50 points no question free

overview:

this is a technology-dependent lesson that students can guide at their own pace of exploration and learning. students share what they learn through the use of twitter (or alternative classroom sharing medium like todaysmeet). the use of a social sharing platform like twitter gives students a place for sharing with a wider audience, for more effective means of communication with each other, for incorporating viewpoints from all students in the classroom, and a means to reference thinking and learning by the use of a hashtag at a later time. students will understand the role the allied air forces played in the normandy invasion. teachers can use this as a stand-alone lesson or offer more structure by guiding students through each source, one by one. teachers may learn more about the eighth air force by accessing the abmc’s strategic bombing campaign interactive.

as university of miami psychologists debra lieberman and adam smith pointed out in a recent article in the journal current directions in psychological science, humans have social and psychological mechanisms to deter incest. with very few exceptions, marriages between brothers and sisters and between parents and their children are verboten in every human culture. the primary psychological anti-incest mechanism is the yuck response. even the idea of sex with their mom or dad, bro or sis is upsetting to most people. the psychologist jonathan haidt has found that nearly everyone is repelled by the prospect of brother-sister sex, even in hypothetical situations in which there is no chance of pregnancy).

the biological cost of incest

this raises an interesting question: just what’s so bad about incest? sure, having sex with your dad or your sister seems gross — but why? some anthropologists have argued that incest taboos are learned social conventions. this explanation, however, doesn’t make sense to me as it does not explain the widespread existence of anti-incest mechanisms in creatures ranging from cockroaches to chimpanzees. second, the incest taboo is about as close to a universal law as human moral rules get.

why should mechanisms to avoid incest be so widespread both in nature and across human societies? the answer is simple. the problem with having sex close with relatives is that there is an astonishingly high chance that your offspring will be born with a serious birth defect.