Internalize the Goal of Seeking Challenging Cognitive Env...

There is one way in which individuals can make their own luck. Internalize the goal of seeking challenging cognitive environments — seek intellectual challenges all the way from choosing the right leisure activities to wanting to marry someone who is intellectually stimulating. The best chance of enjoying enhanced cognitive skills is to fall in love with ideas, or intelligent conversation, or intelligent books, or some intellectual pursuit. If I do that, I create within my own mind a stimulat...

 The Need to Get Off Foreign Oil

New technologies are advancing to the marketplace. but consumers can be wary of change. If they unequivocally demand alternatives to gasoline, for example, the marketplace will be activated, but ±ere is plenty of resistance to overcome. Recently, the president of Shell Oil, John Hoffmeister, expressed his views on world demand for energy and business opportunities ahead. Shell Oil's position, as Hoffmeister explained it, is ±at America will always need foreign oil even as it aggressively deve...

 A Multi-Bodied Alien Considers a Single-Bodied One

Even if there had been no Dataset, even if Johanna Olsndot had not come from the stars, she would still be the most fascinating creature in the world: a pack-equivalent mind in a single body. You could walk right up to her, you could touch her, without the least confusion. It was frightening at first, but all of them quickly felt the attraction. For packs, closeness had always meant mindlessness—whether for sex or battle. Imagine being able to sit by the fire with a friend and carry on an int...