Language pedants hew to an oral tradition of shibboleths that have no basis in logic or style, that have been defied by great writers for centuries, and that have been disavowed by every thoughtful usage manual.

As women are empowered, violence can come down, for a number of reasons. By all measures, men are the more violent gender.

We're living in primate heaven. We're warm, dry, we're not hungry, we don't have fleas and ticks and infections. So why are we so miserable?

There is no society ever discovered in the remotest corner of the world that has not had something that we would consider the arts. Visual arts - decoration of surfaces and bodies - appears to be a human universal.

The stirrings of morality emerge early in childhood. Toddlers spontaneously offer toys and help to others and try to comfort people they see in distress.

The costs of an ignorance of science are nor just practical ones like misbegotten policies, forgone cures, and a unilateral disarmament in national competitiveness. There is a moral cost as well. It is an astonishing fact about our species that we understand so much about the history of the universe. the forces that make it tick, the stuff it's made of; the origin of living things, and the machinery of life. A failure to nurture this knowledge shows a philistine indifference to the magnificent achievements humanity is capable of; like allowing a great work of art to molder in a warehouse.

Today we take it for granted that war happens in smaller, poorer and more backward countries.