As gender identity ordinances and bathroom battles sweep the nation, ordinary Americans have had to confront the question of whether their long-standing beliefs about the sexes are based on biology or bigotry. While the debate has polarized many, it has also served to unite exceptionally unlikely allies. In something of an historical first, self-professed radical feminists and conservative women are tabling their ideological differences and standing in solidarity against gender identity legislation, which they have come to recognize as threatening the civil rights of women. The Hands Across the Aisle Coalition is a bi-partisan group of women who have committed to working together and leveraging their collective resources and platforms to oppose aspects of the transgender movement. The following is the transcript of my introduction at an event I hosted at the Heritage in which five of the coalitions leaders offer a perspective the mainstream media too often ignores on this very important issue. I also encourage you watch the entirety of the event posted in the video below. Thank you, John, and thank you everyone for joining us today for what promises to be an informative and enlightening conversation from voices the mainstream media has ignored. Id also like … Continue reading →

The original telling of Beauty and the Beast is a story about Stockholm syndrome: Beauty is held captive by a creepy monster, but in time she leans to feel deep empathy for her captor and falls in love with him. But Emma Watson, who plays Belle in the upcoming Disney remake, insists that the problematic phenomenon is no longer an issue. The new Belle, it seems, hasnt just figured out how to beat a scary sociological condition she might be fighting the dictates of human evolution as well. In 2014, University of Oregon evolutionary psychologist Michelle Scalise Sugiyama, Ph.D., proposed the theory that humans give in to Stockholm Syndrome because our early ancestors used it as a coping mechanism. Early humans, she wrote in the journal Human Nature, were often taken as prisoners by other groups during wars, and they were more likely to live in the long run if they learned to adapt to their new group rather than resist the entire time they were captive. This trait was especially important for women because they were especially vulnerable, she says. Her theory suggests that the original Belle learned to comply with the Beasts demands because, like her human ancestors, … Continue reading →

An RU-N Biology professor recently discovered a way to extract and sequence DNA from rare and extinct animals preserved in historic museum collections. Assistant Professor Sara Ruane, along with Louisiana State University Professor Chris Austin, developed a protocol and tested a method for DNA sequencing several thousand genes from preserved snake specimens dating back to the early 1900s. The breakthrough brings these once dormant specimens into the modern age of genomics, allowing scientists to start mapping the evolutionary relationships of various snake and other rare and extinct species, and furthering the study of the earths ever-changing biodiversity. I had always thought it would be great if we could extract DNA from preserved specimens, especially those preserved in formalin, says Ruane. Now that we have the computational power to handle short fragments of DNA for sequencing, it was just a matter of optimizing the extraction protocol. Formalin, a variant of formaldehyde, preserves animal specimens and tissue samples for up to 500 years. But according to Ruane, it also locks up the DNA in these specimens, making it hard to extract. And DNA naturally degrades into tiny pieces over time, rendering it difficult to sequence using a conventional approach called the Sanger … Continue reading →