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Reading Silently Used to be Considered WEIRD 0
- History
- March 28, 2016
Nowadays, the norm when reading a book alone is to read it silently to oneself. Apparently, this practice was unusual in the ancient world. As an undergraduate I had to read St. Augustine’s Confessions (397-400), which some claim to be the first autobiography written in the Western world. At the time, I remember being taken
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Why it’s so Easy to Relate to Pontius Pilate 0
- History
- March 25, 2016
Who would sympathize with the Roman official who had Jesus crucified? Even among many who don’t consider themselves Christian, Pontius Pilate is a cultural symbol of an abusive, authoritarian power. But there are a few movies, such as Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, that present him as an almost sympathetic figure. That’s not
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Huxley’s Disturbing Prophecy 0
- Economics
- March 25, 2016
A decade and half after the publication of Brave New World (1931), Aldous Huxley penned a foreword to his magnum opus that has attracted relatively little attention. Written shortly after the conclusion of the Second World War, the article is fascinating in both its frenetic pace and bold conclusions, some of which appear prescient, others
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Blame Terrorism On Engineers and Conservatives?0
- Politics
- March 25, 2016
Apparently, we’ve been missing the secret decoder ring that would reveal the true psychological profile of Islamic terrorists. It’s not really Islam, or even a propensity for mayhem. It’s the need for “cognitive closure.” That habit of mind, along with others that psychologists closely associate with it, gives us the key clue—at least according to
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Feminist Icon Eviscerates the GOP Candidates 0
- Politics
- March 25, 2016
Camille Paglia has risen to fame as one of the premiere academics and social critics in America. Though a liberal and feminist, she has proven herself unafraid to challenge the orthodoxies of her party and progressivism. Writing in Salon this week, Paglia, a Bernie Sanders supporter and contributor, explained why she cannot support Hillary Clinton.
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How SpellCheck and AutoCorrect are Destroying Kids’ Grammar 0
- Education
- March 24, 2016
One thing school-aged parents can agree upon is their dissatisfaction with the lack of writing instruction their children receive in grade school. Writing rules, language arts, essay composition, sentence structure, punctuation, style—all of these things have come up in casual conversations with parents you bump into at the store, in the parking lot, and on
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