Let others debate whether Santa Claus is white or not. There’s no debate that the definitive American Santa is political cartoonist Thomas Nast’s Merry Old Santa Claus (detail shown above) […]
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In 1887, two scientists set out to measure how the speed of light changed with the Earth’s motion. What they *didn’t* find wound up changing the world. “The conclusions, the bizarre […]
Lasting power is accorded to only a handful of presidents, especially after their death. There is no doubt that John Kennedy is one of the few. How did it happen?
The modern dictator needs only to become a client-state to Russia or China (or to be Russia or China), and there is nothing he can't get away with. We members of open societies have the power to change that. All we need is the resolve.
As comedian Martin Mull (allegedly) once said, “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.” Sound’s non-verbal qualities help it elude any attempts to pin it down definitively through the […]
The world just lost a brilliant and fearless journalist. Michael Hastings did more in his short life than most people do in an entire lifetime. As information continues to come […]
It’s the most popular—and least reality-based—sentiment of the disgruntled white college applicant with high scores: a black kid took my seat.
When Fisher v. University of Texas is decided in the next few days, Justice Anthony Kennedy may cast the decisive vote ending affirmative action as we know it. Unless he doesn't.
The strange birth of America's two 'radio nations'
Among the many things about America that the American Civil War changed was its art. Painting and sculpture simply couldn’t be the same. In these sesquicentennial years, every aspect of […]
It disappeared from central London in 1869, after an archeological magazine praised its historical value
One of the biggest misconceptions about post-rational behavioral research is that its effects on society are small. From the news you get the impression “behavioral economics” is all about changing […]
1. Today is Lee-Jackson day. It reminds us that Virginia was forced into a war it didn’t want by events initiated by the states of the deep South and President […]
“Ain’t got no rest in my slumbers/ Ain’t got no feelings to bruise/ Ain’t got no telephone numbers/ I ain’t got nothing but the blues,” goes Jazz composer Duke Ellington’s […]
“The owl of Minerva,” Hegel wrote, “takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering.” A year ago I launched Praxis as a forum for thinking reflectively about […]
Now that the election is over, it’s time for American freethinkers to turn our attention to some unfinished business. And here’s one thing that should be at the top of […]
In a mid-career essay about his elder contemporary Robert Frost, the poet W. H. Auden observes that “[Thomas] Hardy, [W. B.] Yeats and Frost have all written epitaphs for themselves.” […]
As Obama and Romney attack each other for waging “class warfare,” a new study from the Public Religion Research Institute shows how little anyone really knows about the largest block […]
Mitt Romney, the candidate who has made a career out of shifting his positions to suit the political climate and maximize his electoral prospects, may have gone too far with […]
Jeff DeGraff: At Christmas, I change from one culture into another and yet another still and back again.
I’m surprised to still be writing about blasphemy laws, but it seems the idea just won’t die. At the United Nations this week, the elected leaders of newly democratic Egypt […]
So, here’s the question for today: How should we respond when people we admire make serious missteps? Just so there’s no confusion, I want to say right up front that […]
Many think Justice Anthony Kennedy will cast the decisive vote ending affirmative action as we know it.
The year of magical thinking about marriage, reproduction and vaginas (see reviews of Naomi’s Wolf’s hilariously trashed book) continues. The conservative Heritage Foundation released a report last week that reprises […]
When painter Andrew Wyeth passed away in 2009, the reclusive painter took many of the secrets behind his art to the grave. When I heard that the Brandywine River Museum […]
I was going to flip a coin to decide whether or not to write about the Supreme Court RATS – an acronym a progressive blogger from Daily Kos invented for […]
In some ways the United States and France are unusually similar nations—still enchanted with their 18th century revolutions, eager to export their ideals (via pamphlets, speeches, language schools, paratroopers, whatever […]
Cheers for STEM. But what about the, um, rest of the fabulous, life changing, extraordinary and often more important teachers who don't teach math, engineering, technology or science?
At the Washington Post’s The Fix, Chris Cillizza has this to say about Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein’s must read op-ed from the Sunday Post: The truth of the matter though […]
Phoney-baloney outrage. Black-hat, white-hat exaggeration. Every day, I get emails some activist organization or other, suggesting that the nation hangs by a thread, about to drop into a bottomless pit […]