SAT Pastpaper with Solutions

The Alcazar Restaurant was on Sheridan Roadnear Devon Avenue. It was long and narrow, withtables for two along the walls and tables for fourdown the middle. The decoration was art moderne,except for the series of murals depicting the fourseasons, and the sick ferns in the front window.Lymie sat down at the second table from the cashregister, and ordered his dinner. The history book,which he propped against the catsup and the glasssugar bowl, had been used by others before him.Blank pages front and back were filled in with maps,drawings, dates, comic cartoons, and organs of thebody; also with names and messages no longer clearand never absolutely legible. On nearly every otherpage there was some marginal notation, either in inkor in very hard pencil. And unless someone hadupset a glass of water, the marks on page 177 werefrom tears.While Lymie read about the Peace of Paris, signedon the thirtieth of May, 1814, between France andthe Allied powers, his right hand managed again andagain to bring food up to his mouth. Sometimes hechewed, sometimes he swallowed whole the food thathe had no idea he was eating. The Congress ofVienna met, with some allowance for delays, early inNovember of the same year, and all the powersengaged in the war on either side sentplenipotentiaries. It was by far the most splendid andimportant assembly ever convoked to discuss anddetermine the affairs of Europe. The Emperor ofRussia, the King of Prussia, the Kings of Bavaria,Denmark, and Wurttemberg, all were present inperson at the court of the Emperor Francis I in theAustrian capital. When Lymie put down his fork andbegan to count them off, one by one, on the fingersof his left hand, the waitress, whose name was Irma,thought he was through eating and tried to take hisplate away. He stopped her. Prince Metternich (hisright thumb) presided over the Congress, andPrince Talleyrand (the index finger) representedFrance.A party of four, two men and two women, cameinto the restaurant, all talking at once, and tookpossession of the center table nearest Lymie.The women had shingled hair and short tight skirtswhich exposed the underside of their knees whenthey sat down. One of the women had the face of ayoung boy but disguised by one trick or another(rouge, lipstick, powder, wet bangs plastered againstthe high forehead, and a pair of long pendentearrings) to look like a woman of thirty-five, whichas a matter of fact she was. The men were older. Theylaughed more than there seemed any occasion for,while they were deciding between soup and shrimpcocktail, and their laughter was too loud. But it wasthe women’s voices, the terrible not quite sober pitchof the women’s voices which caused Lymie to skimover two whole pages without knowing what was onthem. Fortunately he realized this and went back.Otherwise he might never have known about the secret treaty concluded between England, France,and Austria, when the pretensions of Prussia andRussia, acting in concert, seemed to threaten arenewal of the attack. The results of the Congresswere stated clearly at the bottom of page 67 and atthe top of page 68, but before Lymie got halfwaythrough them, a coat that he recognized as hisfather’s was hung on the hook next to his chair.Lymie closed the book and said, “I didn’t think youwere coming.”Time is probably no more unkind to sportingcharacters than it is to other people, but physicaldecay unsustained by respectability is somehow morenoticeable. Mr. Peters’ hair was turning gray and hisscalp showed through on top. He had lost weightalso; he no longer filled out his clothes the way heused to. His color was poor, and the flower haddisappeared from his buttonhole. In its place was anAmerican Legion button.Apparently he himself was not aware that therehad been any change. He straightened his tieself-consciously and when Irma handed him a menu,he gestured with it so that the two women at the nexttable would notice the diamond ring on the fourthfinger of his right hand. Both of these things, andalso the fact that his hands showed signs of themanicurist, one can blame on the young man whohad his picture taken with a derby hat on the back ofhis head, and also sitting with a girl in the curve ofthe moon. The young man had never for one seconddeserted Mr. Peters. He was always there, tugging atMr. Peters’ elbow, making him do things that werenot becoming in a man of forty-five.

