Members of a gospel choir posing as grocery store employees surprised shoppers this week by breaking into song in memory of Nelson Mandela. It was the most touching flash mob you will ever see.
Oklahoma City, the "buckle of the Bible Belt," may soon have a monument to Satan on its statehouse steps.
The Nelson Mandela of American mythology differs in a few key ways from Nelson Mandela the man.
Don't count on it.
Some links for your post-Thanksgiving political edification: At the Atlantic, Philip Mackowiac tells us that “Abraham Lincoln often spoke and dreamed about being assassinated” and asks whether Lincoln would have […]
My ears perked this afternoon when, as we sat down for our holiday meal, my 9-year-old daughter read aloud President Obama’s Thanksgiving Proclamation. For the first time since George Washington declared a […]
This is the question the Supreme Court will ask in a few months when it hears oral argument in two cases it agreed to consider today. Both cases involve a […]
Note: Yesterday’s Praxis post, “What Your Yearbook Photo Says About Your Gender,” critiqued the latent sexism in instructions to students at a New York City school on how to primp […]
My students looked a little funny this morning. Nails were brighter, curls were bouncier, rumples were sparser and a few young men even sported ties. Today was senior portrait day, […]
In 2014, voters in Switzerland will decide whether their country should send a monthly check for $2,800 to every Swiss citizen and legal resident. This idea may never fly in […]
The outcry about George W. Bush's visit to a group wanting Jews to believe in Jesus is much ado about bubkus.
The dangers of darkness and vitamin D deficiency have been creeping into recent considerations about natural light. Eighty years ago, the conversation was far more alarmist and far more embracing of our nearest star.
"People as old as 90 who actively acquire new interests that involve learning retain their ability to learn. But if we stop taxing the nucleus basalis, it begins to dry up."
Tech-savvy, hard-working people, says Tyler Cowen in his book Average is Over, have a lot to gain in the new economy. The rest of us? Not so much.
The bills to require photo IDs at the voting booth that Republicans have been pushing in a couple of dozen states over the past few years always carry this justification: […]
There’s no simple answer. Recently in the New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert gave us an evenhanded review of two conflicting perspectives on population levels, offering a sobering assessment of our near […]
Many Americans seem to hold on to a romanticized portrait of Columbus even when they are exposed to his dark side.
A new poll shows that Americans overwhelmingly blame the GOP for the catastrophe that continues this evening in Washington. Things are getting so bad for the Republicans that prospects for reopening the government and avoiding a debt-ceiling crisis are, I think, looking up.
John Boehner’s latest move in the political chess game from Hell has moved us deeper into the fiery pit. Even Dante would be shocked. When House Republicans were threatening to […]
Please read poll numbers purporting to explain how people feel about Obamacare with a grain of salt. Most Americans really don't have a clue what it does.
