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Jan Bloch: The man who prophesied World War I 0
- History
- August 8, 2016
Looking back on the Great War today, it feels almost inevitable. If a discontented 19-year old Bosnian Serb with the devil’s luck had not managed to put a bullet into the jugular of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand on a hot summer day in 1914, something else would have triggered the chain of events that resulted
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Olympic Athlete: ‘I was born to have babies’0
- Culture
- August 8, 2016
One of the fascinating parts of the Olympics is the backstory which every athlete brings with them. For three-time gold medalist Kerri Walsh Jennings, that backstory focuses heavily on her family and life as a mother. Jennings won gold for the third time as a beach volleyball player in the 2012 London Olympics. But even
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Prof: Today’s Students and Professors ‘Know Hardly Anything about Anything at All’44
- Culture
- August 8, 2016
Six months ago we shared a frightening observation from Patrick Deneen, a political science professor at Notre Dame who has also taught at Princeton and Georgetown. He described his students as “know-nothings… devoid of any substantial knowledge.” More recently, a respected author and English professor at Providence College in Rhode Island has echoed Deneen’s concerns.
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Muslim in hijab should have had US flag-bearing honor at Olympic Games… says everyone on the internet except me 0
- Culture
- August 8, 2016
People are upset that Michael Phelps, who won his 19th gold medal Sunday while competing in the 400-meter freestyle relay, was tapped to be Team USA flag bearer at the Olympic Games in Rio. Editorial writers around the world—here, here, here, here, here, here, here (I could keep going)—thought the honor should have gone to
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The (Chilling) Reason Slaves Didn’t Revolt More Often 0
- Education
- August 5, 2016
In grade school, I often naively wondered why slaves didn’t revolt more. The reasons seem fairly obvious now, of course. Oftentimes slaves had nowhere to go, and if they did (say, to a free state in the North before the Fugitive Slave Law was passed) they had to travel a long, perilous road to get
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Is ‘devouring’ books a sign of superficiality in a reader?0
- Culture
- August 5, 2016
Last year, a reporter in the Guardian described how the Man Booker Prize judges spent ‘a summer… devouring novel after magnificent novel’, culminating in their selection of ‘a (baker’s) dozen’. This is nothing unusual. The language of eating is often used to describe reading habits. If pressed for an explanation, one might say that to
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