Blog 3 Columns

White Privilege: A Thing of the Past?0
- Culture
- April 3, 2019
White privilege. For years now, we’ve heard some folks sling that term around along with that verbal slap, “Check your privilege.” But here’s a question: Does white privilege exist in 2019? Or is it just a way of smearing whites? First, a definition of white privilege. The online Cambridge Dictionary defines white privilege as “the
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Jordan Peterson and Slavoj Zizek Are Going to Debate Marxism and Capitalism. What Should We Expect?0
- Philosophy
- April 3, 2019
At Toronto’s Sony Center on April 19, Jordan Peterson and Slavoj Zizek will debate “Happiness: Capitalism vs. Marxism.” It’s a rather strange umbrella subject both for the Canadian psychologist and the Slovenian philosopher. In several viral YouTube videos, Peterson has made it clear that suffering, not happiness, is the primary human condition, while in Zizek’s
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Is Seattle Dying?0
- Culture
- April 3, 2019
A local news documentary about Seattle’s rampant homelessness and drug-abuse crisis has touched a nerve with the city’s residents, many of whom say they are frustrated with the inability of the courts and local officials to deal with the problem. In “Seattle is Dying,” an hour-long special that ran on Seattle’s ABC-affiliated KOMO News station
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How the Minimum Wage Affected Workers During (and After) the Great Recession 0
- Economics
- April 3, 2019
The law of demand is one of the most fundamental concepts of economics. This law states that, if all other factors remain equal, the higher the price of a good, the less people will demand that good. Most of the time this is too obvious to mention. Yet people seem to think we can suspend
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Why Time Speeds Up as We Get Older (And What We Can Do About It)0
- Culture
- April 2, 2019
Time seems to go faster as we age. When we were children, the school year and then the summer seemed to stretch forever. As adults, we wonder where the time went. Duke University engineering professor Adrian Bejan believes he can explain this universal phenomenon. Bejan found as we age our ability to process mental images
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Social Justice Is at Odds with American Ideas of Justice 0
- Culture
- April 2, 2019
What is justice? This complicated question is the subject of much study by philosophers, lawyers, clergy, and laymen. It is often easier to determine the metes and bounds of justice from what it is not than to define what it is in the abstract. Unfair procedures, treating the rich differently from the poor, racial discrimination,
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How Would Dostoevsky Have Responded to the Smartphone?0
- Culture
- April 2, 2019
“I don’t know how to make friends without my phone,” a teenager told me last summer when I found myself enforcing a policy banning screens at a student seminar I was helping with. I was a little surprised by this line of reasoning, but I’ve encountered it more than a few times since from teens
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Does Equal Pay Day Promote Myths About Women’s Pay?0
- Economics
- April 2, 2019
Today is Equal Pay Day. That means it’s time for people to peddle myths about what women are paid for doing the same job as a man. Many of those who promote Equal Pay Day cite a misleading statistic that the average woman makes 20% less than the average man. But this statistic compares women
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Compulsory Schooling Laws Aren’t Progressive, They’re Inhumane 0
- Education
- April 2, 2019
Someone asked me recently if I could wave a magic wand and do one thing to improve American education what would it be. Without hesitation, I replied: Eliminate state compulsory schooling statutes. Stripping the state of its power to define and control education under a legal threat of force is a necessary step in pursuit
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White Privilege: A Thing of the Past?0