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Do Americans Need a Weekly Day of Rest?0
- Culture
- March 21, 2016
For many who work in the world of desks and offices, the idea of going to work on a Sunday is rather incomprehensible, except perhaps when under the pressure of an urgent deadline. But for those who work in industries such as retail or service, Sunday has become just another day. Nowhere is this more
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Tolerance or Respect?0
- March 21, 2016
Respect is (1) an alternative to tolerance and (2) the better one. It is an alternative because it concerns the same issue: how to live with fellow humans who appear to be identically constituted in their need to formulate opinions and to assert them in speech (not always in that order) but disparately developed in
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Study: Smart People are Happier with Fewer Friends 0
- Science
- March 21, 2016
If too much socialization wears you out, it might be because you’re smart. That’s the interesting revelation uncovered in new research by evolutionary psychologists Satoshi Kanazawa and Norman Li, as reported in the Washington Post. Unsurprisingly, Kanazawa and Li found the following correlations in a national survey of 15,000 people they conducted: The higher the
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How ‘The Simpsons’ Predicted Trump 0
- Politics
- March 21, 2016
On March 19, 2000, The Simpsons alluded to a future Donald Trump presidency in an episode titled “Bart to the Future.” Newsday puts it thus: “Bart sees his future in a vision where his band plays a gig for popcorn shrimp and Lisa becomes the first ‘straight female’ president of the United States. In a clip
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Academics are Horribly Unprofessional… Here’s Why 0
- Education
- March 21, 2016
In a recent article for The Chronicle of Higher Education Rob Jenkins asks, “Why Are Some Academics So Unprofessional?”. One might well ask the same about any other profession, of course; doubtless many of you could give examples. But it does seem worse in academia, and that suggests a lesson both important and easily absorbed.
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A History Joke 0
- Education
- March 21, 2016
Question: How many historians does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: There is a great deal of debate on this issue. Up until the mid-20th century, the accepted answer was ‘one’: and this Whiggish narrative underpinned a number of works that celebrated electrification and the march of progress in light-bulb changing. Beginning in
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