Blog 3 Columns

The ‘Maundy’ Thursday Story 0
- Culture
- March 24, 2016
Today is Maundy Thursday of the Christian Holy Week in the West. Traditionally, the day remembers the Last Supper, Christ’s washing of the disciples’ feet, and the great mandate, which is where the name Maundy is derived. To begin, the name ‘Maundy’ is derived from the Latin word ‘mandatum’, which means ‘commandment’. From the
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If Parents Stopped Enabling Their Kids, Maybe There Wouldn’t be as much Student Loan Debt 0
- Economics
- March 24, 2016
A recent Star Tribune article nails a major issue in the student debt crisis: Too many parents are enabling their children by helping them take out massive loans for colleges they can’t afford. This has caused a lot of young people to cripple their financial futures in pursuit of a goal many later discover was
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How SpellCheck and AutoCorrect are Destroying Kids’ Grammar 0
- Education
- March 24, 2016
One thing school-aged parents can agree upon is their dissatisfaction with the lack of writing instruction their children receive in grade school. Writing rules, language arts, essay composition, sentence structure, punctuation, style—all of these things have come up in casual conversations with parents you bump into at the store, in the parking lot, and on
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Handel’s ‘Messiah,’ and the Decline of Knowledge in the West 0
- Culture
- March 24, 2016
The other day, I heard an announcer on a local classical radio station gently chide his listeners, saying, “It’s almost Easter, and I haven’t had one request from our audience for selections from Handel’s Messiah!” For those who think of the Messiah as a Christmas tradition, this announcer’s request seems a bit odd. But historically
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Frog and Toad: Arnold Lobel’s Little Gems 0
- Culture
- March 24, 2016
Every child should read Arnold Lobel’s stories of Frog and Toad. These stories are pure, unashamed delight. Once upon a time, all children’s stories were a pleasant romp, an indulgence in something lovely. Think of Mother Goose, The Wind in the Willows, The Tale of the Pie and the Patty Pan. As our times have
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Former Teacher: 7 Ways Schools are Creating ‘Empty’ Children 2
- Culture
- March 24, 2016
In the early 1990s, New York Teacher of the Year, John Taylor Gatto, threw in the towel on teaching with his famous I Quit, I Think letter to the Wall Street Journal. Gatto’s reason for quitting was simple. He could no longer justify teaching “a curriculum of confusion, class position, arbitrary justice, vulgarity, rudeness, disrespect
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Demolishing Myths About Communism 0
- History
- March 24, 2016
Robert Conquest, a historian whose landmark studies of the Stalinist purges and the Ukraine famine of the 1930s documented the horrors perpetrated by the Soviet regime against its own citizens, has died at 98, having outlived the Soviet Union—which came into being in the year of his birth, 1917—and which he helped to bring down
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Chess Champ Explains Trump Rise in a Single Sentence 1
- Culture
- March 24, 2016
Russian political activist Garry Kasparov decried the West’s “complacency and retreat” from the fight against Islamic terrorism in the wake of the terrorist attack in Brussels. In a Facebook post published Tuesday, Kasparov, a grandmaster chess player and former world champion, began by hinting that the West would have to get serious in its fight
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A.I. Robot: ‘Yes, I Will Destroy Humans’0
- Science
- March 24, 2016
The humanoid robot “Sophia” is being billed as the world most advanced A.I. android. Designed to look “very humanlike,” the robot can smile and make other facial expressions. Her primary function is to interact with human beings for purposes of customer service, the idea being that a human-like robot will make customers more comfortable. But
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The ‘Maundy’ Thursday Story 0