At the simplest level, only people who know they do not know everything will be curious enough to find things out.

Kidney disease is a low-profile, unglamorous problem, a disease that disproportionately strikes minorities and the poor. Its celebrity spokesman is blue-collar comedian George Lopez, who received a kidney from his wife.

Medicare is immune from the competitive pressures that force private insurers to pay attention to what patients and doctors want.

In a dynamic, decentralized system of individual choice and responsibility, people do not have to trust any authority but their own.

At the simplest level, only people who know they do not know everything will be curious enough to find things out.

European nations began World War I with a glamorous vision of war, only to be psychologically shattered by the realities of the trenches. The experience changed the way people referred to the glamour of battle; they treated it no longer as a positive quality but as a dangerous illusion.

How we feel about the evolving future tells us who we are as individuals and as a civilization: Do we search for stasis-a regulated, engineered world? Or do we embrace dynamism-a world of constant creation, discovery, and competition?