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Three Cheers for the Industrial Revolution–and the Fossil Fuels that Drove it 0
- History
- November 1, 2016
In an article for CapX last week, I discussed Johan Norberg’s new book, Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future. As Norberg notes, over the last two centuries, humanity has made massive improvements in terms of nutrition, sanitation, life expectancy, poverty, violence, literacy, environmental quality, political freedom and child labor. Today, I want to discuss the role that
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Millennial Prof Diagnoses the Problem with His Generation 0
- Culture
- November 1, 2016
Five years ago I was dragged kicking and screaming into registering for a Facebook account for work purposes. Unlike many of my fellow millennials, I had successfully avoided social media, and I was happy with that status, thank-you-very-much. As it turns out, I was not the only millennial who bucked the trend. Dr. Cal Newport,
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Is Diversity the New Noblesse Oblige?0
- Culture
- November 1, 2016
Noblesse Oblige [noh-bles oh-bleezh]: the inferred responsibility of privileged people to act with generosity and nobility toward those less privileged. I heard this term for the first time nearly 20 years ago during an undergraduate course I took on the French Revolution taught by Dr. Peter Dimeglio, one of the best (and toughest) instructors I ever
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Theologian: God Doesn’t Need Christians 0
- Culture
- November 1, 2016
Last week I raised the question of whether or not the “feel good” approach to religion was leading to the steady decline of America’s churches. Such an approach attempts to bring hoards of people to church, making them comfortable in order to swell the ranks of those who follow God. Not surprisingly, a few readers
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Why Sasquatch and Other Crypto-Beasts Haunt our Minds 0
- Philosophy
- October 31, 2016
Since the 15th century, and possibly earlier, there have been accounts of hairy, nude and tremendously strong people living in the more obscure corners of the Caucasus. Called ‘Almas’, the creatures are occasionally shot, sometimes domesticated (and, in one case, wed). Across the sunbaked Eurasian steppe and high in the Himalayas, there is the white-furred
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The First Known Depiction of a Witch on a Broomstick 0
- Education
- October 31, 2016
Via Hyperallergic.com: The visual of the witch on a broomstick is so ubiquitous as to be benign. Before the Wicked Witch of the West or Harry Potter took flight on the spindly cleaning tool, the image first appeared in the 15th century. Two women in marginal illustrations of the 1451 edition of French poet Martin Le Franc’s Le Champion des Dames (The Defender of
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