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By the early ’90s, so long as one had the good sense to major in the humanities — all bets were off in the STEM fields — it was nearly impossible to get a final grade below a B-minus at an elite college.

According to a 2012 study, the average college GPA, which in the 1930s was a C-plus, had risen to a B at public universities and a B-plus at private schools. At Duke, Pomona and Harvard, D’s and F’s combine for just 2 percent of all grades

Some blame students’ consumer mentality, a few see a correlation with small class sizes (departments with falling enrollments want to keep students happy), and many cite a general loss of rigor in a touchy-feely age. 

Autonomous cars aren’t just cars. They’re infrastructure. If the U.S. wants to avoid its past mistakes, American cities have to start thinking about how to use autonomous cars to make their downtown areas more efficient for humans, not just for machines. That could mean aggressive congestion pricing, limiting the number of AVs in an area, prohibiting certain companies from operating such cars, or even capping ownership. Today these may seem like radical steps. But compared to a future where every family and company tries to operate an autonomous car in the same metro area, it may feel like pure old-fashioned conservatism.

There is a future where a handful of efficient, self-driving cars operated by a responsible fleet manager could return American cities to a superior age, where people mixed promiscuously around the streets, rather than be confined to narrow sidewalks to maximize space for cars.

Regnerus relies on the concept of sexual economics, in which mating is seen as a marketplace. In this view, women are gatekeepers to a limited, highly desired product: sex. In exchange for access to this product, men proffer commitment, fidelity and resources.

Regnerus believes that the sharp drop in the value of sex has shifted the market, even its more conservative parts, leading to a massive overall slowdown in the creation of committed relationships like marriage, in large part because men see less of a need to make themselves into appealing long-term partners.

among younger women, especially those who want that sort of traditional relationship, there increasingly seems to be a vague dissatisfaction with the state of things. Why, when women have gained so much power, are we so often at impasse in our romantic relationships? Why do men our age seem so unmotivated to grow up and so ambivalent about committing? As uncomfortable as it may be to contemplate, the shifts this book describes may provide an inkling of an explanation.

One of the island’s most distinctive features, though, remains hidden: the Jurong Rock Caverns, which hold 126 million gallons of crude oil.

the Jurong Rock Caverns are less an emblem of the marvels of technology than of the anxiety of a nation.

Amy Wax, a tenured professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, had made disparaging remarks about the school’s black students and suggested that some of them should not be at the school. After the video of her remarks came to light earlier this month, the school announced that she was barred from teaching first-year students and would only teach her specific areas of expertise – but would also maintain her tenure, salary and seniority.

In an interview last September on the online video chat platform Bloggingheads, Wax told host Glenn Loury that Penn’s affirmative action policies had negative consequences for beneficiary students themselves.

“Here’s a very inconvenient fact, Glenn: I don’t think I’ve ever seen a black student graduate in the top quarter of the class, and rarely, rarely, in the top half,” she said. “I can think of one or two students who scored in the first half of my required first-year Civil Procedure course.”

The government’s repayment policy is an extension of its approach to British tourists or other citizens who get in trouble abroad and need help returning to the United Kingdom. People 18 years or older have to reimburse the government.That age limit came into effect after The Guardian newspaper reported two years ago on a 17-year-old British teenager who sought help at the British embassy in Islamabad to escape a forced marriage in 2014. She had to sign a loan agreement and hand in her British passport before being allowed to return to the United Kingdom, and ultimately was billed more than $1,000, with her passport being held until she paid.

Just as the government would not charge a crime victim for investigating a crime, it should not charge women for bringing them back home, said Alison Gardner, an assistant professor of sociology who studies modern slavery at the University of Nottingham. She said a $1,000 debt could be devastating for a young woman whose family has tried to force her to marry and could disown her if she escaped.“It’s an example of this general policy of pushing costs onto the people who have incurred the misfortune, which drives a cycle of increased vulnerability,” she said.

What impact has the modern media environment had on the 2016 campaign?

modern media realities make everything intellectually thinner, shallower. Everything moves fast; we talk not of the scandal of the day but the scandal of the hour, reducing a great event, a presidential campaign, into an endless river of gaffes.

This year I am seeing something, especially among the young of politics and journalism. They have received most of what they know about political history through screens.

Since the morning of January 3, 1868, Japan has struggled to answer one question: What does it mean to be modern and Japanese? It was on that date that a group of mid-level samurai and imperial courtiers announced the formation of a new government to be ruled by the 16-year old Meiji emperor, thus ending two-and-a-half centuries of control by the Tokugawa samurai family.

several generations of growth and development have not erased the feeling that Japan remains in the midst of a transformation pitting tradition against modernity.

Perhaps even more so today, 25 years since their economy cratered, Japanese people question what kind of society they want, how much to incorporate Western concepts of individualism, how much capitalist disruption to permit, and how to deal with the threat posed by hostile foreign countries—the same questions unleashed by the events of 1868.

