The Conversation

Can politicians be too old to serve in office? Should society make retiring at a certain age mandatory for elected officials who run the country – like presidents and senators? Whatever view one takes on the ethics of age limits for politicians, voting remains the primary way to put one’s views into practice.

Short naps can boost mental functioning and memory, as well as improve alertness, attention and reaction time. Short naps are also linked to increased productivity and creativity. Because napping seems to improve creative thinking, some companies have attempted to harness this by introducing napping rooms into the workplace.

People are increasingly interacting with others in social media environments where algorithms control the flow of social information they see. Algorithms determine in part which messages, which people and which ideas social media users see.

Trump’s bail was set at US$200,000, while his former attorney Rudy Giuliani’s bail was set at $150,000. Megan T. Stevenson, a University of Virginia law professor who researches bail, answers questions about the American bail system and how the bail amounts in the Georgia election interference case reflect that system.

The near blackout will leave 330 million Americans relying on news reports, artist renderings and social media posts for the bulk of their information, despite wanting to see the live proceedings for themselves.

Southern California experienced a wave of wildfires 13,000 years ago. These fires permanently transformed the region’s vegetation and contributed to Earth’s largest extinction in more than 60 million years. This was a time marked by dramatic climate upheavals and rapidly spreading human populations. The parallels between the late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions and today’s environmental crises are striking.

Florida officials want public school educators to misleadingly emphasize Washington’s efforts to abolish slavery. Yet Washington’s efforts to free Black people pale in comparison to how he fought to keep Black people enslaved.

People around the world — including many Americans — cannot understand why a sizeable portion of the United States population continues to support Donald Trump, despite an ever-increasing list of charges against him, including the latest indictments in Georgia. Here’s an explanation.

The Taliban has denied Afghan women the most basic human rights in what can only be described as gender apartheid. Only by labelling it as such and making clear the situation in Afghanistan is a crime against humanity can the international community legally fight the systematic discrimination against the country’s women and girls.

Uncivil obedience is the opposite of the more commonly known protest strategy of civil disobedience. Protesters may appear to respect authority by carefully following the laws to show what they are doing is legal. But the behavior may be seen as “uncivil” by some because the behavior challenges social expectations, uses laws in ways unintended by their originators, or both.

Clearly, the few evolutionary changes the domestic cat has made have been the right ones to wangle their way into people’s hearts and homes. It started in the Middle East. The boldest cats entered huts and perhaps allowed themselves to be petted – kittens are adorable! – and, voilà, the domestic cat was born.

Donald Trump is now experiencing the full weight of a system of government in which criminal law is produced and enforced by law enforcement agencies and prosecutors across 50 states–the “federalism” Ronald Reagan preached–and by one powerful central government.

There has been a change in the Biden’s administration’s overall attitude toward Israel, as with the pointed use of the term “terrorism” against Israel by the state department in response to the killing of a young Palestinian, 19-year old Qusai Jamal Maatan, near Ramallah by settlers on August 4.

Whereas Florida would have students believe that enslaved Black people “benefited” by developing skills during slavery, the reality is that enslaved Africans contributed to the nation’s social, cultural and economic well-being by using skills they had already developed before captivity.

Imagine that we’ve all – all of us, all of society – landed on some alien planet, and we have to form a government: clean slate. We don’t have any legacy systems from the U.S. or any other country. We don’t have any special or unique interests to perturb our thinking. How would we govern ourselves?

Fires have become an increasing risk in many areas of the U.S. that people once considered safe. Over the past two decades, a staggering 21.8 million Americans found themselves living within 3 miles (5 kilometers) of a large wildfire. Nearly 600,000 of them were directly exposed to the fire, with their homes inside the wildfire perimeter.

Trump and his allies have long created a culture of lies, illusions, cruelty and misrepresentation. He has waged an incessant attack on reason, critical thinking, informed judgment and social responsibility. His distaste for Black people, migrants and others he considers disposable is matched by his support for the financial and corporate elite.

Predictability helps prevent anxiety in children. Predictability means things going along as they’ve always gone: sleep at night, up in the morning, cornflakes for breakfast, off to school, activities in the afternoon, dinner with the family.

Most Americans (69%) believe it is essential that the United States continue to be a world leader in space. But only a subsection of that group believes NASA should prioritize sending people to the Moon. The United States’ most visible effort to maintain world leadership in space is arguably its Artemis Program to land humans on the Moon by late 2024.

Because these kinds of slavery took place so long ago and weren’t based on modern racism, some people have the impression that they weren’t as harsh or violent. That impression makes room for public figures like Christian theologian and analytic philosopher William Lane Craig to argue that ancient slavery was actually beneficial for enslaved people. Those arguments are wrong.