The Alcazar Restaurant was on Sheridan Roadnear Devon Avenue. It was long and narrow, withtables for two along the walls and tables for fourdown the middle. The decoration was art moderne,except for the series of murals depicting the fourseasons, and the sick ferns in the front window.Lymie sat down at the second table from the cashregister, and ordered his dinner. The history book,which he propped against the catsup and the glasssugar bowl, had been used by others before him.Blank pages front and back were filled in with maps,drawings, dates, comic cartoons, and organs of thebody; also with names and messages no longer clearand never absolutely legible. On nearly every otherpage there was some marginal notation, either in inkor in very hard pencil. And unless someone hadupset a glass of water, the marks on page 177 werefrom tears.While Lymie read about the Peace of Paris, signedon the thirtieth of May, 1814, between France andthe Allied powers, his right hand managed again andagain to bring food up to his mouth. Sometimes hechewed, sometimes he swallowed whole the food thathe had no idea he was eating. The Congress ofVienna met, with some allowance for delays, early inNovember of the same year, and all the powersengaged in the war on either side sentplenipotentiaries. It was by far the most splendid andimportant assembly ever convoked to discuss anddetermine the affairs of Europe. The Emperor ofRussia, the King of Prussia, the Kings of Bavaria,Denmark, and Wurttemberg, all were present inperson at the court of the Emperor Francis I in theAustrian capital. When Lymie put down his fork andbegan to count them off, one by one, on the fingersof his left hand, the waitress, whose name was Irma,thought he was through eating and tried to take hisplate away. He stopped her. Prince Metternich (hisright thumb) presided over the Congress, andPrince Talleyrand (the index finger) representedFrance.A party of four, two men and two women, cameinto the restaurant, all talking at once, and tookpossession of the center table nearest Lymie.The women had shingled hair and short tight skirtswhich exposed the underside of their knees whenthey sat down. One of the women had the face of ayoung boy but disguised by one trick or another(rouge, lipstick, powder, wet bangs plastered againstthe high forehead, and a pair of long pendentearrings) to look like a woman of thirty-five, whichas a matter of fact she was. The men were older. Theylaughed more than there seemed any occasion for,while they were deciding between soup and shrimpcocktail, and their laughter was too loud. But it wasthe women’s voices, the terrible not quite sober pitchof the women’s voices which caused Lymie to skimover two whole pages without knowing what was onthem. Fortunately he realized this and went back.Otherwise he might never have known about the secret treaty concluded between England, France,and Austria, when the pretensions of Prussia andRussia, acting in concert, seemed to threaten arenewal of the attack. The results of the Congresswere stated clearly at the bottom of page 67 and atthe top of page 68, but before Lymie got halfwaythrough them, a coat that he recognized as hisfather’s was hung on the hook next to his chair.Lymie closed the book and said, “I didn’t think youwere coming.”Time is probably no more unkind to sportingcharacters than it is to other people, but physicaldecay unsustained by respectability is somehow morenoticeable. Mr. Peters’ hair was turning gray and hisscalp showed through on top. He had lost weightalso; he no longer filled out his clothes the way heused to. His color was poor, and the flower haddisappeared from his buttonhole. In its place was anAmerican Legion button.Apparently he himself was not aware that therehad been any change. He straightened his tieself-consciously and when Irma handed him a menu,he gestured with it so that the two women at the nexttable would notice the diamond ring on the fourthfinger of his right hand. Both of these things, andalso the fact that his hands showed signs of themanicurist, one can blame on the young man whohad his picture taken with a derby hat on the back ofhis head, and also sitting with a girl in the curve ofthe moon. The young man had never for one seconddeserted Mr. Peters. He was always there, tugging atMr. Peters’ elbow, making him do things that werenot becoming in a man of forty-five.

The Alcazar Restaurant was on Sheridan Roadnear Devon Avenue. It was long and narrow, withtables for two along the walls and tables for fourdown the middle. The decoration was art moderne,except for the series of murals depicting the fourseasons, and the sick ferns in the front window.Lymie sat down at the second table from the cashregister, and ordered his dinner. The history book,which he propped against the catsup and the glasssugar bowl, had been used by others before him.Blank pages front and back were filled in with maps,drawings, dates, comic cartoons, and organs of thebody; also with names and messages no longer clearand never absolutely legible. On nearly every otherpage there was some marginal notation, either in inkor in very hard pencil. And unless someone hadupset a glass of water, the marks on page 177 werefrom tears.While Lymie read about the Peace of Paris, signedon the thirtieth of May, 1814, between France andthe Allied powers, his right hand managed again andagain to bring food up to his mouth. Sometimes hechewed, sometimes he swallowed whole the food thathe had no idea he was eating. The Congress ofVienna met, with some allowance for delays, early inNovember of the same year, and all the powersengaged in the war on either side sentplenipotentiaries. It was by far the most splendid andimportant assembly ever convoked to discuss anddetermine the affairs of Europe. The Emperor ofRussia, the King of Prussia, the Kings of