Miller-McCune

Barack Obama’s eloquent plea for a national dialogue on race may go unheeded for a simple psychological reason: The topic makes a whole lot of people uncomfortable, and our favorite way of dealing with anxiety-provoking subjects is to ignore them.

As we reported in February, students who are exposed to the idea that free will is an illusion are more likely to cheat on tests. Not surprisingly, the notion that our actions aren’t truly controlled by our conscious mind seems to undermine our sense of personal responsibility. Well, our ethical foundations eroded a bit more this week.

Watch The Three Stooges get Income Tax Sappy in which Shemp proposes to claim 11 dependents: "My ex-wife and 10 bartenders."

The first issue of Miller-McCune magazine looked at the industry and government response to the E. Coli outbreak of 2006, in which tainted spinach sickened more than 200 people and killed three.

There seems to be a special public delight when religious types get caught with their pants down. Whether it’s that sexual hypocrisy is especially malodorous or that others’ overt religiosity amplifies someone else’s schaudenfreude is tough to say.