With Xi’s Power Grab, China Joins New Era of Strongmen

There was a time, not so long ago, when a Chinese leader setting himself up as ruler for life would have stirred international condemnation for bucking the global trend toward greater democracy. Now, such an action seems fully in keeping with moves by many countries in the other direction.

She and other experts described this “authoritarian reversion” as a global contagion that has undermined the abiding faith that forging liberal democracies and market economies was the surest path to prosperity and equality.

Imagine, if you will, that millions of hard-working Americans finally reached their boiling point. Roiled by an unsettling pattern of economic booms and busts; powerless before a haughty coastal elite that in recent decades had effectively arrogated the nation’s banks, means of production and distribution, and even its information highway; burdened by the toll that open borders and free trade imposed on their communities; incensed by rising economic inequality and the concentration of political power—what if these Americans registered their disgust by forging a new political movement with a distinctly backward-looking, even revanchist, outlook? What if they rose up as one and tried to make America great again?

To clarify: This scenario has nothing whatsoever to do with Donald Trump and the modern Republican Party. Rather, it is a question that consumed social and political historians for the better part of a century. They clashed sharply in assessing the essential character of the Populist movement of the late 1800s—a political and economic uprising that briefly drew under one tent a ragtag coalition of Southern and Western farmers (both black and white), urban workers, and utopian newspapermen and polemicists.

But does that point of view hold up after 2016? The populist demons Trump has unleashed—revanchist in outlook, conspiratorial in the extreme, given to frequent expressions of white nationalism and antisemitism—bear uncanny resemblance to the Populist movement that Hofstadter described as bearing a fascination with “militancy and nationalism … apocalyptic forebodings … hatred of big businessmen, bankers, and trusts … fears of immigrants … even [the] occasional toying with anti-Semitic rhetoric.” A year into Trump’s presidency, the time is right to ask whether Hofstadter might have been right after all about Populism, and what that possibly tells us about the broader heritage of such movements across the ages.

The treaty of marriage between Henry V of England and Catherine of France, daughter of Charles VI, sworn in the Cathedral of Troyes on May 21st, 1420, marks the darkest hours of the French monarchy in the fifteenth century. In thirty-one short articles, the treaty made Henry the son of Charles VI and heir, with Henry's own heirs, to the Crown of France. It also made Henry regent until the king's death and gave him the government of the kingdom of France. The 'so-called' dauphin, Charles, was thought to be definitively isolated, having already forfeited his rights after he had had John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, assassinated at Montereau on September 10th, 1419

On the borders of the territories where he strove to impose his authority as regent and heir to France, the Dukes of Brittany (John V) and of Burgundy (Philip the Good), contrived to safeguard their de facto independence

The unexpected death of Henry V on August 31st, 1422, and the long-awaited death of Charles VI (October 21st, 1422), the brutal regency of the Duke of Bedford, and the Amiens alliance of April 1423 between the three dukes (Bedford, Brittany, Burgundy), all contributed, to different extents, to aggravate the political conflict

In June 1488, just three years after Henry VII’s unlikely victory in the English Midlands, James IV became king on the battlefield of Sauchieburn south of Stirling, close to the spot where Robert Bruce had won his great victory over the English at Bannockburn in 1314.

James IV was brought up at Stirling Castle by his mother, Margaret of Denmark, alongside his two younger brothers. The queen had produced three healthy sons but she and James III led separate lives after an earlier rebellion in 1482. The king, who had managed to alienate all of his siblings, believed that his wife had sided with his brother, the Duke of Albany, when the duke returned from exile in France and invaded Scotland with the future Richard III of England. James III seems also to have felt that his eldest son was tainted by contact with Albany and perhaps considered barring the boy from the succession

James IV was ruler of a land famously described in a letter written by its own nobility in 1320 to Pope John XXII as ‘the tiny country of Scotia lying on the very edge of the inhabited world’. Scotland was poor, cold and wet. Edinburgh, its capital, held only 12,000 citizens, in contrast to London’s 50,000. Yet, like its new monarch, the country was not inward-looking.  Difficulty of travel by road over rugged terrain meant that it had long relied on sea routes for transport and communication with the wider world. The kings of Scotland were determined not to be overlooked in Europe. They forged trade and political alliances with Scandinavia and were long-standing allies of the French, who viewed Scotland as a brake on the ambitions of England. The two countries that occupied the island of Britain were natural enemies, nowhere more so than in the Borders, where centuries-old feuds and the violence that fuelled them were adjudicated by special courts composed of English and Scots. But James III had attempted a policy of conciliation with England that was unpopular with his aristocracy and Henry VII, a cautious man, did not relish constant war with his northern neighbour. It remained to be seen how James IV would approach Anglo-Scottish relations and how he would develop his ambition to make Scotland a European power.

the dominant causes of this skew toward wealth can be traced to meritocracy.

