The whole "Protestant work ethic" thing always sounded a little suspiciously ethnocentric to me. (Even though I'm only a p short of waspism myself) I think it's more accurate to call it the "Immigrant" work ethic. Someone with enough gumption to cross an ocean for a new life is ...

I also know that soil in the northern hemisphere is infinitely better suited for agriculture than in the southern hemisphere because of fairly recent glaciation, a major reason why almost all of the world's advanced agricultural societies are in the northern hemisphere. (Europe, North America, Chin...

I remember hypothesizing in a world civ class that in this case, China's political unity prevented it from expanding the way Europe, with it's intense rivalries and constant feuding, could. What reason would a unified and totalitarian (to be fair, extremely enlightened) state the size and power of ...