Introduction “In 2004, five researchers, including the Nobel Prize winning behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman, did a study showing which activities gave 909 working women in Texas the most pleasure. Child care ranked sixteenth out of nineteen behind preparing food, behind watching TV, behind napping, behind shopping, behind housework. In an ongoing…

“Now there are folks who are trying to rethink gravity itself. They suspect gravity might not even be a fundamental force, but an emergent force. …

“Every so often, a car turned off Sixth Street to navigate Arthur Avenue, hemmed in by the snow, and that’s when the boys would take aim. Jori packed a tight one and let it fly. The car jerked to a stop, and a man jumped out. The boys ran inside…

Introduction “original, n. A thing of singular or unique character; a person who is different from other people in an appealing or interesting way; a person of fresh initiative or inventive capacity.” “To get Firefox or Chrome, you have to demonstrate some resourcefulness and download a different browser. Instead of accepting…

Introduction “Many people have assumed that, with billions of dollars of foreign investment piling into Vietnam, political change will inevitably follow. But liberalisation only began because of the need to feed and employ a burgeoning population and even now its limits are rigorously policed. The trappings of freedom are apparent on…

MYTH 1: ALL THE REAL INDIANS DIED OFF “In 1900 the US census counted approximately a quarter of a million Indians, a small fraction of the Indigenous population in 1492 (even based on a modest population estimate of ten million).” “In one study, Jeani O’Brien sought to understand how Indians…

Introduction “1 use the terms “state socialism” and “state socialist” to refer to the governments of the Soviet Union and Bulgaria during the twentieth century. Although ruled by “communist” parties, both nations considered themselves to be in the socialist stage of the Marxist developmental framework, in which “communism” was the ideal…

Ancient History “Land was another prize. The Romans relied on their colonies in north Africa for vital grain shipments to feed the burgeoning population of Rome; they named one of their coastal provinces Africa after a Berber tribe known as the Afri who lived in the region of modern Tunisia. …

Introduction “Enneagram teaches us that there are nine different ways of experiencing the world and nine different ways of answering these basic questions about life: Who am I? Why am I here? and Why do I do the things I do? How we build and maintain relationships varies significantly from one…