Working societies — if they are to endure, grow, and cohere, if they are to prosper, hang together, and really mature — need moral universals. Moral universals are simply things that people believe everyone should have. In the UK, those things — those moral universals — are healthcare and media and welfare. In…
A generation ago 70 percent of children played outside; today the rate is down to 30 percent.209 In 2008 the nine-year-old son of the journalist Lenore Skenazy begged her to let him go home by himself on the New York subway. She agreed, and he made it home without incident. When she wrote about the vignette in a New…
People have wracked their brains for an explanation of benzene and how the celebrated man [Kekulé] managed to come up with the concept of the benzene theory. With regard to the last point especially, a friend of mine who is a farmer and has a lively interest in chemistry has asked me a question which I would like to…
Outside our consciousness there lies the cold and alien world of actual things. Between the two stretches the narrow borderland of the senses. No communication between the two worlds is possible excepting across the narrow strip. For a proper understanding of ourselves and of the world, it is of the highest importance…
But where, says some, is the King of America? I'll tell you. Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the…
"Why did you not come when I called you?" said the blind man. "Must you be led like a child? Cannot you hear the path as you walk?" Nunez laughed. "I can see it," he said. "There is no such word as see," said the blind man, after a pause. "Cease this folly and follow the sound of my feet." Nunez followed, a little…
But when she examined the record of history, Betzig was stunned. Her simplistic prediction that power is used for sexual success was confirmed again and again. Only in the past few centuries in the West has it failed. Not only that, in most polygamous societies there were elaborate social mechanisms to ensure that a…
Your 3-year-old has declared that he and the closet are going to Asia. Asia, like America, is a concept that depends on our ability to think symbolically. America exists only because a group of people got together more than 200 years ago and decided that this great mass of land directly to the south of Canada should…