A Career Without a Diagnosis
The popular view of careers offers two caricatures: only the unprincipled get to the top, or it’s enough to do good work and the system will reward the deserving on…
Let the joke live out its life
When someone starts a joke you know, it is easy to stop them: I know this one. Technically this saves time. Socially it says the teller’s pleasure has no value.…
Statistics Against Fate
The average preference among women for slightly older partners doesn’t prescribe a choice to any particular woman; a raised divorce rate under a certain style of behaviour doesn’t assign divorce…
Beauty: The Public Rating and the Private Taste
Ugliness has one advantage over beauty: it doesn’t fade with time. — Serge Gainsbourg In 1878 Francis Galton set out to obtain the face of a criminal. He took photographs…
Adults Without Halos
Children’s culture rests on a convenient fiction: an adult knows better for the simple reason that he is an adult. Age does increase experience, but it issues no guarantee of…
A proving ground with consequences
Youth really does let you try out several versions of yourself. You can change hobbies, friends, style, educational route and your idea of a future profession. A mistake at seventeen…