing deeply and slowly activates a powerful part of the nervous system responsible for resetting the body to its pre-anxiety state.

Am I overestimating the severity of the problem I’m facing? Am I underestimating my power to manage it?

It’s human nature to want to repeat any behavior that leads to feelings of pleasure or comfort, but every boost of avoidance-related relief increases the likelihood that you’ll want to continue to avoid what you fear.

For example, the realities of in-person school are sure to be more manageable than the harrowing scenarios your imagination can create.

Knowing what’s true about anxiety — and not — will make it easier to navigate the uncertain times ahead.

Hennepin County, where the trial is being held, is only 17% Black or multiracial, while it is 74% white.

The jury's racial makeup will assuage some of the concerns that activists and others had expressed as jury selection got underway two weeks ago.

An insufficiently diverse jury, they believed, would undercut people's faith in the legitimacy of a trial seen as a critical moment in the racial justice movement that Floyd's killing helped reenergize last spring.

Two of the Black men on the jury are not African Americans but, rather, Black immigrants. During questioning, they expressed the kind of moderate views on policing and race relations

None of the Black jurors ultimately chosen for the panel spoke extensively about personal experiences with racism or about having had overtly negative interactions with police. Several said they had a healthy respect for law enforcement.

The fate of Juror 76 highlighted a tension that often exists in jury selection, especially in cases in which issues of race loom large. The experiences that come with being Black in America are often enough to get jurors struck from a case

That did not seem to be the case during jury selection for the Chauvin trial. Several jurors who expressed at least some support for the movement were seated on the jury — a sign of progress, Chakravarti said.

On one hand, that the defense would strike people with negative views of police is understandable, given Nelson's responsibility to seat a jury favorable to his client.

She said his fate was a reminder that the jury selection process should be reformed to ensure more African Americans have a fair shot to serve on juries."We should start," she wrote, "by recognizing that their lived experiences with racism are not justification to excuse them."

Tensions did not subside with the thaw: scarcity and high food prices contributed to bread riots across the country in the following spring. “Times are now alarming”, reported the Clipston Paris Register on May 1 1795.

. The Victoria Relief Fund was established and soup kitchens were set up in various parishes, foreshadowing social reforms that would confront poverty in subsequent decades.

But the winter of 1939-1940 was one of the coldest on record, and it arrived as the country anxiously contemplated another war in Europe.

As Britain’s winters become progressively milder, people may never see the like of 1940 again. But these descriptive accounts and first-hand testimonials unveil the power of climate change over human lifetimes – and hint at the role weather will continue to play in Britain’s future.

FOMO—fear of missing out—also plays a role

A 2018 British study tied social media use to decreased, disrupted, and delayed sleep, which is associated with depression, memory loss, and poor academic performance.

Social media use can affect users’ physical health even more directly. Researchers know the connection between the mind and the gut can turn anxiety and depression into nausea, headaches, muscle tension, and tremors.

The earlier teens start using social media, the greater impact the platforms have on mental health. This is especially true for females. While teen males tend to express aggression physically, females do so relationally by excluding others and sharing hurtful comments. Social media increases the opportunity for such harmful interactions.

In the past, teens read magazines that contained altered photos of models. Now, these images are one thumb-scroll away at any given time. Apps that provide the user with airbrushing, teeth whitening, and more filters are easy to find and easier to use. It’s not only celebrities who look perfect—it’s everyone.

In recent years, plastic surgeons have seen an uptick in requests from patients who want to look like their filtered Snapchat and Instagram photos.

A person experiences impostor syndrome when feeling chronic self-doubt and a sense of being exposed as ‘a fraud’ in terms of success and intellect. “Whether it’s another pretty vacation or someone’s bouquet of flowers, my mind went from ‘Why not me?’ to ‘I don’t deserve those things, and I don’t know why,’ and it made me feel awful.”

Sperling encourages people to conduct their own behavior experiments by rating their emotions on a scale of 0-10, with 10 being the most intensely one could experience an emotion, before and after using social media sites at the same time each day for a week.

A surge in border crossings by migrant children appeared to catch a White House focused on the pandemic off guard and offered Republicans an opening as they seek to slow his momentum -- and build their 2022 attack lines against Biden's narrow Democratic congressional majority.

