It is now possible to quantify people's levels of happiness pretty accurately by asking them, by observation, and by measuring electrical activity in the brain, in degrees from terrible pain to sublime joy.

Thresholds of pain, indignity and incapacity are entirely personal.

So what really works? Treatments in jail do some good, but it's mostly too late: finding a family and a job or just growing older make most prisoners eventually give up crime.

It is now possible to quantify people's levels of happiness pretty accurately by asking them, by observation, and by measuring electrical activity in the brain, in degrees from terrible pain to sublime joy.

The best care on earth cannot prevent us all dying in the end.

Nothing keeps people together like the exalted conviction that they alone are to be spared that eternal anguish of hell fire to which everyone else will be condemned.

How do you make any sense of history, art or literature without knowing the stories and iconography of your own culture and all the world's main religions?