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We’ve heard a lot of bad apologies lately. What makes a good one?
Think of some of the excuses, denials and apologies we've heard in the last few months. Film producer and alleged abuser Harvey Weinstein urging dismissal of a federal sexual misconduct suit lodged against him because actress Meryl Streep once described their working relationship as "respectful." --- Roy Lewicki, professor emeritus of management and human resources at The Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business, started focusing on apologies in the wake of JetBlue's detailed explanation of a major equipment shutdown in New York, Tiger Woods's mea culpa for extramarital affairs, and British Petroleum's attempt to atone after the deadly Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
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Food for Thought: Was Cooking a Pivotal Step in Human Evolution?
The shift to a cooked-food diet was a decisive point in human history. The main topic of debate is when, exactly, this change occurred. All known human societies eat cooked foods, and biologists generally agree cooking could have had major effects on how the human body evolved. For example, cooked foods tend to be softer than raw ones, so humans can eat them with smaller teeth and weaker jaws. Cooking also increases the energy they can get from the food they eat. Starchy potatoes and other tubers, eaten by people across the world, are barely digestible when raw. Moreover, when humans try to eat more like chimpanzees and other primates, we cannot extract enough calories to live healthily.
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How To Break Your Phone Addiction
I got my first smartphone in the summer of 2012, and ever since, I’ve found myself wishing I had stuck with my flip phone. It’s not that I hate my iPhone, exactly, but I frequently hate how I use it. I check it all the time, especially when I’m in the middle of hard work requiring concentration and effort. When I’m bored, I look at whatever the internet is serving up to me, often getting anxiety-provoking information I’d rather not ruminate about right then. I feel nervous about being “off the grid” if I don’t have my phone with me, even if I’m unreachable only for an hour or two. And yet, despite all these ill effects, I keep carrying and checking my phone.
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Need a Date? First, Get a Dog
Something happens whenever Aaron Morrill takes his large and fluffy mutt, Donut, for her daily walk, and it’s something that always catches him a bit by surprise. Women gather. They flock to Donut — “a particularly cute dog,” he says — and he often finds himself surrounded by a gaggle of young women who want to know how old she is (4), if he raised her from a puppy (yes) and if they can pet her (sure). “They see you with a dog and all their defenses go down,” said Mr. Morrill, 59, a businessman in Jersey City, N.J. “They assume you must be a decent human being.
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An expert in the craft examines Oval Office profanities
Now that we know that the discourse in Donald Trump’s White House is about as vile and vulgar as the banter in a rundown barroom just before last call, I figured it was time to talk dirty. This column is going to lead the league in asterisks and dashes — those typographical stand-ins for the words you can’t use in a family newspaper, words that used to compel mothers everywhere to run for a bar of soap to wash out the mouths of their profane kids. Those are the words that have been at the center of Tim Jay’s professional universe for more than40 years.
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Why We Should Lower the Voting Age to 16
The young people who have come forward to call for gun control in the wake of the mass shooting at their high school in Parkland, Fla., are challenging the tiresome stereotype of American kids as indolent narcissists whose brains have been addled by smartphones. They offer an inspiring example of thoughtful, eloquent protest. Unfortunately, when it comes to electing lawmakers whose decisions about gun control and other issues affect their lives, these high schoolers lack any real power. This needs to change: The federal voting age in the United States should be lowered from 18 to 16.
