The smartest groups, then, are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other.

Being unemployed is even more disastrous for individuals than you'd expect. Aside from the obvious harm - poverty, difficulty paying off debts - it seems to directly affect people's health, particularly that of older workers.

In the heart of the Great Depression, millions of American workers did something they'd never done before: they joined a union. Emboldened by the passage of the Wagner Act, which made collective bargaining easier, unions organized industries across the country, remaking the economy.

Disasters redistribute money from taxpayers to construction workers, from insurance companies to homeowners, and even from those who once lived in the destroyed city to those who replace them. It's remarkable that this redistribution can happen so smoothly and quickly, with devastated regions reinventing themselves in a matter of months.

Tough times have always lent themselves to nativist sentiments and closed-door policies. But in the case of highly skilled immigrants these policies are a recipe for stagnation.

Besides great climates and lovely beaches, California and Greece share a fondness for dysfunctional politics and feckless budgeting.

I typically don't adopt the ascetic approach. In part, that's because I do use the Net for research even as I'm writing (to check facts, or so on). But I think it's also because I find the possibility of distraction comforting.