It
might sound like a lame excuse.
But if a man cheats on his wife, he might explain himself this way: "I couldn't help it. My evolved psychological mechanisms made me have an affair." And he'd be right.
Sort of.
David M. Buss, a psychologist at the University of Texas who will be giving the lecture "Sexual Conflict in Human Mating" at Augustana College on October 30, has spent more than two decades studying sexual desire and behavior. And his research has led to one overarching observation: Across cultures, people's mating strategies are universal.
In
August, two news stories broke the same day - one meaty, one junky.
In Detroit, U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled that the Bush
administration's warrant-less National Security Agency surveillance
program was unconstitutional and must end. Meanwhile, somewhere in
Thailand, a man named John Mark Karr claimed he was with six-year-old
beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey when she died in 1996.
Rick
Best acknowledges that public television isn't the unique presence
that it was in the 1970s and '80s - virtually the only place on
the television spectrum to find educational programming and serious
shows on science, history, public affairs, and high culture.
We've
seen screaming headlines of a grading scandal at Auburn, the shocking
arrests on murder charges of two former Montana State University
athletes, and sharp scrutiny over so-called high-school-diploma mills
that churn out would-be college athletes who lack the requisite
academic credentials. Echoing among these stories is the Duke
University lacrosse scandal, which continues to percolate in the
national news media.
