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The one Trump comparison you haven’t heard yet 0
- History
- May 6, 2016
The race for the Republican presidential nomination has provided pundits with ample opportunity to claim that we have reached an all-time low in terms of fractiousness, divisiveness and vulgarity. Not so. A quick look to the Classical world lays to rest such a naive assumption. Politics under any system of government is always a dirty
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Cartoonist Fired After Poke at Big Ag CEOs 0
- Culture
- May 6, 2016
Rick Friday, the longtime cartoonist whose drawings had appeared in the Iowa-based publication Farm News for more than two decades, drew his final cartoon for the publication last week, he said. In a Facebook message posted April 30, Friday suggested he was fired because his cartoon “insulted” someone affiliated with one of the corporations mentioned
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True Education Involves Suffering 0
- Education
- May 5, 2016
One of the best pieces of educational advice I’ve heard in recent months didn’t come from a book or a talk about education. It came from a film about wine. This past week I watched A Year in Burgundy on Netflix. I highly recommend this documentary not only for the information it provides on the winemaking process,
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Reintegrating the Humanities 0
- May 5, 2016
I have always sought to instill into my students that a knowledge of literature is not possible without an adequate knowledge of history, philosophy and theology. I stress, for instance, that we cannot know the plays of Shakespeare unless we know something about the time and culture in which he was living and the philosophical
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The Actual ‘Sword in the Stone’?0
- History
- May 5, 2016
Even if you haven’t actually read a version of the legend of King Arthur, you’ve probably seen one of the movies or TV miniseries about it. I well remember the least serious: the 1963 animated Disney classic The Sword in the Stone, which many children from then on have also seen. We just don’t have
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Why are Colleges Banning ‘Any Product that Looks like a Cigarette’0
- Culture
- May 5, 2016
In this age of campus speech codes and safe spaces, are we really surprised that some university administrators act as moralistic tyrants over their student fiefdoms? The movement for a tobacco-free campus is no different. University officials around the United States are waging a war on the evil smoking “culture.” Consider the anti-tobacco policy of
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