“I was grocery shopping and someone banged my foot with their shopping cart,” said a participant in a workshop I was conducting with a large organization. “They made me mad!” Defensive and indignant, the participant went on to tell how he didn’t receive a proper apology. “Everyone in this room knows what I’m talking about,”
READ MOREMany years ago, growing up in England, I witnessed the dying embers of loyalty to a dead British Empire. For my father’s generation the unthinkable had happened. Night had fallen on the Empire on which they were raised to believe the sun would never set. As a child, my father told me that there were
READ MOREThe Uniform Determination of Death Act (yes, there is such a thing) says there are two ways people in the U.S. can be declared dead. 1) The brain dies; or 2) one experiences an “irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions.” Thinkers as early as Galen (129 A.D. – 216 A.D.) understood the brain to be the
READ MOREBy now, you’ve probably seen some of the complaints on the internet about the “new math” being promoted by the Common Core Standards. Many grade-school children—including, for instance, comedian Louis CK’s children—have come home with math homework that is virtually indecipherable to their parents. The goal behind the new math, it seems, is to encourage
READ MOREEvery so often, the issue of grade inflation makes the headlines, and we are reminded that grades are being debased continuously. That happened in late March when the two academics who have most assiduously studied grade inflation—Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy—provided fresh evidence on their site GradeInflation.com that grade inflation continues. The authors state, “After 30 years of making
READ MOREWe’ve heard all the stories. Homeschoolers consistently get higher ACT scores than public school students. Homeschoolers score above average on standardized tests. Homeschoolers have “higher quality friendships and better relationships with their parents and other adults.” With numbers like these, it’s no wonder that homeschooling saw an increase of over 60% in the last decade.
READ MOREIn case you haven’t noticed, the occasion of Queen Elizabeth’s 90th birthday has provided all of us curious commoners with plenty of new pictures to gaze at and analyze. None more so than those which include Will and Kate’s cute kids, Prince George and Princess Charlotte. Commenting on the picture of the Queen surround by
READ MOREIf the current political campaigns have revealed anything about Americans, it is that they loathe changing their minds. Although a few people may vote for a different political party this year, because the two frontrunners struggle with likeability, most Americans will hold fast to their personal values and beliefs—at least on the big issues, such
READ MOREOkay, finally we have good evidence that cursing isn’t some classless, primitive behavior that most think is indicative of barbarism and heathenism. Alright, maybe it’s not that extreme, but there are people out there who think that cursing is unattractive and unnecessary. If you’ve ever been accused of sounding less intelligent because you swear too
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