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Blog 3 Columns

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Blog 3 Columns

‘La La Land’: A Glorious Movie that Succumbs to Pessimism 0
- Culture
- January 31, 2017
No movie comes more highly recommended than La La Land, which won more Golden Globe Awards (seven) than any other movie in history and which is now poised to sweep the Oscars (fourteen nominations). Does La La Land, as its admirers assert, really evoke the Hollywood of old? Is it a classic musical that spurns the irony and
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‘Bad Things Happen For a Reason’: Why People Might Want to Lose the Phrase 0
- Literature
- January 31, 2017
The problem of evil is a classic dilemma in the philosophy of religion. The relative ease with which the problem can be stated belies the depth of the challenge that it presents to traditional monotheism. Roughly, it can be summarised as follows: If God is omnipotent, then He has the power to create a world
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What Trump’s Executive Order on Refugees Does (And What it Doesn’t)0
- Politics
- January 30, 2017
Before I even had my Saturday morning coffee I received a text from a friend linking to a New York Times op-ed with the headline, “Trump’s Immigration Ban Is Illegal.” As I ground beans, the wife of a prominent conservative friend posted on Facebook that she was “heartbroken” over the ban, and that she promised
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Super-Rich Survivalists Are Preparing for an Apocalypse 0
- Culture
- January 30, 2017
Have you ever imagined what you would do in the event of a zombie apocalypse without the zombies? End times without the return of the savior? A nuclear winter? An environmental catastrophe? A bloody revolution? Most of us have, but preparing for the apocalypse seems pointless. At most, we might drive to the local warehouse
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Reality: Most People Don’t Care about Truth 1
- Education
- January 30, 2017
“The pain of our corruption must be healed by virtue, knowledge, and eloquence.”—Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) In the wake of the “Trump phenomena” and other recent political developments, many people have become concerned that we have entered a “post-truth” era characterized by a contempt for objective facts. Fittingly, Oxford Dictionaries made “post-truth” the word of the
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Is Parental Fear of Boredom Overworking Kids?0
- Culture
- January 30, 2017
Growing up, I knew better than to utter those two infamous words of childhood: “I’m bored.” The reason I rarely uttered them was because I knew that my mother would immediately find some type of chore to “entertain” me with. Today’s kids rarely utter the “I’m bored” phrase either. Only their reason for not doing
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Common Sense Is Getting Lost in the Immigration Debate 0
- History
- January 30, 2017
One of the early-medieval words and concepts I’ve thought about bringing back is the ‘thede’. In old England, the ‘thede’ referred to the tribe. It was a familial, rather than an abstract, descriptor of the people or the nation. Even though it had a certain standing in common law, the thede is not to be
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Can the Nazis be Forgiven? Exploring the Complexities of Forgiveness 0
- History
- January 30, 2017
Friday, Jan. 27 is International Holocaust Remembrance Day – an annual day that honors the memories of the victims of the Nazi era. Seven decades after Hitler perpetrated his terrible genocide on the Jewish people, the world is faced with a disturbing question: Can the Nazis be forgiven? As a member of a Jewish family
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‘On Bullshit’: A Text for the Times 0
- Culture
- January 30, 2017
It’s rare to find a book of philosophy which is so relevant to the debates of the day that it could have appeared on an op-ed page. But such is On Bullshit, by an emeritus professor at Princeton University, Harry Frankfurt. It first appeared in an academic journal in 1986 and 20 years later a
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