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  • U.S. Students Win the 2016 Math Olympiad

    U.S. Students Win the 2016 Math Olympiad0

    Earlier this week, news came out that a group of U.S. students had won the 2016 International Math Olympiad. As the Washington Post noted, such news is surprising, particularly since the U.S. team was the reigning champion from 2015, a title they finally snagged after losing for 21 years. I was encouraged reading about the

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  • The Origin of the Term ‘Dark Ages’

    The Origin of the Term ‘Dark Ages’1

    With threats both without and within, some have surmised that the West is on the cusp of a new Dark Age. We at Intellectual Takeout have wondered the same thing ourselves. Traditionally, the term “Dark Age” has been assigned to the period that followed the Fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century. It

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  • Shakespeare: More Beneficial than Self-Help Books?

    Shakespeare: More Beneficial than Self-Help Books?0

    CBS News recently ran a brief segment featuring Ken Ludwig, a playwright and author of How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare. During the course of the interview, Ludwig explained that his purpose in writing the book was not only to get kids reading Shakespeare, but also to fill in the Shakespearean holes of the parents

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  • Why Can’t People Disagree Without Taking Things So Damn Personally?

    Why Can’t People Disagree Without Taking Things So Damn Personally?0

    • July 20, 2016

    Many in our audience express dismay about people not being able to discuss hot-button issues – politics, religion, race, sexuality – without it devolving into anger and name-calling. Why is it that people can’t have a disagreement without taking things so damn personally? Well, one obvious reason is human nature. Our positions on controversial topics

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  • What would Socrates do?

    What would Socrates do?0

    Surveying news headlines in recent years, it seems that cheating is rampant. In the athletic arena, Lance Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles for using performance-enhancing drugs. In business, some of the world’s largest banks have paid nearly $200 billion – the equivalent of the GDP of New Zealand – in

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  • What the Founding Fathers Got Wrong

    What the Founding Fathers Got Wrong0

    By any objective standard, it would be difficult to claim that the Constitution really matters at any practical level in the United States. At a symbolic level, it still means a great deal. But, what a disconnect: that it matters so much in our minds and language but that it means nothing in our day-to-day

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