Articles

Hidden gold in college applications

If the gatekeepers at Davidson College had judged the teenager by her ACT score, she probably wouldn’t have gotten in. It was 25 out of a possible 36, and more than three-quarters of the students at Davidson, a liberal-arts school in North Carolina with about 1,800 undergraduates and an acceptance rate of just over 20 […]

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Our politics aren’t keeping up

When the U.S. military trains fighter pilots, it uses a concept called the OODA loop. It stands for observe, orient, decide, act. The idea is that, if your ability to observe, orient, decide and act in a dogfight at 30,000 feet is faster than the other pilot’s, you’ll shoot his plane out of the sky. […]

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Paranoid politics: Will voters believe the hype?

Amid all the media analyses of the prospects of each of the candidates in both political parties, there is remarkably little discussion of the validity—or lack of validity—of the arguments these candidates are using. It is as if what matters this election year is the fate of a relative handful of people running for their […]

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Trump’s rise should prompt GOP to look in mirror

For decades, Republican leaders—desperate to boost dwindling numbers as old white men die and minority populations grow—have embraced anyone who would have them, from corporate CEOs to white supremacists, gun enthusiasts to evangelicals, anti-abortion activists to warmongers.

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