Tryals

Imagine a man who works hard in his chosen trade. He has honed his skills with long practice and dedication, innovated techniques unknown to his rivals, cleverly sidestepped routine bureaucratic and managerial obstacles, and ultimately employed his talents more profitably and advantageously than any of his competitors. By his greying years he has amassed a considerable fortune. Now he wishes to retire and pass on the accumulated fruits of his hard work to his biological he

Perhaps the problem is that we are so used to making assumptions about property in our daily lives that we hardly think about what the term really means—what property actually is . It has something to do with the root of the word, proper —what is fitting or suitable—and its sibling propriety , meaning an action or reward appropriate to a particular person. The latter once referred to an inherent quality—that those with certain inborn characters had particular things owing

The members of our talkative species have acquired some remarkable notions about personal immortality. Most of us seem vaguely resigned to the likelihood of our death. Eventually. Someday. And yet we go out of our way to put off the seeming inevitability. We fantasize about a cure for cancer. We make extravagant claims for wonder drugs and genetic therapies. We place faith in technologies that might conceivably enhance our natural lifespans, artificially accomplishing

Imagine a deserted island in the middle of a distant ocean. It has never known a human occupant and is too far from any civilized nation to have been charted or claimed. But late one night a group of castaways washes up on its shores, survivors of a terrible storm that has swept the decks of a number of fortuitously passing ships. Let us suppose that these castaways are from many places, that none of them knew any of the others before their stranding, so have no ties or sh

A lottery is a reliable way of getting rich, so long as you’re not the one buying the ticket. To be sure of making money, you need to be the one selling it. If the vendor has designed her lottery well, which is not hard to do, she is almost guaranteed of making a healthy profit. She knows what the lottery will pay out relative to ticket revenues. She knows exactly how to attract buyers. It hardly matters to the seller that someone will take a large share of the revenue a

The Academy is biased against them. So conservatives often say. They frequently complain that they are not fairly or proportionately represented in the academic world—that is, in the formal institutions of knowledge and higher learning. This is where the research is done, the learned consensus formed, the next generation of leaders and thinkers molded and taught. This is where the elite of the well-educated practice their critical thinking skills and gain capacity to chal

Is human nature inherently bad? Yes. Are human beings fundamentally good? Yes. Are these contradictory answers? No, not really. They are just answers to different questions. Each might be convincing in its own limited terms. The problem is that the questions are not very good. Each is designed to elicit only one of two possible answers. Yes or no . Neither one is very useful. But the questions themselves are not meant to promote useful discussion. They are rhetoric