The Difference Between a Democracy and a Republic

There’s a lot of talk about “losing our democracy.” From the left and the right. But did you know that our country was established as a republic, a democratic republic and not a direct democracy? That’s an important difference, one that is at the center of some recent Supreme Court decisions. Click here.

It’s good to know, I think, that there are computer geniuses out there hacking into and F-ing up telephone scammers that prey on trusting old folks like me. Many of these operations are headquartered in India. (No surprise there.) One such avenger is the very entertaining young man in this video. Click here.

As I said, this should be good to know. But it made me feel uneasy realizing how this guy, if he became evil, could be doing amazing scams himself.

American Wine

I never wanted to become an expert on wine. I just wanted to know a little more than my wine snob friends.

Recently, I became a customer of my partner’s wine biz: The Bonner Private Wine Partnership. It publishes educational articles and videos on its website from a true expert. (He looks like a gravedigger, but is enormously entertaining.) In a recent issue of “The Wine Explorers Letter,” he teaches something that I’m sure my wine snob friends don’t know: How old and respectable America’s wine history really is.

Click here to read the article and to watch a video explaining the seemingly unnecessary wine-sniffing ritual. (It’s all about biology and evolution.)

Drink coffee…and live longer! 

Really? Click here.

In the mid-1990s, the wild population of the world’s rarest bird, a blue-gray parrot called the Spix’s macaw, dwindled to just one. Two decades later, conservationists are attempting to release Spix’s macaws from captivity and reintroduce them to the wild. Click here.

COVID and “Chemosensory Disruption”: Answers Begin to Emerge

As I mentioned on June 3, if I ever suffered any loss of smell from my bout with COVID, it was minor. My sense of smell was never great to begin with.

Loss of smell was a very common symptom back then, when the pandemic was spiking. Since then, it’s become much less common. A study published last month found that compared with those who had been infected with the original virus, those who had the Alpha variant were 50% as likely to have it. It fell to 44% for the Delta variant, and then to 17% for Omicron.

You can read about why that is here.

Maybe “good to know” is taking it too far. Here are five things I was amused by recently.

* Johns Hopkins students design edible tape to keep your burrito wrapped. Click here.

* US weddings are at their lowest in six decades. Click here.

* Exploring the United States of pizza. Click here.

* Science images selected by Nature magazine’s photo team. Click here.

* Inside the soon-to-open orbital space hotel. Click here.

How common are false accusations of rape? 

Although it’s impossible to know how many rape accusations are false, an oft-cited 2010 study put the frequency at between 2% and 10%, with an average of about 6%. An FBI study put the frequency at 8%.

However, these numbers count all rape accusations – including those against strangers. If we assume that false accusations against strangers are very low – say, 2% – it would mean that false accusations against known people would be five times that, or 30%.

But why would anyone falsely accuse someone of rape? 

One study identified teenage girls as the most likely source of false rape allegations. According to the researchers, they make the claims to avoid getting into trouble with their parents or to avoid social criticism from their peers. In fact, half of the complaints documented in the study were made, not by the victims themselves, but by parents or friends.

A 2017 report by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that fake accusers “were primarily motivated by emotional gain. Most false allegations were used to cover up other behavior such as adultery or skipping school.” They were also used for extortion, revenge or retaliation, and out of a desire for attention.

It should be needless to say, but it must be said: The effect on the falsely accused is usually permanent and devastating. Click here and here and here for a few examples.

Another Kind of Rape 

There has always been a kind of rape that was almost never prosecuted… because nobody seemed to care about it. Prison rape. It was thought to happen to young men that were imprisoned for the first time, and the general reaction to hearing about it ranged from indifference to approval. It was an extra, deserved punishment. And a good deterrent. So it was, and still is, pretty much ignored.

In 2001, Human Rights Watch estimated that at least 4.3 million inmates had been raped while incarcerated in the United States. You can read about it here.