Darwin seems to lose out with the public primarily when his supporters force him into a mano-a-mano Thunderdome death match against the Almighty. Most people seem willing to accept Darwinism as long as they don't have to believe in nothing but Darwinism. Thus, the strident tub-thumping for absolute atheism by evolutionary biologists like Richard Dawkins, whom the new issue of Discover Magazine rightly criticizes as "Darwin's Rottweiler," is self-defeating.

If you look across a host of measures at adoption studies, fraternal v. identical twin studies, twins-raised-apart studies, the history of early childhood intervention research, naturally-occurring experiments, differences between societies, changes over history, and so forth, you tend to come up with nature and nurture as being about equally important: maybe fifty-fifty. The glass is roughly half-full and half-empty.

In contrast to New Orleans, there was only minimal looting after the horrendous 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan - because, when you get down to it, Japanese aren't blacks.

What goes unsaid eventually goes unthought

Racism is to the current era what unAmericanism was to the Fifties: a curse word that provides a handy substitute for logical thought.

Truth is better for humanity than ignorance, lies, or spin. And it's more interesting.

Monogamy is a huge time-saver.