Up until the mid-1960s, America was largely a melting pot of white Europeans. With changes to immigration laws, the last fifty years have seen a large influx of migrants to the U.S. coming from non-European nations. As a nation of immigrants, if race and ethnicity don’t bind us together, what does? In Bridge of Spies,
READ MOREIt’s safe to say that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is one of the most revered figures of the twentieth century. His method of patient, peaceful resistance to British colonial rule proved both wise and effective. He said many beautiful things, demonstrated powerful discipline, and was a deeply spiritual man. The full picture of Gandhi goes beyond
READ MOREThe best way to help a kid climb out of poverty and into the middle class is through a college education, right? At least, that’s what we’ve been told. But in our quest to get more impoverished kids into college, have we actually doomed them to a life of greater poverty? That’s a question explored
READ MOREIn the movie Bridge of Spies, James Donovan, the lawyer tasked with the legal defense of a Soviet spy during the Cold War, makes the argument to a CIA operative that what makes us Americans is our agreement about the Rule Book, the Constitution. As seen in movie clip above, Donovan states: “Just one thing
READ MOREFor the vast majority of history, people freaked out about eclipses. Ancient peoples in particular often could not rationally explain eclipses. Unsurprisingly, it was not uncommon to say the eerie, celestial phenomena foretold doom: floods, pestilence and famine. The earliest record of an eclipse we have comes from clay tablets unearthed from the ancient Sumerian
READ MOREScience got started much earlier than you think. Consider the example of the sphericity of the earth: “There never was a period of ‘flat earth darkness’ among scholars (regardless of how many uneducated people may have conceptualized our planet both then and now). Greek knowledge of sphericity never faded, and all major medieval scholars accepted
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