Guns on campus, philosophy, sentence diagramming, and more: Required Readings, March 4, 2014

Happy Mardi Gras, RR readers, wherever you are!

This Fat Tuesday we bring you a couple questions. The first is of the rhetorical sort, with an Idaho professor wondering, in light of a bill to permit guns on college and university campuses, “When may I shoot a student?”

Meanwhile, an interview with the author of Plato at the Googleplex asks “Why study philosophy?” The answer, more or less: to challenge one’s own point of view.

I have always been fascinated with the way words connect to make language, and I admit to being one of those freaks who enjoyed diagramming sentences. Which is why I found Pop Chart Lab’s effort to diagram 25 opening sentences of famous novels all kinds of awesome.

A college degree has long been touted as the first step on the road to the American dream. But one author suggests that the U.S. higher education system instead reinforces inequality. What do you think, readers?

Finally, the effort is on once again to repeal the so-called Louisiana Science Education Act, with a bill filed by State Senator Karen Carter Peterson. Supporters of LSEA, including Governor Bobby Jindal, have stated that it permits the teaching of creationism. Here’s hoping that Louisiana gives up LSEA for Lent and beyond.

Required Readings are a list of links that you might find interesting! Look for them to appear every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday morning. Have some links you’d like to share? Submit them on our contact form!

Image by Wesleying