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jxs

It clearly depends on the class! Some 'reading' classes can be far more conceptually challenging than simpler 'pset' classes, and vice versa. If you're just thinking of 'difficulty' as 'the amount of work required to do well', then some Gov classes (with hundreds of pages of reading a week) will quite clearly be harder than, say, some simple bio classes.

jxs

Marriage—or at least a lifetime commitment between two people—has sprung up independently in many cultures across the world. While one might argue that the effects of evolution no longer 'apply' to contemporary society, it's clear that the requirements of childrearing favor two-party lifetime (or 'marital') commitments. These findings together seem to imply that this type of commitment has its roots in innate human needs.

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HLH

I definitely agree with this on a personal level. However I think that this statement generalizes and tries to tell people what they should and shouldn't enjoy, which I think is a tough argument to make. For instance, I think if someone is dedicated to being a doctor, and is therefore dedicated to learning and doing well in school to get there, but might not intrinsically find it rewarding, that they still have a very admirable reason for their education and doing what they are doing, even if it is a step.

jxs

I also think it's important to consider 'education' as a very broad term. The contemporary student's education extends far beyond the reaches of their institutionalized learning; if we include education gleaned from following current events, reading for pleasure, watching cooking shows, etc, we might find that a lot more people agree upon the intrinsic rewards education has to offer.

David K

How can you say no to this? http://www.funnyphotos.net.au/userimages/user756_1158817368.jpg

jxs

Isn't it the point that it's ugly?

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jxs

And the salad bars are really minimal.

David K

I wouldn't say a "moral" obligation, especially since the meal plan is opt-in. In theory you could eat off campus, or not on the meal plan. That being said, there's a pretty high barrier to entry, so having more variety (and healthier options) is a must.

David K

We are built to be afraid of death and survive as long as possible.

Stone

Yet opinions/emotional reactions to death vary widely. It seems that we must accept that humans have some control over their stance towards death. And to say that we SHOULD be afraid of death because were are evolutionarily biased to fearing death is committing the naturallistic fallacy.

David K

It's hard to know when you start dating whether it will work out, or what things will be like.

KS

I'm interested to see what arguments can be summoned against this; I myself occasionally look at an e-mail during a lull in a lecture, but I don't understand the people who, say, watch videos throughout the entirety of lecture. Why not just ditch?

AP

Here is one, the one that applies to me lots of the time: you might just find the vast majority of a lecture unnecessary, but a small part necessary. If a course is progressing extremely slowly, I can faze out the redundant 45 minutes of every lecture and just pay intermittent attention to the new 15 minutes (actually in one of my classes now it's more like 85 minutes to 5 minutes). It makes sense. Whispering in class though, who does that, unless you're Sanders or the SC? That sounds actually annoying.

Matthew Chartier

Patriots and nationalists tend to overvalue a lot of things which they associate strongly with their country, but if the point being made here is that democracy is not an ideal worthy of some reasonable amount of admiration in excess of that afforded other forms of government, then I disagree. Democratic government as implemented in the government of the United States is by no means perfect, but the central principles of democracy are sound. Every person who lives under a government should be given the right to participate in the decision-making process. The obvious drawback to democracy is that it is slow and often lacking in unified purpose, but I will gladly take a less efficient government over one in which power is held and exercised effectively but arbitrarily. "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." - Churchill