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Drowning in Good Intentions

October 5, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
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When it comes to sacrificing yourself in an attempt to prevent a drowning, Australians Joseph and Carole Sherry may be the ultimate examples. In January 2010, two of the couple's three children, Elise, 14, and Nicholas, 9, were struggling in the surf at a beach south of Brisbane, according to a newspaper account, when Carole, 44, entered the water to help them and apparently got caught in a riptide. Seeing his wife in trouble, Joseph, 42, tried to save her. Instead, both drowned as Elise and Nicholas and their older sister, all now safely on shore, watched in horror. It is a pattern that ... Read More

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Calculating an End to Divisive Politics

December 27, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Much scholarly research never suggests a clear practical application for the public good. You can't say that about the work of Steven J. Brams, professor of politics at New York University. He seems to have an angle on everything. True to form, he has advice that could help detoxify national politics and pull the agenda from the grip of political extremists … and a better way to elect candidates in a political primary where there seems to be no clearly superior choice ... and how to pick a special congressional committee when important work needs to be done on divisive issues. Born in ... Read More

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Brams: Use Approval Voting in Presidential Primaries

December 27, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

If Republicans are wondering about how to choose among less-than-inspiring choices available in the upcoming primaries — and how to sort losers from potential winners in a national election — they would be wise to sign up for study with Steven J. Brams. What happens in primaries of both parties, he says, is that the “field is crowded, the centrist is squeezed, the strong left candidate or strong right candidate wins. And it’s a disaster, in my opinion, for the country.” Brams says approval voting, in which voters can vote for more than one candidate — in some scenarios as ... Read More

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Brams: Let Congress Select Super Committees

December 27, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Following the failure of the budgetary super committee to come to an agreement in the fall, members of Congress admitted to being ashamed of the institution and the implacable partisanship that stymies it. As part of the deal to raise the debt ceiling, the 12-member super committee of six Democrats and six Republicans from both houses of Congress set about trying to identify $1.5 trillion in budgets cuts for the next 10 years. Compromise had little chance, even though failure to compromise triggers $1.2 trillion in across-the-board budget cuts — an outcome few in either party publicly ... Read More

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Brams: Negotiate Mideast Peace With Point System

December 27, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

With the Arab world and the Middle East in turmoil, Israel may soon find itself negotiating with a new and unfamiliar government in Egypt. When the uneasy neighbors do meet, how many points would Egypt bid, out of a possible 100, for Israel to bless the creation of a Palestinian state, especially if that calculation came at the expense of bids on other matters of importance to Egypt? Steven J. Brams has examined the current peace agreement between Egypt and Israel, negotiated at Camp David, Md., in 1978, as a way to test his theories about fairness and his recommendation that ... Read More

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Brams: Kick Coin Flips Out of NFL Overtimes

December 27, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

As an example of the broad interests and proposed solutions of Steven J. Brams, a New York University professor of politics, in 2011, he offered an alternative way for the National Football League to determine which team gets the ball first when games go into overtime. In February, NYU announced that Brams and James Jorasch, founder of Science House, an organization that brings together science and business, adapted some ideas about fair division of goods to take the randomness out of NFL overtime periods. Most ties in the NFL are resolved with one team winning a coin flip and electing ... Read More

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How to Keep the Devil From Getting More Than His Due

October 29, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

The February 2011 issue of Currents in Biblical Research should have a calming effect on anyone who had to hide behind the sofa when watching the scary scenes in The Exorcism of Emily Rose. In “The Devil in the Details,” Derek R. Brown, a doctoral candidate at the University of Edinburgh, discusses the different ideas about demons and Satan in ancient religious texts. The ideas range from the “original” concept of Satan as he is described in the Old Testament, as an adversarial angel who is a member of God’s divine council, to the “new” Satan of the New Testament Gospels, ... Read More

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Could More Interracial Marriages Cure Inequality?

June 12, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

True to its name, GOOD magazine happily reports that Americans of differing races are intermarrying more than ever and "that it's a clear indication that attitudes and behaviors are shifting with the times." In the middle of a colorful infographic on GOOD's website is an illustration of a black groom and white bride. Before we pat ourselves on the back for our open-mindedness about race, comparatively few blacks and whites rush hand in hand to the altar. Instead, it remains the least common type of interracial union. Asians, it turns out, are most open to marrying whites. Sociologist ... Read More

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Is It Ever OK to Spank My Child?

March 28, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

When psychology professor Marjorie Lindner Gunnoe announced some of her research findings about spanking a little over a year ago, The Center for Effective Discipline, an anti-spanking group, attacked both the research and how the media portrayed it. In her study, Gunnoe used survey data on youth from ages 12 to 18 about whether they had been spanked, and from the responses, she determined that spanking of children from ages 2 to 6 doesn’t put the children at risk for depression, antisocial behavior, violence or sexual activity. The center’s website said that “parents who believe ... Read More

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The Upside of Teen Pregnancy

January 13, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Jenelle is a party-loving high school junior in Oak Island, N.C., with blond hair and a metal stud above one side of her mouth. Andrew is a slim, smooth-talking former model with a fondness for alcohol. They've been together three years. Jenelle thought unprotected sex with Andrew would be OK because they'd tried it before and nothing had happened. Now they've got a baby on the way, and Jenelle's determined to keep it and stay with Andrew, too. "We're in it forever now," she predicts. For the stars of the first episode of the recently completed second season of MTV's reality show, "16 ... Read More

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