Bavaria,Denmark, and Wurttemberg, all were present inperson at the court of the Emperor Francis I in theAustrian capital. When Lymie put down his fork andbegan to count them off, one by one, on the fingersof his left hand, the waitress, whose name was Irma,thought he was through eating and tried to take hisplate away. He stopped her. Prince Metternich (hisright thumb) presided over the Congress, andPrince Talleyrand (the index finger) representedFrance.A party of four, two men and two women, cameinto the restaurant, all talking at once, and tookpossession of the center table nearest Lymie.The women had shingled hair and short tight skirtswhich exposed the underside of their knees whenthey sat down. One of the women had the face of ayoung boy but disguised by one trick or another(rouge, lipstick, powder, wet bangs plastered againstthe high forehead, and a pair of long pendentearrings) to look like a woman of thirty-five, whichas a matter of fact she was. The men were older. Theylaughed more than there seemed any occasion for,while they were deciding between soup and shrimpcocktail, and their laughter was too loud. But it wasthe women’s voices, the terrible not quite sober pitchof the women’s voices which caused Lymie to skimover two whole pages without knowing what was onthem. Fortunately he realized this and went back.Otherwise he might never have known about the secret treaty concluded between England, France,and Austria, when the pretensions of Prussia andRussia, acting in concert, seemed to threaten arenewal of the attack. The results of the Congresswere stated clearly at the bottom of page 67 and atthe top of page 68, but before Lymie got halfwaythrough them, a coat that he recognized as hisfather’s was hung on the hook next to his chair.Lymie closed the book and said, “I didn’t think youwere coming.”Time is probably no more unkind to sportingcharacters than it is to other people, but physicaldecay unsustained by respectability is somehow morenoticeable. Mr. Peters’ hair was turning gray and hisscalp showed through on top. He had lost weightalso; he no longer filled out his clothes the way heused to. His color was poor, and the flower haddisappeared from his buttonhole. In its place was anAmerican Legion button.Apparently he himself was not aware that therehad been any change. He straightened his tieself-consciously and when Irma handed him a menu,he gestured with it so that the two women at the nexttable would notice the diamond ring on the fourthfinger of his right hand. Both of these things, andalso the fact that his hands showed signs of themanicurist, one can blame on the young man whohad his picture taken with a derby hat on the back ofhis head, and also sitting with a girl in the curve ofthe moon. The young man had never for one seconddeserted Mr. Peters. He was always there, tugging atMr. Peters’ elbow, making him do things that werenot becoming in a man of forty-five.

The Alcazar Restaurant was on Sheridan Roadnear Devon Avenue. It was long and narrow, withtables for two along the walls and tables for fourdown the middle. The decoration was art moderne,except for the series of murals depicting the fourseasons, and the sick ferns in the front window.Lymie sat down at the second table from the cashregister, and ordered his dinner. The history book,which he propped against the catsup and the glasssugar bowl, had been used by others before him.Blank pages front and back were filled in with maps,drawings, dates, comic cartoons, and organs of thebody; also with names and messages no longer clearand never absolutely legible. On nearly every otherpage there was some marginal notation, either in inkor in very hard pencil. And unless someone hadupset a glass of water, the marks on page 177 werefrom tears.While Lymie read about the Peace of Paris, signedon the thirtieth of May, 1814, between France andthe Allied powers, his right hand managed again andagain to bring food up to his mouth. Sometimes hechewed, sometimes he swallowed whole the food thathe had no idea he was eating. The Congress ofVienna met, with some allowance for delays, early inNovember of the same year, and all the powersengaged in the war on either side sentplenipotentiaries. It was by far the most splendid andimportant assembly ever convoked to discuss anddetermine the affairs of Europe. The Emperor ofRussia, the King of Prussia, the Kings of Bavaria,Denmark, and Wurttemberg, all were present inperson at the court of the Emperor Francis I in theAustrian capital. When Lymie put down his fork andbegan to count them off, one by one, on the fingersof his left hand, the waitress, whose name was Irma,thought he was through eating and tried to take hisplate away. He stopped her. Prince Metternich (hisright thumb) presided over the Congress, andPrince Talleyrand (the index finger) representedFrance.A party of four, two men and two women, cameinto the restaurant, all talking at once, and tookpossession of the center table nearest Lymie.The women had shingled hair and short tight skirtswhich exposed the underside of their knees whenthey sat down. One of the women had the face of ayoung boy but disguised by one trick or another(rouge, lipstick, powder, wet bangs plastered againstthe high forehead, and a pair of long pendentearrings) to look like a woman of thirty-five, whichas a matter of fact she was. The men were older. Theylaughed more than there seemed any occasion for,while they were deciding between soup and shrimpcocktail, and their laughter was too loud. But it wasthe women’s voices, the terrible not quite sober pitchof the women’s voices which caused Lymie to skimover two whole pages without knowing what was onthem. Fortunately he realized this and went back.Otherwise he might never have known about the secret treaty concluded between England, France,and Austria, when the pretensions