Blog 3 Columns

If Middle Eastern Nations Are Stabilizing, Then Why Do the Refugees Keep Coming?0
- Culture
- September 5, 2018
Over the past five years, a quiet humanitarian crisis has been erupting in South America. Beginning in 2009, but especially since 2015, almost four million people, or one in 10, have left Venezuela. Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro’s regime are behind this steady and sure collapse of the Venezuelan economy and society. Yet as criticism
READ MORE
A Backward View: Older Books and the Culture of the Now 0
- Culture
- September 5, 2018
For almost twenty years, I have written book reviews for a weekly newspaper in Western North Carolina. In general, reviewers take an interest only in new books. This makes some sense, as older books have already received their accolades or their slings and arrows. A few critics—Nick Hornby in his collection of reviews Ten Years
READ MORE
Why There’s So Much Inconsistency in School Shooting Data 0
- Education
- September 4, 2018
How many school shootings happen in the U.S. in a single school year? The answer is surprisingly hard to figure out. In April, the U.S. Department of Education released a report on the 2015-2016 school year, stating that “nearly 240 schools (0.2 percent of all schools) reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting.”
READ MORE

Mayor Suggests Fine-Free Libraries So ‘Everyone Can Afford to Check Out a Book’0
- Culture
- September 4, 2018
Early this spring I experienced something that has probably only happened to me once before: I had an overdue library book. Given that I was the girl in college who felt frantically behind on her homework if she wasn’t a week ahead in her assignments, this was a bit distressing. But, I gritted my teeth
READ MORE
Learning the Fourth Amendment … from Mom 0
- Education
- September 4, 2018
A few months back, I regaled readers with a story about my first confrontation with the state, a head-to-head match that left my brother and I jaded as we packed up our lemonade stand on the boardwalk in Ocean City, New Jersey. This summer showed how little has changed. Several news stories emerged detailing how
READ MORE
Four Reasons to Avoid Teaching Stranger Danger to Children 1
- Culture
- September 4, 2018
Are you the parent of a young child? If so, I’m willing to bet that some well-intentioned person has sent you a YouTube video called Child Abduction (Social Experiment). I’ve been sent this video 5 times over the past several years, the most recent instance being last week. The video goes thus: a guy named
READ MORE

Are Women Rejecting True Girl Power?0
- Culture
- September 4, 2018
G. K. Chesterton was politically incorrect well before the term had been invented and well before its potent force could have been imagined. This political incorrectness especially reared its head concerning the family and gender roles, as evidenced by a 1911 Illustrated London News essay on “suffrage and the family.” On the eve of the
READ MORE
Love at First Sight: Is it Real?0
- Culture
- August 31, 2018
For a lecture course I teach at Brown University called “Love Stories,” we begin at the beginning, with love at first sight. To its detractors, love at first sight must be an illusion – the wrong term for what is simply infatuation, or a way to sugarcoat lust. Buy into it, they say, and
READ MORE
J.D. Martinez’s Second Amendment Stance Isn’t Controversial. It’s Patriotic.0
- Culture
- August 31, 2018
Someone recently dug up an old pro-Second Amendment Instagram post by Boston Red Sox star J.D. Martinez, in which the potential Triple Crown winner posted a picture of Adolf Hitler featuring the quote, “To conquer a nation, First disarm it’s (sic) citizens.” Martinez captioned the post, “This is why I will always stay strapped! #thetruth.”
READ MORE

If Middle Eastern Nations Are Stabilizing, Then Why Do the Refugees Keep Coming?0