Can the modern economy function without a market for interestbased credit? This question has acquired some urgency in the wake of the recent Shariat Court ruling banning interest in Pakistan. Some pundits have pronounced that great harm will result from the banning of interest. Actually, such pronouncements are based on a lack of understanding of both the modern economic system, as well as the ...

The death penalty remains an intensely divisive topic in American society. Recently, there has been a series of cases, first involving defendants with mental retardation and more recently involving juveniles, in which the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled by a five-to-four margin that the death penalty in both these classes violates the Constitution's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment...

Induced abortion has been a universal phenomenon in the history of humanity. The first recorded evidence was found in an Egyptian papyrus from 1550 BC. The debate on the proposed Termination of Pregnancy Bill is mired in misconception. Many, including the Christian doctors’ group, make the assumption that the prohibition of abortion is biblical. In fact, prohibition of abortion predates all mon...

December 2015 saw another Congressional budget standoff and threatened government shutdown. This omnibus bill was particularly important for public health, because – for the first time in years – it contained language that would have reversed a 19-year-old prohibition on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funding for research on firearm injury. Unfortunately, 2016’s final Omnibus ...

This study examined associations between perceived degree and style of parental prohibition and adolescents' internalization of and oppositional defiance against parental rules in the friendship and moral domain. Relations were investigated in 2 longitudinal adolescent samples (total N = 532). Results indicated that perceived style but not degree of prohibition related to overtime changes in in...

The classical psychedelic drugs, including psilocybin, lysergic acid diethylamide and mescaline, were used extensively in psychiatry before they were placed in Schedule I of the UN Convention on Drugs in 1967. Experimentation and clinical trials undertaken prior to legal sanction suggest that they are not helpful for those with established psychotic disorders and should be avoided in those liab...

Abstract This paper analyses the preverbal morpheme te, used in both apprehensive ‘precautioning’ sentences and one of two prohibitive constructions Papapana (papa1265, Austronesian, Oceanic; Papua New Guinea). I aim to establish whether there is a diachronic relationship between functions te , which direction, how why semantic change may have occurred. requires consideration synchronic differe...

Optimality in accounting standards is elusive, and a tireless quest for it through empirical research seems rather Sisyphean. Then, why don’t we let market participants decide as we do in most consumer goods? On the other hand, even card-carrying free market advocates seem to have a hunch that some labor standards such as prohibition of sexual harassment and protection of workers engaged in dan...