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Trump Fires FBI Director James Comey0
- Politics
- May 9, 2017
The Associated Press is reporting that President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday. Politico has more: “President Donald Trump has fired FBI Director James Comey – a move that comes as the FBI is probing potential contacts between Trump’s campaign aides and Russian officials ahead of the election. ‘The president has accepted
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Political Disagreement is a Bad Reason to Unfriend0
- Culture
- May 9, 2017
I have an interesting meeting next week. A young woman in my community is working very hard on a set of policy suggestions for environmental measures, and she wants a libertarian perspective on the ideas she has drawn up. So we’re going to get together over coffee and talk about her plan and about what
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How Government Makes Us Fatter0
- Politics
- May 9, 2017
The government, with its accomplices in the food lobby, has helped to make and keep us fat. Through subsidies and misguided food suggestions, Congress, the FDA, and the USDA have made it more difficult for Americans to make smarter dietary decisions. It’s not as if we don’t care. Americans spend $33 billion annually on weight-loss
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College Majors that Report the Highest Underemployment0
- Education
- May 9, 2017
Forbes recently ran an interesting article that analyzed college degree programs and underemployment. The article was based on a survey released by PayScale, which collected data from nearly one million workers between March 2014 and March 2016. Here are the 12 majors that reported the highest rates of underemployment (a situation in which someone is
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Climate Scientists: Using Confirmation Bias When Data Doesn’t Match Theory?0
- Politics
- May 9, 2017
There’s been a small gaggle of news stories about a new paper by Iselin Medhaug and colleagues in the May 4 issue of Nature that concludes that climate models are just fine and their sensitivity to carbon dioxide is spot-on. If one adjusts the data observed during the balance of the “hiatus” in warming, by filling
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Why Millennial Women Want to Date Older Men1
- Culture
- May 8, 2017
The recent Vanity Fair article detailing the more lurid underbelly of online dating—the barrage of dick pics, the endless swiping, the death of romance—was grim, if not horrific. Dating, Vanity Fair would have you believe, is evolving into an elaborate charade of deception: Everybody is petrified of giving someone the “wrong idea.” Men are impolite
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The Epic of Gilgamesh: A Guide to the Classics0
- History
- May 8, 2017
“Forget death and seek life!” With these encouraging words, Gilgamesh, the star of the eponymous 4000-year-old epic poem, coins the world’s first heroic catchphrase. At the same time, the young king encapsulates the considerations of mortality and humanity that lie at the heart of the world’s most ancient epic. While much has changed since, the
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Study Suggests Lack of Reading Driving Contentious Society0
- Culture
- May 8, 2017
It’s a commonly accepted fact that reading offers far more cognitive benefits than watching television. This is largely because television is a more “passive” activity, while reading goes deeper, encouraging greater thought and fostering verbal communication. But a recent study out of Kensington University in London suggests that the advantage of choosing reading over television
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Public Schools Shouldn’t Be Teaching ‘Values’0
- Education
- May 8, 2017
America’s public schools are getting worse, and part of the reason why is that they have taken on too much responsibility. This point was made by the famous historian Jacques Barzun in his preface to his 1983 book Teacher in America: “There [in public schools], instead of initiatives to develop native intelligence and give it
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