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A (Seemingly) Simple Way to Feel Happier0
- Culture
- May 16, 2016
Doing good things for others, even on a small scale, seems to increase one’s sense of well-being and happiness more than things done to help one self. So concludes a new study in the journal Emotion (Nelson et al., 2016). Dr. Jeremy Dean at PsyBlog sums it up as follows: “…as people do nice things for
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What Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The Jungle Book’ Gets Right About Rules0
- Culture
- May 13, 2016
The latest issue of National Geographic arrived at our house with a dazzling cover story on Yellowstone National Park, full of images of grizzly bears, wolves, elk, and bison. Yellowstone is a wild place “filled with wonders—fierce animals, deep canyons, scalding waters—that are magnificent to behold but fretful to engage,” and the issue asks whether
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We Need to Stop Pushing Everyone Toward College0
- Culture
- May 13, 2016
Last year, Pew Charitable Trusts reported that eight in ten Americans are in debt. Much of that debt stems from home mortgage loans, but as a new chart from Slate demonstrates, the last ten years have also seen an explosion in debt from student loans. Such an explosion is not surprising considering the push to
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Sexual Harassment Training Isn’t Just a Waste of Time: It’s Harmful0
- Culture
- May 13, 2016
The last time you had to sit through a training program or sign your office’s fine-print disclosure on sexual harassment policy, you probably thought you were just wasting your time. You were wrong: Research suggests that efforts to raise awareness and train employees about sexual harassment may be worse than a waste. They may actually
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Schools Might Want to Reconsider the Push for Devices in the Classroom0
- Culture
- May 13, 2016
It’s been a rough week for electronic devices. First there was the news that smartphones – with their continual news alerts and notifications – lead to increased inattentiveness and hyperactivity. Then there was the report that British teachers suspected parental phone usage as the reason behind the decline in the conversation ability of preschoolers.
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One Simple Way to Keep Your Child from Being a Reading Statistic0
- Culture
- May 13, 2016
Between 2011 and 2015 the number of American adults who didn’t read a book in the course of a single year went from 1 in 5 to fewer than 1 in 4. And if fewer American adults are reading, chances are that fewer American children are being read to as well. Such a scenario is
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Ladies, You Need to Stop Husband-Shaming0
- Culture
- May 13, 2016
Over the years, in posts on Facebook groups for mothers, I’ve seen my share of women talking smack about their husbands. Writing to hundreds (sometimes thousands) of other women, many of whom they don’t know, wives will unburden themselves about the latest insensitive things their husbands have done. The complaints run the gamut from real
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Is It Time to Stop Bashing the Liberal Arts?0
- Education
- May 13, 2016
With college tuition and student-loan debt at all-time highs, it’s fashionable to bash “the liberal arts.” The standard complaint, and the point of many jokes, is that majoring in such subjects as literature, philosophy, and history doesn’t develop skills marketable enough to generate a decent “return on investment.” Even President Obama has beaten that drum.
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How to Actually ‘Make America Great’0
- Culture
- May 13, 2016
As an angry young man, back in my native England, I thought that the world could be fixed through the power of politics. As a not very angry and not very young man, now living in the United States, I have long since abandoned the belief that politics can fix the world. With this disillusioned
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