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Blog 3 Columns

  • 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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  • Pliny’s ‘Natural History’ Offers Odd Home Remedies

    Pliny’s ‘Natural History’ Offers Odd Home Remedies2

    Gaius Plinius Secundus (more commonly known simply as Pliny or Pliny the elder) was a Roman naturalist and physician who lived during the dawn of the Roman Empire.   Pliny was born in 23 A.D. in Lombardy, a province in Northern Italy, and spent many years in the Roman army as an officer. In his

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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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  • What Ivy League Students Were Studying 250 Years Ago

    What Ivy League Students Were Studying 250 Years Ago1

    • July 20, 2016

    Here is the curriculum for Columbia University (“King’s College” at the time) in 1763. As you look through this list, keep in mind that the average age of the first-year student was fifteen! First Year Sallust, Historia Caesar, Commentaries Ovid, Metamorphoses Virgil, Eclogues Aesop, Fables Lucian, Dialogues ?New Testament Grotius, De Veritate Latin Grammar Greek Grammar English & Latin Themes Cornelius Nepos

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