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George Washington’s Rules of Civility in the Age of Internet0
- October 13, 2015
Ever read George Washington’s Rules of Civility? If so, it’s unlikely you’ve read more than a handful before you realize that you’ve repeatedly broken one or more at some point in time. It’s easy to laugh at the manners of the past and dismiss them as ridiculously stiff and formal. But would we experience more
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Faith is Inescapable0
- October 13, 2015
We get a lot of harsh critiques of religion from commenters on our Intellectual Takeout Facebook page. Present in many of these critiques is the idea that faith is opposed to reason. In this piece, I don’t wish to argue about the merits of our commenters’ opposition to religion. Many (not all) identify some real
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Did Playboy Rediscover Mystery?0
- October 13, 2015
Let’s be honest, a good deal of the clothes women are wearing these days don’t leave much to the imagination. Naturally, they attract the attention of men – that’s the intention, right? – but you do wonder if it’s all become a bit boring. As Playboy announces that it will no longer be publishing nude
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Are We Inching Toward World War III?1
- Politics
- October 13, 2015
A couple of weeks ago, we posted about a Harvard professor’s thesis that the U.S. could likely be at war with China in the next decade. Now, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Fred Kaplan wonders if the same might be true of the U.S. and Russia. His provocatively-titled piece in Slate last week pointed out that “The
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American Students Can’t Write… Because Schools Never Taught Them How1
- October 13, 2015
I had a rude awakening during peer review week in my College Comp II course: writing was a struggle for my classmates. At the time, I was in tears as I read through their papers because the editing work ahead of me was so daunting! In retrospect, I should have been crying more over the
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Walker Percy on Why Modern Life is “Disappointing”0
- October 12, 2015
From his renowned work Lost in the Cosmos: “As John Cheever said, the main emotion of the adult Northeastern American who has had all the advantages of wealth, education, and culture is disappointment. Work is disappointing. In spite of all the talk about making work more creative and self-fulfilling, most people hate their jobs, and with
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The Great TV Alternative0
- Education
- October 12, 2015
Over the weekend, an Intellectual Takeout reader reached out to me and described how our recent articles on the potential harms of preschool education caused her to reconsider her stance on the issue. Despite the challenges it posed, she realized she couldn’t afford not to pull her little girl out of preschool and bring her
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Reason #1,057 to Homeschool – Institutional Schools Are Boring0
- Education
- October 12, 2015
Does the traditional school setting bore students, causing them to lose interest in learning? Given the institutional, restrained atmosphere that’s necessary to keep a classroom of 30 children in order, it seems highly likely. And, as the Washington Post reports, it’s that type of atmosphere that is leading parents like Lisa Cain to pull their
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Most Americans Aren’t Prepared for a Disaster (But Should They Be?)0
- October 12, 2015
The majority of Americans are not prepared for a disaster. According to a recent survey commissioned by the Ad Council, only 17% claim to be “very prepared.” So, why aren’t most of us prepared? Well, of course, there’s good-old-fashioned busyness and/or laziness. I think, also, there’s the fact that most of us have grown up
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