What turned Brenton Tarrant, the 28-year-old Australian who murdered 50 people at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, last week into a mass killer? We’ll never know for sure. The media has been full of speculation. The suspects include extreme right-wing ideologies, racism, toxic masculinity, resentment of immigrants, first person shooter video games, the internet,
READ MOREProfessor Kerry Cronin and her famous dating class at Boston College are back in the news. This time it is Elizabeth Bernstein of The Wall Street Journal who unpacks Dr. Cronin’s class, the young Generation Z students who take it, and the reasons why such a course has become oddly necessary. Interestingly, Cronin’s class isn’t
READ MOREA couple of years ago, after sending my five-year-old daughter off to school, she came home reciting the same cheerful environmental mantra I was taught in elementary school. “Reduce, reuse, recycle,” she beamed, proud to show off a bit of rote learning. The moral virtue of recycling is rarely questioned in the United States. It
READ MOREAfter getting married, the decision to take on my husband’s last name was a difficult one. In addition to the financial cost and social awkwardness of changing your identity, the process is so labor-intensive that there’s an app for that. Seriously. For $99, you can “change your name in minutes” on HitchSwitch, a concierge service
READ MOREGrowing up, I was taught that fairness and justice required giving people their due. This meant that achievement and merit were the universal criteria for reward. Particular criteria such as gender, race, sexuality, and ethnicity should not matter, for to exclude people on these grounds would be bigotry. How times have changed! Now our official
READ MOREWhat should you do if your five-year-old son tells you that he is a girl? The proportion of children and young adults who say that they are transgender is rising at an extraordinary rate, not only in the United States but in other countries as well. In 2009–2010, only forty girls in the United Kingdom requested reassignment
READ MOREAre you growing weary of superhero films? Many viewers are, but others still fill the theaters, especially if the film presents the opportunity to enjoy another cameo of the now deceased father of the Marvel Universe, Stan Lee. I’m in this latter camp. I find it hard to resist the appeal of a good fight-scene,
READ MOREWhat if everything you thought about 3D-printed guns was wrong? I know what you’re thinking. How is this article different from the 50+ articles written beforehand? Well, how many of those journalists do you think consulted with someone who spends a decent amount of their time 3D-printing guns? How many inaccuracies do you think they
READ MOREThe left really wants to give kids the right to vote. This idea is so popular on the left that a majority of House Democrats voted in favor of lowering the voting age to 16. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., endorsed the idea as well. Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “I myself have always been for lowering
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