of Prussia andRussia, acting in concert, seemed to threaten arenewal of the attack. The results of the Congresswere stated clearly at the bottom of page 67 and atthe top of page 68, but before Lymie got halfwaythrough them, a coat that he recognized as hisfather’s was hung on the hook next to his chair.Lymie closed the book and said, “I didn’t think youwere coming.”Time is probably no more unkind to sportingcharacters than it is to other people, but physicaldecay unsustained by respectability is somehow morenoticeable. Mr. Peters’ hair was turning gray and hisscalp showed through on top. He had lost weightalso; he no longer filled out his clothes the way heused to. His color was poor, and the flower haddisappeared from his buttonhole. In its place was anAmerican Legion button.Apparently he himself was not aware that therehad been any change. He straightened his tieself-consciously and when Irma handed him a menu,he gestured with it so that the two women at the nexttable would notice the diamond ring on the fourthfinger of his right hand. Both of these things, andalso the fact that his hands showed signs of themanicurist, one can blame on the young man whohad his picture taken with a derby hat on the back ofhis head, and also sitting with a girl in the curve ofthe moon. The young man had never for one seconddeserted Mr. Peters. He was always there, tugging atMr. Peters’ elbow, making him do things that werenot becoming in a man of forty-five.

The Alcazar Restaurant was on Sheridan Roadnear Devon Avenue. It was long and narrow, withtables for two along the walls and tables for fourdown the middle. The decoration was art moderne,except for the series of murals depicting the fourseasons, and the sick ferns in the front window.Lymie sat down at the second table from the cashregister, and ordered his dinner. The history book,which he propped against the catsup and the glasssugar bowl, had been used by others before him.Blank pages front and back were filled in with maps,drawings, dates, comic cartoons, and organs of thebody; also with names and messages no longer clearand never absolutely legible. On nearly every otherpage there was some marginal notation, either in inkor in very hard pencil. And unless someone hadupset a glass of water, the marks on page 177 werefrom tears.While Lymie read about the Peace of Paris, signedon the thirtieth of May, 1814, between France andthe Allied powers, his right hand managed again andagain to bring food up to his mouth. Sometimes hechewed, sometimes he swallowed whole the food thathe had no idea he was eating. The Congress ofVienna met, with some allowance for delays, early inNovember of the same year, and all the powersengaged in the war on either side sentplenipotentiaries. It was by far the most splendid andimportant assembly ever convoked to discuss anddetermine the affairs of Europe. The Emperor ofRussia, the King of Prussia, the Kings of Bavaria,Denmark, and Wurttemberg, all were present inperson at the court of the Emperor Francis I in theAustrian capital. When Lymie put down his fork andbegan to count them off, one by one, on the fingersof his left hand, the waitress, whose name was Irma,thought he was through eating and tried to take hisplate away. He stopped her. Prince Metternich (hisright thumb) presided over the Congress, andPrince Talleyrand (the index finger) representedFrance.A party of four, two men and two women, cameinto the restaurant, all talking at once, and tookpossession of the center table nearest Lymie.The women had shingled hair and short tight skirtswhich exposed the underside of their knees whenthey sat down. One of the women had the face of ayoung boy but disguised by one trick or another(rouge, lipstick, powder, wet bangs plastered againstthe high forehead, and a pair of long pendentearrings) to look like a woman of thirty-five, whichas a matter of fact she was. The men were older. Theylaughed more than there seemed any occasion for,while they were deciding between soup and shrimpcocktail, and their laughter was too loud. But it wasthe women’s voices, the terrible not quite sober pitchof the women’s voices which caused Lymie to skimover two whole pages without knowing what was onthem. Fortunately he realized this and went back.Otherwise he might never have known about the secret treaty concluded between England, France,and Austria, when the pretensions of Prussia andRussia, acting in concert, seemed to threaten arenewal of the attack. The results of the Congresswere stated clearly at the bottom of page 67 and atthe top of page 68, but before Lymie got halfwaythrough them, a coat that he recognized as hisfather’s was hung on the hook next to his chair.Lymie closed the book and said, “I didn’t think youwere coming.”Time is probably no more unkind to sportingcharacters than it is to other people, but physicaldecay unsustained by respectability is somehow morenoticeable. Mr. Peters’ hair was turning gray and hisscalp showed through on top. He had lost weightalso; he no longer filled out his clothes the way heused to. His color was poor, and the flower haddisappeared from his buttonhole. In its place was anAmerican Legion button.Apparently he himself was not aware that therehad been any change. He straightened his tieself-consciously and when Irma handed him a menu,he gestured with it so that the two women at the nexttable would notice the diamond ring on the fourthfinger of his right hand. Both of these things, andalso the fact that his hands showed signs of themanicurist, one can blame on the young man whohad his picture taken with a derby hat on the back ofhis head, and also sitting with a girl in the curve ofthe moon. The young man had never for one seconddeserted Mr. Peters. He was always there, tugging atMr. Peters’ elbow, making him do things that werenot becoming in a man of forty-five.