On average, children whose parents make more than $200,000 a year score about 250 points higher on the SAT than children whose parents make $40,000 to $60,000

Only about one in 200 children from the poorest third of households achieves SAT scores at Yale’s median

History guided them as they crafted the American system of governance. This included the European traditions they were partially rejecting, but also elements from an older generation of republics that they wished to copy, especially the Roman Republic.

Not surprisingly, then, Rome inspired many features of our own Constitution, including its checks and balances, bicameral legislature, term limits and age requirements. In some cases, the Founders copied terms straight out of the Roman constitution: words like senate, capitol and committee.

A tour through the artwork of the U.S. Capitol today reveals early Americans saw the Roman ideals of farming, working hard, raising strong families and participating in local government as the building blocks for a strong national republic.

A prestigious team of medical scientists has projected that by 2030, nearly one in two adults will be obese, and nearly one in four will be severely obese.

In as many as 29 states, the prevalence of obesity will exceed 50 percent, with no state having less than 35 percent of residents who are obese,

in 25 states the prevalence of severe obesity will be higher than one adult in four, and severe obesity will become the most common weight category among women, non-Hispanic black adults and low-income adults nationally.

(CNN)In 2020, Women's History Month comes amid a time of social upheaval and global fear over the coronavirus pandemic and resulting political turmoil. While for many the 2020 presidential race is now an afterthought, this Women's History Month does also mark the departure of the last remaining women candidates from the 2020 presidential field -- during an election year that also marks the centennial of women's suffrage.

Here is a glimpse at those inspiring stories and figures—who they are, what they've meant to these women in the past and what they mean to them now, looking forward in 2020 and beyond. As trailblazing tennis legend Billie Jean King once said to me, "Whatever you care about, you can make a difference. You really can. Don't ever underestimate yourself. Do not underestimate the human spirit."

Madeleine Albright is the first woman to serve as US Secretary of State. She is the author of multiple books, including the shortly forthcoming "Hell and Other Destinations: A 21st-Century Memoir."

The World Health Organization says the virus that causes COVID-19 doesn't seem to linger in the air or be capable of spreading through the air over distances more than about three feet.

But at least one expert in virus transmission said it's way too soon to know that.

"I think the WHO is being irresponsible in giving out that information. This misinformation is dangerous," says Dr. Donald Milton, an infectious disease aerobiologist at the University of Maryland School of Public Health.

it’s no wonder Detroit — and places like it — are underwater in this crisis. Milwaukee, Chicago and New Orleans have all seen black people absorbing the full force of the outbreak. This virus is poised to rip through every black neighborhood in America.

I represent Ward 5 on the Minneapolis City Council, but where I’m from, people just call it the Northside. The short version, again, goes like this: Our corner of the city has always been plagued by flooding and weak soils, so naturally, it’s where the city parked its “undesirable” populations. In the early part of the 20th century, that population was Jewish, then black, then Southeast Asian.

Minneapolis is not unique in its use of redlining and restrictive covenants that kept blacks from owning property. Minneapolis is not unique in using the construction of highways to annihilate black neighborhoods. Minneapolis is not unique in placing its worst polluters in and near its black and brown neighborhoods. And unfortunately, we are also not unique in our failure to seriously seek a remedy to these harms.

“The federal government has essentially found a workaround by purchasing location data used by marketing firms rather than going to court on a case-by-case basis,” The Journal reported. “Because location data is available through numerous commercial ad exchangesAn ad trafficking system through which advertisers, publishers and networks meet and do business via a unified platform. An ad exchange allows advertisers and publishers to use the same technological platform, services and methods, and "speak the same language" in order to exchange data, set prices and ultimately serve an ad. Glossary, government lawyers have approved the programs and concluded that the Carpenter ruling doesn’t apply.”

Last year, a Times Opinion investigation found that claims about the anonymity of location data are untrue since comprehensive records of time and place easily identify real people. Consider a commute: Even without a name, how many phones travel between a specific home and specific office every day?

The courts are a ponderous and imperfect venue for protecting Fourth Amendment rights in an age of rapid technological advancement. Exhibit A is the notion that the Carpenter ruling applies only to location data captured by cellphone towers and not to location data streamed from smartphone apps, which can produce nearly identical troves of information.

In essence, he was raising an issue that economists have long grappled with: How can a society assess the trade-off between economic well-being and health?

“Why is nobody putting some numbers on the economic costs of a monthlong or a yearlong shutdown against the lives saved? The whole discipline is well equipped for it. But there is some reluctance for people to stick their neck out.”

There is, however, a widespread consensus among economists and public health experts that lifting the restrictions would impose huge costs in additional lives lost to the virus — and deliver little lasting benefit to the economy.