Blog 3 Columns

Why We Fear (and Crave) Commitment 0
- Culture
- August 8, 2018
Recently, I attended my friend’s bachelorette party. It was tasteful compared to typical bachelorette festivities, but one thing kept us talking. That night, my friend received a plethora of congratulations, too many to count. This might be as expected considering her mock wedding veil and the sash that read, “bride to be.” So what was
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Why It’s Time to Treat the Hammer and Sickle Like the Swastika 1
- History
- August 8, 2018
If someone were to ask you to think of either extreme of the political spectrum, odds are you would immediately picture a swastika at one end, and a hammer and sickle at the other. Regardless of your views of the left-right paradigm, or whether you subscribe to horseshoe theory or not, we (rightfully) tend to
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The Worst Emperor of Ancient Rome: Caligula 0
- Economics
- August 8, 2018
During the question-and-answer period after a lecture on ancient Rome, an audience member asked me, “Who would you rank as the Empire’s worst Emperor?” That was a tough one. I deplore concentrated power so I really don’t like any of them. Of the grand total of 178 emperors—81 in the Western Empire and 97 in
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The Problem With Conflating Sexual Advances With Sexual Harassment 0
- Culture
- August 8, 2018
It is wrong to ask someone intrusive questions about his private life. A federal appeals court made that clear in allowing a woman to sue over invasive questions by federal officials. It ruled that she had a plausible claim that federal officials violated her constitutional privacy rights by questioning her about private details of her
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Liberation Theology: How Competing Claims of Being on God’s Side Are Testing Our Social Order 0
- Culture
- August 8, 2018
Religion is a vital source for change, but it does not yield easily to what the political philosopher John Rawls in 1997 called the ‘public reason’ that enables liberal democracies. In the late 1960s, for example, a new group of radicals, known as liberation theologians, challenged the accommodation of religion to an unjust society. The
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Justifying Racism Through Language 0
- Culture
- August 8, 2018
The best way to grasp how sociology has managed to make color-blind racism (CBR) seem believable is to study its Newspeak (to continue the Orwell theme). Whiteness To many modern sociologists, color blindness is a racist weapon that works, somehow, through whiteness, a scheme of thought invisible to most whites, but revealed by CBR sociology. Whiteness
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A Brief History of Russia Meddling in Other People’s Elections 0
- Economics
- August 8, 2018
U.S. Special counsel Robert Mueller on Feb. 16 indicted Russian individuals and entities for interference in the U.S. presidential election. This is not a one-off act of Russian interference. In the previous nine years, Russia has invaded its neighbor Georgia, annexed the Ukrainian province of Crimea and supported rebels in Eastern Ukraine. As a historian
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Why California Cities Are Becoming Unlivable 0
- Economics
- August 7, 2018
In July, the mayor of San Francisco frankly stated that poverty in the city is so bad, that “there is more feces on the sidewalks than I’ve ever seen.” And it’s not just her – the local NBC investigative unit found a “dangerous mix of drug needles, garbage, and feces throughout downtown San Francisco.” While
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The Affective Fallacy: Understanding How Your Feelings Can Make You Dumb 0
- Education
- August 7, 2018
The NBC show Friday Night Lights is about high school football in a small Texas community. High-school students are taking part in a class discussion when the brash star halfback, Brian “Smash” Williams crudely argues that monogamy is unnatural for a male. The teacher is puzzled by Smash’s statement. A female friend and classmate, Waverly,
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Why We Fear (and Crave) Commitment 0