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Blog 3 Columns

Welcome to the Chaos Stage of our Decline 0
- Culture
- July 26, 2016
Oddly enough, and despite the wretched news of another mass shooting right on the heels of several others, the latest reports from the Bureau of Justice Statistics indicate that gun violence is actually down. Statistically, we’re safer now than we were in the 1990s. Here are a couple highlights: Firearm-related homicides declined 39%, from 18,253
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Teacher: Students Crave Ethics Instruction 0
- Culture
- July 26, 2016
High school English teacher Paul Barnwell made two interesting observations yesterday in The Atlantic. The first was that his students have no moral compass. Barnwell discovered this when discussing various ethical issues with his class. His students were, he found, quite oblivious to internationally and historically accepted values of moral living. But perhaps such a
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Is Free Will an Illusion?0
- Culture
- July 26, 2016
A little more than a year ago, I had the chance to talk with an extremely intelligent and talented scholar, one who had justly won a number of major awards. As we began to talk rather civilly over coffee and tea about our understandings of modern academia, this person said with some exasperation after I told
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History Quiz: Kings of Medieval England 0
- Education
- July 26, 2016
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Harvard Scientist Explains what Porn does to your Brain 3
- Family
- July 26, 2016
As we’ve previously noted, it’s difficult to get consistent answers on the alleged dangers of pornography. Scientific research on the subject varies widely. It’s safe to say that Kevin Majeres, a psychiatrist specializing in cognitive-behavioral therapy and a faculty member of Harvard Medical School, is among those who view pornography as harmful. Writing on the
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Brutal Reviews of Shakespeare from the 1600s 0
- History
- July 26, 2016
In 1660, Samuel Pepys, a 26-year-old civil servant in London, started writing a diary. He kept it up for about a decade before quitting, and the surviving record offers historians a rich glimpse into daily life in 17th century England. Take this entry from March 1, 1661. Pepys, an avid fan of theater, recorded his
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A Warning about Islam from the Last Pope?0
- July 26, 2016
A large part of the controversy between Islam and the West boils down to scriptural hermeneutics. “Scriptural hermeneutics” refers to the lens that a person, group, or religion uses to interpret their respective scriptures. Most Christians, for instance, hold to some sort of theory of “divine inspiration” in regard to how the Bible was
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Why Conservatives Can’t Understand Liberals (and Vice Versa)0
- Education
- July 25, 2016
It’s probably important to preface any conversation on morality by noting that humans often struggle—mightily—to agree on what morality is. While it’s a thorny topic to define and explain, it would of course be foolish to avoid the pursuit of moral truths for this reason. Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia
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Students Today: Minds without ‘Furniture’0
- Education
- July 25, 2016
In my reading on past education philosophy, I have repeatedly encountered the phrase “furniture of the mind.” Perhaps the first instance of it is found in one of the most famous educational documents in history—“The Yale Report of 1828”—where the faculty of Yale College (now University) said the following: “The two great points to be
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