
Whose dystopia are we living in today? With Donald Trump as president and the world seemingly ablaze, answering that question can sometimes feel like gambling on a horse race. So bet big on George Orwell, as China’s terrifying social credit system makes his Nineteen Eighty-Four freshly relevant. Though the odds are still good on Aldous Huxley, whose Brave
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For something with such important consequences, the Constitution is surprisingly vague when it comes to impeachment. Most of the language in the Constitution lays out what happens once Congress decides to impeach. But there is no particular process that the House must follow in the lead-up to an impeachment vote. The House of Representatives votes
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The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) – the “Nation’s Report Card” – scores are out, and they aren’t encouraging. But how discouraged should we be? The main NAEP tracks national, state, and selected local scores back to the early 1990s, though there have been some changes that have affected comparability among years, and not all states have participated
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I did a double take reading a headline on The Conversation the other day. It appears that pets plus Halloween makes for a lucrative enterprise: Americans are expected to spend US $8.8 billion on candy, costumes and decorations this year – or $86 for every person who plans to celebrate. That includes a half a
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Recently, my friend John and I were discussing intelligence and the media. “Find any picture of reporters with that woman,” John said, “And you’ll see she’s the smartest person in the room.” “That woman” was Melania Trump. I only knew a little about Melania Trump, so I thought I’d do some digging. She speaks six
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Society seems to be rejecting logic, embracing a feelings-based approach to politics and other subjects instead. Experts and data are no longer valued and emotions rule the day, causing how one feels about a situation to hold more weight than actual reality. This is problematic on a number of fronts. For one, the abandonment of
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