Since the bigger gorillas leave chimps only a fraction of the quantity of food bonobos get, each chimp must fight ferociously to survive, including killing other chimpanzees

In my business - SAT tutoring - you get used to sighs. A client's mother frets over the sheer amount of work her daughter has to do to get her score up, until she reaches the resigned moment when she will sigh and observe that no one thought you could prepare for the SAT back when she took it - it was 'untutorable.'

With few exceptions, the publishing industry has come to a consensus: if a book has a young protagonist, and if its worldview is primarily interested in the questions that crop up when coming of age, then it's a young adult novel.

Higher SAT scores mean better college matriculation rates. So it's no wonder that private schools in ultra-competitive environments would grease the qualifying process as much as possible.

When I was a teenager, what I most wanted to read were fantasy novels. Not Tolkien and Malory, but sword-and-sorcery pulp. I craved glowy blue magic, chainmail bikinis, dragons with unpronounceable names.

Anguish over the loss of a loved one or feelings of helplessness have complex roots. But in the end, they make you feel bad because they adjust your brain's chemistry. Happiness and its opposite are both electro-chemical reactions; those reactions are temporary and ineffable and could even have hidden benefits.