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There’s an urban legend about a Texas man who takes a rifle to the side of his barn and sprays bullets across the wall, more or less at random. Then he finds the densest clusters of holes and [...]

In 1909, the French ethnographer Arnold van Gennep published a book called “The Rites of Passage.” In it, he explored the rituals that cultures use to transition people from one stage of life to [...]

For much of the past year, Americans have guided their behavior using a kind of cognitive triangulation. First, we’ve judged the risks of a coronavirus infection; second, we’ve assessed our [...]