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1 week ago | 
thespectator.com | Peter Wood
Republicans in the House are considering a bill to make major changes in federal student loans for college, and President Trump is floating the idea of making colleges responsible for borrowers who fail to repay. For decades student loans and their repayment are never far the center of controversy, but it wasn’t always that way. I grew up in the era before massive student debt.
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1 week ago | 
thespectator.com | Peter Wood
Americans are not a naturally gloomy people. We don’t necessarily expect things to go our way, but when they don’t, we can laugh it off. In my part of Vermont there’s a place called Hateful Hill, for example, so-named by stagecoach drivers who had a tough time with the steep road. But Hateful Hill is also a beautiful elevation. Today, even those who don’t “get” Donald Trump need to start seeing the upside.
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1 week ago | 
spectator.com.au | Peter Wood
Americans are not a naturally gloomy people. We don’t necessarily expect things to go our way, but when they don’t, we can laugh it off. In my part of Vermont there’s a place called Hateful Hill, for example, so-named by stagecoach drivers who had a tough time with the steep road.
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3 weeks ago | 
thespectator.com | Peter Wood
The Singer Sewing Machine Company is credited – that’s the right word – with popularizing the idea of the installment plan. Starting in 1856, a customer could buy a sewing machine for a very modest down payment and a rather lengthy commitment to further payments. Isaac Singer copied the idea from a piano company, but he turned it into a model of aggressive marketing to the average household.
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3 weeks ago | 
spectator.com.au | Peter Wood
The Singer Sewing Machine Company is credited – that’s the right word – with popularizing the idea of the installment plan. Starting in 1856, a customer could buy a sewing machine for a very modest down payment and a rather lengthy commitment to further payments. Isaac Singer copied the idea from a piano company, but he turned it into a model of aggressive marketing to the average household.
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3 weeks ago | 
thespectator.com | Peter Wood
This is drumming season. That’s the time of year when the woodpeckers stake out their territories by tapping out tattoos on hollow trees. Road signs or “no trespassing” edicts make an even more impressive racket. I come to Vermont to get away from Midtown Manhattan’s horns and sirens – but this time of year, it’s just a visit to the percussion section. But the real racket isn’t from the birds declaring their sovereignty over the woods.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Peter Jones |Peter Wood |Justin Brierley |Grace Curley
If surveys are to be believed, Generation Z(oomer), aged roughly between thirteen and twenty-eight, have expressed a desire to be ruled by a dictator. That term derives from the Latin dictator, which referred to an official given absolute power (i.e. he was above the law) for a fixed term to do whatever he thought necessary to deal with a clearly identified problem. Take the famous example of Cincinnatus.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Josh Peterson |Katherine Dee |Peter Wood |Neal Pollack
Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was gunned down by Luigi Mangione in New York City on December 4. Surveillance footage hit the internet within hours. Wild speculation spread about the strange gun in the killer’s hands. The elongated barrel, the chamber movements that signaled repeated gun jams, the lack of recoil. Was it a veterinary euthanasia gun? As it turned out, it was a homemade gun, commonly known as a “ghost gun,” printed using 3D technology.
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Dec 12, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Peter Wood
Luigi Mangione is officially the “suspect” in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, but he is plainly the culprit, and public discussion has moved on to his motives. Why would a young man possessed of intellectual gifts, friends, family, good looks, a winning personality and, apparently, lots of money, gun down a man he had never met? This isn’t the kind of question my organization, the National Association of Scholars, normally takes up.
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Aug 16, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Peter Wood |Svitlana Morenets |Nigel Jones |Alexander Horne
Minouche Shafik has reigned as president of Columbia University. Culture wars, like the kind involving actual armies, have casualties. Shafik is the fourth Ivy League president to step down in the last nine months. She was proceeded by Liz Magill at the University of Pennsylvania and Claudine Gay at Harvard.
