ARCHIVE.

Give randomly jiggling atoms long enough and, very rarely, they could fall into the shape of a single working brain, complete with memories of a life it never lived. Some models of the universe seem to predict far more of these lonely minds than ordinary people. Physicists don't take that as news about reality. They take it as a sign that a theory has gone wrong.

An inclusionary housing quota doesn't build anything by itself. It's a condition attached to new projects, a share of homes at capped prices or a fee instead, and what it produces depends on what gets built under it.

Swap a ship's planks one at a time and every repair looks harmless. Then someone builds a second ship from the old planks, and "the same ship" stops being an easy phrase.

One grain of sand is not a heap, and one more grain never seems to make the difference. Follow that thought all the way and you end up somewhere absurd.

Things can get better and people can still feel worse off. It depends on who they're comparing themselves with.

Your brain can sort colours, sounds and memories, and in principle you could explain all that sorting without anyone needing to be home. Yet tasting your morning coffee feels like something from the inside. Science has several serious rival accounts of why. They disagree about almost everything, except that the question is worth asking.