Regrettably, even I have yet to visit Monticello, the estate of third U.S. president Thomas Jefferson, who spent more than forty years designing, dismantling, and reimagining this "essay in architecture," as he called it.  The property is regarded a national treasure -- both for its historical significance and beauty. It's perched atop a lofty hill in Albemarle County, Virginia, not far from Jefferson's birthplace of Shadwell.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt once wrote, "Monticello speaks to me as an expression of the personality of its builder."  Indeed, if you were to pick the president with the widest range of hobbies and abilities, Jefferson would have to be in the Top 3. He was a writer, inventor, philosopher, architect, scientist, scholar, gardener, statesman, founder of the University of Virginia, viticulturalist, and the list goes on. Unlike any of the other 43 men to take office, Jefferson was a polymath -- a true intellectual and Renaissanc...

In the Republican debate on Tuesday, senator Marco Rubio said the following: "We need more welders and less philosophers." If the point Rubio was trying to drive home is that we need more people in stable, well-paying jobs, I agree -- but I don't think he articulated it properly. His statement, in my opinion, smacks of anti-intellectualism. As I've stated in many of my posts, we live in a time where being intellectually-driven puts you in the minority. Conversing about the solar system or the American Revolution isn't as "cool" or easy as talking about the Kardashians. One thing a social psychology professor I had in college once told my class that has since stayed firmly etched in my mind: Human beings are cognitive misers; we are naturally inclined to waste as few mental resources as possible. Is it any wonder, then, that most people can't name the capitals of five U.S. states? Or that many don't know when the Civil War took place and...