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For most of the last century, wages in poorer parts of America rose faster than wages in richer places, as inventions were put to work in the hinterlands. After Henry Ford invented the Model T, for example, workers on assembly lines all over the Midwest built it. Now it’s just the opposite. Bright young people from…
Our findings, especially those that examine household decision-making, emphasize that while the return to higher education is high, it is not a safe investment for many households. The deterrent effect of risk survives the ability of agents to feasibly debt finance college with student loans. The main force here is…
The Chinese characters here are 回饋 (made out of black and white sesame seeds). You should recognize 回 if you have been following me on Facebook. 回 means return. 饋 means ‘offering food to someone’ or ‘gift’. It is made out of 食 and 貴. 食 means ‘to eat’ or ‘food’. 貴 means something precious or expensive. 回 (return) 饋…
Strange is our situation here upon earl Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men—above e all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own…
The power of man to do work—one man-power—is, in its purely physical sense, now an insignificant accomplishment, and could only again justify his existence if other sources of power failed. ... Curious persons in cloisteral seclusion are experimenting with new sources of energy, which, if ever harnessed, would make…
Nobody knows more than a tiny fragment of science well enough to judge its validity and value at first hand. For the rest he has to rely on views accepted at second hand on the authority of a community of people accredited as scientists. But this accrediting depends in its turn on a complex organization. For each…
I purpose, in return for the honour you do us by coming to see what are our proceedings here, to bring before you, in the course of these lectures, the Chemical History of a Candle. I have taken this subject on a former occasion; and were it left to my own will, I should prefer to repeat it almost every year—so…
The principle thing I stand for is, I suppose, not a "return to nature," which is a phrase capable of a quite childish interpretation, but the return to a poetic relation to nature. Man is out of relation to his background…When man is in a poetic relation to his background, he achieves a religious sense of life, and…
Science in England is not a profession: its cultivators are scarcely recognised even as a class. Our language itself contains no single term by which their occupation can be expressed. We borrow a foreign word [Savant] from another country whose high ambition it is to advance science, and whose deeper policy, in…
As a new parent, you may feel sometimes that all children do is take from you, but it is just a form of giving in disguise. Kids present you with an ear infection, but what they are really giving you is patience. They present you with a tantrum, but they are really giving you the honor of witnessing a developing…
I have on my own part made it my care and study that the things which I shall propound should not only be true, but should also be presented to men's minds, how strangely soever preoccupied and obstructed, in a manner not harsh or unpleasant. It is but reasonable, however (especially in so great a restoration of…
This much is certain: The future of the planet wall not be a reprise of the past, a return to "a state of nature." The future will certainly be technological, increasingly globally homogeneous, and, in the short run at least, will embody the connectivity of the computer chip and the contrivances of genetic…
The result of the new economics is that people are often paid for their attention, implicitly or explicitly. They get to see television free in return for watching commercials. Their magazines and newspapers are subsidized or supplied free by advertisers. Nowadays bus shelters, baseball stadiums, and even those little…
19 Man's fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath [a] ; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless. 20 All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. 21 Who knows if the spirit of man rises…
To the ancient Greeks the ocean was an endless stream that flowed forever around the border of the world, ceaselessly turning upon itself like a wheel, the end of earth, the beginning of heaven. This ocean was boundless; it was infinite. If a person were to venture far out into it--were such a course thinkable--he…