Scams

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 31st Jul 2023

When I first received an email from a Nigerian prince, with a ridiculous story about him needing to get $300 000 out of his country, and that if I helped him, I would be entitled to get a cut etc., I clicked trash, and thought to myself - who would fall for that? Then the stories started to come out about people who had fallen for this exact, or similar scams. I recall the account of one individual, who after weeks of back-and-forth by email had ended up travelling to Paris to meet the people he’d been dealing with. He...Click To Read More

Stereotypes

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 24th Jul 2023

The term/word “stereotype” originated in the print industry. It refers to a metal plate that printers used to hold an entire page of print. This enabled them to print identical pages over and over again. The journalist, Walter Lippmann, brought the term to public attention in the 1920’s, when he used it to refer to “pictures in the head”, whereby people created fixed ideas of the attributes that all members of a group shared e.g., all Jews and Scottish people are tight/cheap with money (as a Jewish/Scottish person I obviously adhere to both stereotypes thereby giving value for money –...Click To Read More

Stalking And The Counterman Case

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 17th Jul 2023

On June 27 (2023), The US Supreme Court threw out the conviction of Billy Raymond Counterman, who had been sentenced (in Colorado) to a custodial sentence of four and a half years for stalking a female musician. The case is significant a one and has some potentially far-reaching effects, concerning not only stalking, but also possible claims regarding self-defense. A significant aspect of what defines stalking and harassment cases is how the person targeted perceived the actions and behaviors of their stalker/harasser as opposed to how the stalker/harasser intended their behavior to be interpreted e.g., an ex-intimate partner may have...Click To Read More

America's Violent Holidays

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 10th Jul 2023

On July 4^th, 2023, there were sixteen mass shootings, resulting in fifteen people being killed, with another 94 injured. The shootings occurred across thirteen states as well as in Washington DC. The Gun Violence Archive’s definition of a mass shooting (this database of mass shootings is managed by North Eastern university professor, James Alan Fox), is an incident where four or more people are killed or injured (excluding the shooter), due to the use of firearms. It should be noted that not all of these events involve what would be described as an “Active Shooter” incident, as many of these...Click To Read More

Hazing

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 3rd Jul 2023

Up until the 1960’s it was thought that chimpanzees were largely vegetarian and somewhat peaceful creatures. It wasn’t really until Jane Goodall’s groundbreaking research into chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park (Tanzania), that it was understood that chimps can be highly aggressive - hunting and killing monkeys, committing infanticide, engaging in intra-group conflicts (ganging up against individuals) and even attacking troops/bands of gorillas (considerably larger primates), when in groups. Whilst chimpanzees can be capable of social and mutually beneficial cooperative behaviors, they also at times engage in extreme violence against each other, that not uncommonly involves genital mutilation i.e., forms...Click To Read More