And with its customary sense of timing, North Korea is testing the new commander-in-chief with missile launches that are ratcheting up tensions in a showdown that no president in the last 70 years has managed to solve.

The President has maintained approval ratings above 50% in his early months in office because he arrived with a mandate to tackle the pandemic head on and executed his agenda with a steady approach that was the antithesis of the erratic

Unlike the coronavirus crisis that has killed more than half-a-million Americans, the issues that are now at the top of the nightly newscasts have defied bipartisan consensus for decades -- and will provide a severe test of the President's calls for national unity and cooperation between Democrats and Republicans.

Two years ago, Democrats excoriated Trump administration officials for its handling of the crisis at the border. Now the problem is squarely within Biden's domain and government resources are once again strained to the brink as more than 600 unaccompanied children cross the Mexico border each day.

"We're not seeing any action. Our experience has taught us that now is the time to act. We need Congress to get on board. We need a recognition of the fact that there's a crisis on the Southwest border," Roy Villareal, who served as chief patrol agent in the Tucson sector from 2018 to 2020, told CNN's Priscilla Alvarez.

"This is just the first step in a process of providing greater access to the media," Psaki said during a news briefing.

"It's a huge problem. I'm not going to pretend that it's not. It's a huge problem," Harris said in remarks that appeared to be somewhat of a do-over of the administration's initial downplaying of the situation.

"I asked her, the VP today, because she's the most qualified person to do it, to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle, and the countries that can help, need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border," Biden said on Wednesday.

Then there is the problem that one action can arise out of many different brain states and the same event can trigger many different brain reactions.

But the amygdala lights up during fear, happiness, novelty, anger or sexual arousal (at least in women). The insula plays a role in processing trust, insight, empathy, aversion and disbelief. So what are you really looking at?

The brain is not the mind. It is probably impossible to look at a map of brain activity and predict or even understand the emotions, reactions, hopes and desires of the mind.

A glass of water may be more meaningful to you when you are dying of thirst than when you are not. Your lover means more than your friend. It’s as hard to study neurons and understand the flavors of meaning as it is to study Shakespeare’s spelling and understand the passions aroused by Macbeth.

Right now we are compelled to rely on different disciplines to try to understand behavior on multiple levels, with inherent tensions between them. Some people want to reduce that ambiguity by making one discipline all-explaining. They want to eliminate the confusing ambiguity of human freedom by reducing everything to material determinism.

An important task these days is to harvest the exciting gains made by science and data while understanding the limits of science and data.

The brain is not the mind.

It’s a slippery number, however. Measurements using different techniques have produced different results, and the numbers show no sign of converging even as researchers refine their observations

the theorists are intrigued. They hope the Hubble Constant confusion is the harbinger of a potential major discovery — some "new physics."

“Any time there’s a discrepancy, some kind of anomaly, we all get very excited,”

“Where’s it all going to go? How’s it all going to end? That’s a big question,”

One idea floating around is that there could have been something called Early Dark Energy that skewed the appearance of the background radiation

“New physics might be that there’s some form of energy that acted in the earliest moments of the evolution of the universe. You’d get an injection of energy that’d then have to disappear,”

Leavitt, a then-obscure employee of the Harvard College Observatory, discovered that the intrinsically brighter stars have longer periods. This insight — Leavitt’s law — allows astronomers to know the Cepheid’s absolute luminosity, then gauge the distance to the star based on how bright or faint it appears.

just to be clear: The Hubble Constant in question is the rate of expansion in our “local” universe, not the rate of expansion when the background radiation was first emitted billions of years ago. Over time, the Hubble Constant isn’t constant.)

At the dawn of the 21st century, this Standard Model seemed to pass every observational test. And any disparities in the measurement of the Hubble Constant would surely be ironed out with further observations, scientists assumed. They had even nailed down the age of the universe precisely: 13.8 billion years.

“We felt really good,”

He added, jokingly, “We should have stopped taking data.”

“We are wired to use our intuition to understand things around us,” Riess said. “Most of the universe is made out of stuff that’s completely different than us. This adherence to intuition is often wildly unsuccessful in the universe.”