Unit 10 Motorism The scene is a petrol station somewhere in England. A queue of cars stretches back over a kilometer down the road. As vehicles move slowly towards the pumps, the air fills with the sound of the car horns. People are getting frustrate...
Unit 9 Why French Live Longer In 1965, a French lawyer, Andre Raffray, gambled on statistics and lost. He acquired the flat of a 90-year-old woman, Jeanne Calment, agreeing to pay her a lifetime pension of 2,500 francs a month in exchange. It seemed...
Unit 8 The Theory of Cosmetic Relativity I am the kind of person who likes to be on time for things. I like to be early. Let's say I need to catch a flight leaving at 4 pm. In planning my drive to the airport, I will factor in a cushion: to allow for...
Unit 7 The Rules of Game Italians love women. Russians love Vodka. What do Americans love? They love rules. There are thousands of books dedicated to the idea that whatever you are doing, you can learn to do it better. And they all seem to come from...
Unit 6 Lost and Found The weekend was over, and Begbie had returned to town, restless, and strangely unhappy. There was within him a curious sense of something lost. He unpacked his suitcase listlessly, compared its contents with the catalogue of his...
Unit 5 Two Basic Ways to See Growth There are two basic ways to see growth: one as a product, the other as a process. People have generally viewed personal growth as an external result or product that can be identified and measured. The worker who ge...
Unit 4 September 11 and My Turn One of the things I always believed is that no matter how bad something is, you can take something positive out of it. The one time I wasn't sure of that was on September 11. I happened to wake up early that day. I tur...
Unit 3 My Un-wedding Day The local bishop in the western Canadian city of Nelson, was going to perform the ceremony. July 18, 1987, would be the day, just before my 37th birthday, when I would get married for the first time. Her name was Helen. She w...
Unit 2 Mirror Miracle We are all more obsessed with our appearance than we like to admit. Concern about appearance is quite normal and understandable. Attractive people have distinct advantages in our society. Studies show: * Attractive children are...
Unit 1 The Weight of Paper The arrival of computer everywhere in the workplace would, some technological forecasters predicted, soon make paper a thing of the past. And guess what? Bill Gate's vision of a computer on every desk has been more or less...