Though it can be vital for the advancement of their missions that charities exercise this right, fewer than a third of charities in the U.S. (31%) engaged in advocacy in the last five years. This represents a dramatic decline in the past two decades, even though the law allows these groups to speak up regarding the issues that affect the people they serve.

While people are used to thinking about how clothing, air movement, temperature and humidity affect comfort, two lesser-known measures help explain how they experience comfort indoors: Mean radiant temperature. and operative temperature.

In a world of potential nuclear terrorism and conflicts that risk the unthinkable use of nuclear weapons, the need to control proliferation and double down on arms control, such as a US-Iran agreement and better relations with China, are essential starting points.

Twitter has swapped the fluffy bird that used to symbolize the social media platform for a spindly black X. Ditching the company’s well-known logo and changing its name to a letter often associated with danger, death and the unknown is only the latest user-aggravating step CEO Elon Musk has taken since he bought Twitter in October 2022 for US$44 billion.

Three counts in this new indictment allege conspiracies: There is conspiracy to defraud the government; to obstruct an official proceeding – in this case, counting the electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021; and against the rights of the voters to cast ballots and have them fairly and honestly counted.

Aromatherapy is not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treatment of any medical condition. Clinicians say there’s not sufficient evidence to show that it works. Conversely, public acceptance of aromatherapy has never been higher. But this is not always a good thing. Although information about aromatherapy abounds on the internet, many of the claims are based on personal experience. This is not scientific evidence.

Though Roberts’ opinions appear at odds, his general disdain for the use of race is not. In both landmark race-related cases this term–the repeal of affirmative action, the requirement that race be considered when drawing congressional districts–he was clear that his preference is for as little use of race as possible, a position he has held for decades.

As school leaders in the U.S. wrestle with whether or not to ban smartphones–and Flagler County schools have banned the use of cell phones during instructional time–four scholars to weigh in on the issue.

The fast track to citizenship is not as important in explaining immigrant enlistments as economic factors like poverty and debt, and cultural factors, such as valuing warrior masculinity and legitimization of war.

For women playing football in this year’s Women’s World Cup, there are issues and concerns they must play through. Unfortunately, most of these obstacles exist outside the corners of the football pitch. Lack of funds for training and pay equity continue to be at the forefront.

People who come to rely on certain AI systems will have to trust them implicitly to navigate daily life. That means they will need to be sure the AIs aren’t secretly working for someone else. Across the internet, devices and services that seem to work for you already secretly work against you.

Barbie fits perfectly into director Greta Gerwig’s repertoire of women-focused stories, which includes two Oscar-nominated coming of age films, Ladybird (2017) and Little Women (2019). Gerwig is a feminist filmmaker whose characters are curious, transgressive and rebel against their restrictive circumstances. Barbie is no exception.

UFOs trend in and out of collective awareness but never fully disappear. Thirty years of polling find that 25%-50% of surveyed Americans believe at least some UFOs are alien spacecraft. Today in the U.S., over 100 million adults think our galactic neighbors pay us visits.

On July 19, 1848, nearly 300 men and women gathered in Seneca Falls, New York, to begin the United States’ first public political meeting regarding women’s rights. The Quaker women who participated in the gathering at Seneca Falls were at the forefront of efforts to abolish slavery, promote the temperance movement and grant rights to women.

With the news on July 18, 2023, that Special Counsel Jack Smith had informed former President Donald Trump that he was a target of the federal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and the related Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, speculation began immediately among political analysts and pundits about what charges the former president might face.

Efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution to recognize women’s rights have faced major challenges for the past century. Most recently, in April 2023 Senate Republicans blocked a similar resolution that would let states ratify the amendment, despite an expired deadline.

In the 125 years since U.S. troops invaded Puerto Rico on July 25, 1898, during the Spanish-American War, the U.S. government has controlled the island militarily, politically and economically – with no end in sight or, for Puerto Rico, a clear path to statehood.

The water off South Florida is over 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 Celsius) in mid-July, and scientists are already seeing signs of coral bleaching off Central and South America. Particularly concerning is how early in the summer we are seeing these high ocean temperatures. If the extreme heat persists, it could have dire consequences for coral reefs.

On July 13, 2023, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a drugmaker’s application for the first daily over-the-counter birth control pill for people seeking to prevent pregnancy, to be available next year. This expanded access could be a significant development in the post-Roe era as individual states further restrict women’s access to abortion.

In the United States, any Black person outside of what someone else determines is his or her socially designated physical or social location is presumed to be out of place, with repercussions ranging from what some might call benign amusement to death.