Sonali Kohli

This post has been updated (12:34 p.m. EST)

Think about a weighing scale. You know that it’s going to tell you how much you weigh when you step on it, and that’s probably it. To reach that conclusion you’re mostly using the occipital cortex, in the back of your mind.

A New York University professor was banned this week (paywall) from traveling to the United Arab Emirates, a prime location for NYU’s burgeoning network of international campuses. The professor, who researches labor practices, had been critical of the conditions for migrant construction workers in the country.

On St. Patrick’s Day, when fans of beer and green clothing gather from America to Ireland to celebrate Irish (and not so Irish) culture, it’s worth remarking on just how green the Irish landscape is—even from space.

The good news: the gender wage gap has been decreasing in the US, with women in 2013 making 78.3 cents for every dollar earned by men, up from 60.2 cents in 1980.

A Kappa Sigma fraternity member at University of Maryland, College Park is being investigated by the university for a racist, sexist email sent to six other students at the school over a year ago. Early this morning, the university’s president put out an official statement about the school’s response to the email, which references raping women during rush week and uses offensive language to describe black, Indian and Asian women.

What is the deal with attaching unflattering adjectives to women’s names? There’s a household appliance called the Lazy Susan. Negative Nancy is a stereotype that’s still a part of American headlines and stories.

College tuition in the US continues to increase. A number of small private colleges, though, are offsetting some of these increases by covering a larger share of student tuition and fees.

If Americans get to choose the next Daily Show host, they choose Tina Fey.

Google’s chief financial officer announced in a lengthy note on Google+ yesterday that he will retire as soon as Google finds and trains a replacement. With the average American retiring at 62, the 52-year-old Patrick Pichette (who is Canadian-born) is bowing out a full decade earlier than most.

Parents who show love and affection raise kids with high self-esteem. But be careful not to overdo it: Parents who put their children on a pedestal raise narcissists. It’s a fine line, but one that can define whether your kid will simply be pleased with herself, or she’ll show derision toward others.

Millions of groggy Americans woke up early today wondering whether the daylight does, indeed, need saving. Amid long-standing cases for more uniform time zones and getting rid of daylight saving altogether,  John Oliver educated Americans on the silliness of it all.

Fifty years ago, civil rights demonstrators began a march from Selma, Alabama, to the state’s capital of Montgomery, to advocate for voting rights and to protest the killing of an activist by a state trooper during an earlier demonstration. When Martin Luther King, Jr., Hosea Williams, and about 600 others set out on March 7, 1956, Alabama law enforcement met them with brutal violence. More than 50 demonstrators required medical treatment, and the day was dubbed “Bloody Sunday.” BBC then described injuries as ”skull and limb fractures and suffering the effects of tear gas.”

Racism is so pervasive in the US job market that even black Americans with Harvard degrees are at a disadvantage, according a 2014 study in the journal Social Forces (highlighted in Inside Higher Ed).

You might want to think twice before piling up on birthday gifts for the young one this year.

In recognition that New York City’s population of 8.5 million is nearly one-eighth Muslim, the city has announced that its public schools will close for Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha next school year.

Teenage boys prepare for their futures with internships and job shadowing. Teenage girls, on the other hand, tend to prepare by researching online. That’s according to data released today by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. During international testing in 2012, 15-year-olds from 15 OECD member countries were asked about the methods they use to find out more about their future careers or studies.

Schools around the US are grappling with how to make up the time squandered on snow days, thanks to the blitz of weather-related school closures caused by this year’s gruesome bout of cold weather.

If the trajectory of IQ tests is to be believed, then intelligence is increasing across the world.

Last week, the New York Times published an in-depth piece (paywall) on the excessive use of force at New York’s Attica prison, stemming in large part from a history of violence and a prison riot that left 43 people dead in 1971. Tucked away in the story was this sentence, highlighting a telling American attitude toward a huge part of our history:

You might forget the mundane details of your days, but they’re still hanging out in your brain—they just need a tug of emotion to come spilling out.

Barnes & Noble is spinning off its college business—which runs 714 college bookstores on university campuses around the US—into a separate company.

American Facebook users will soon be able to send rafts of help to friends if they see posts expressing suicidal thoughts, the company announced yesterday. Facebook will notify the flagged user the next time the person signs on, with messages from Facebook that suggest connecting with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, a friend, or “tips and advice on how they can work through these feelings.”

Yes, there are just too many things that have to be done today. But ask yourself, do they all have to be done right now?