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Evaluates the factors determining the level of tolerance of first year university students and faculty in the United States for gender-based humor and their implication to the acceptability of such humor in the family, academe and society. Implication to shifting gender relations; Discussion on theories about the role of humor; Lesser acceptability gender-based jokes by faculty.

This article explores the employment of the elements of civil religion to legitimate the American development of and reliance on atomic weapons. The nuclear monopoly was viewed as a `sacred trust,' the result of the United States' uniqueness and proof of its special destiny. As the claim of the U.S. to uniqueness was undermined before the whole world, the nation's special destiny was associated particularly with its technological superiority. It is argued that the absence of a similar civil religion in Canada tied to the bomb helps account for the different Canadian response to the Soviet nuclear threat. Where the priestly mode of civil religion is celebratory, affirmative and culture building, the prophetic mode is challenging and judgmental. It is virtually impossible to establish direct causal connections between civil religion and the unfolding of the arms race. However, connections between the two can be established by two indirect means. The plausibility of the civil religion-arms race link can be further enhanced by an understanding of the difference between Canadian and American responses to the Soviet threat. Nuclear censorship replaced the free exchange of scientific information, and the public was left largely uninformed about a device that seemed impossible to understand.