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A 1st-Century Roman Teacher on How to Raise a Genius 0
- Culture
- April 26, 2016
We often marvel at the handful of students who get top ACT scores and land scholarships at Ivy League universities. And with good cause, for it seems the number of geniuses these days are few and far between. But could we have a lot more “geniuses” in this country than we realize? That seems to
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Can You Pass This 8th Grade Spelling Test from 1904?1
- Culture
- April 26, 2016
With the rise of spell check and auto correct, we’ve let instruction in spelling go to the wayside. But in 1904, proper spelling was an absolute must if one wanted to move on to high school. The following quiz is taken from a Boxwell-Patterson examination booklet. Are you smarter than an 8th grader in 1904?
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Why Death Today Has No Meaning 0
- Culture
- April 26, 2016
The most famous work of the German sociologist and philosopher Max Weber (1864-1920) is undoubtedly The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. But one of his most oft-quoted statements comes not from this book, but from an essay titled “Science as a Vocation,” in which he describes the modern world as “disenchanted”: “The fate
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Are Men Just Better at Math and Science Than Women?0
- Culture
- April 26, 2016
In early 2005, Harvard President Lawrence Summers suggested that innate differences between men and women might be responsible for under-representation of women in math and science departments at elite academic institutions. The comment set off a firestorm and led to Summers’ ouster the following year. A few months after Summers’ comments, a pair of Harvard
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Intellectual Takeout App 2.0 is out!0
- Culture
- April 26, 2016
A few weeks ago we released an iPhone app for Intellectual Takeout. It was received really well and a number of folks recommended changes, such as sorting by categories and the ability to “favorite” or “bookmark”, to make it better. We listened and got to work on a new version. Download Intellectual Takeout’s App 2.0! The
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Why Children are Unlikely to Understand these References in Peanut Cartoons 2
- Culture
- April 26, 2016
Writing on the ever popular Peanuts cartoon strip in The Atlantic, Jonathan Merritt makes an interesting observation about the prevalence with which Charles Schulz incorporated religion into his comics: “More than 560 of Schulz’s nearly 17,800 Peanuts newspaper strips contain a religious, spiritual, or theological reference. To put this into perspective, Schulz only produced 61
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