The Alcazar Restaurant was on Sheridan Roadnear Devon Avenue. It was long and narrow, withtables for two along the walls and tables for fourdown the middle. The decoration was art moderne,except for the series of murals depicting the fourseasons, and the sick ferns in the front window.Lymie sat down at the second table from the cashregister, and ordered his dinner. The history book,which he propped against the catsup and the glasssugar bowl, had been used by others before him.Blank pages front and back were filled in with maps,drawings, dates, comic cartoons, and organs of thebody; also with names and messages no longer clearand never absolutely legible. On nearly every otherpage there was some marginal notation, either in inkor in very hard pencil. And unless someone hadupset a glass of water, the marks on page 177 werefrom tears.While Lymie read about the Peace of Paris, signedon the thirtieth of May, 1814, between France andthe Allied powers, his right hand managed again andagain to bring food up to his mouth. Sometimes hechewed, sometimes he swallowed whole the food thathe had no idea he was eating. The Congress ofVienna met, with some allowance for delays, early inNovember of the same year, and all the powersengaged in the war on either side sentplenipotentiaries. It was by far the most splendid andimportant assembly ever convoked to discuss anddetermine the affairs of Europe. The Emperor ofRussia, the King of Prussia, the Kings of Bavaria,Denmark, and Wurttemberg, all were present inperson at the court of the Emperor Francis I in theAustrian capital. When Lymie put down his fork andbegan to count them off, one by one, on the fingersof his left hand, the waitress, whose name was Irma,thought he was through eating and tried to take hisplate away. He stopped her. Prince Metternich (hisright thumb) presided over the Congress, andPrince Talleyrand (the index finger) representedFrance.A party of four, two men and two women, cameinto the restaurant, all talking at once, and tookpossession of the center table nearest Lymie.The women had shingled hair and short tight skirtswhich exposed the underside of their knees whenthey sat down. One of the women had the face of ayoung boy but disguised by one trick or another(rouge, lipstick, powder, wet bangs plastered againstthe high forehead, and a pair of long pendentearrings) to look like a woman of thirty-five, whichas a matter of fact she was. The men were older. Theylaughed more than there seemed any occasion for,while they were deciding between soup and shrimpcocktail, and their laughter was too loud. But it wasthe women’s voices, the terrible not quite sober pitchof the women’s voices which caused Lymie to skimover two whole pages without knowing what was onthem. Fortunately he realized this and went back.Otherwise he might never have known about the secret treaty concluded between England, France,and Austria, when the pretensions of Prussia andRussia, acting in concert, seemed to threaten arenewal of the attack. The results of the Congresswere stated clearly at the bottom of page 67 and atthe top of page 68, but before Lymie got halfwaythrough them, a coat that he recognized as hisfather’s was hung on the hook next to his chair.Lymie closed the book and said, “I didn’t think youwere coming.”Time is probably no more unkind to sportingcharacters than it is to other people, but physicaldecay unsustained by respectability is somehow morenoticeable. Mr. Peters’ hair was turning gray and hisscalp showed through on top. He had lost weightalso; he no longer filled out his clothes the way heused to. His color was poor, and the flower haddisappeared from his buttonhole. In its place was anAmerican Legion button.Apparently he himself was not aware that therehad been any change. He straightened his tieself-consciously and when Irma handed him a menu,he gestured with it so that the two women at the nexttable would notice the diamond ring on the fourthfinger of his right hand. Both of these things, andalso the fact that his hands showed signs of themanicurist, one can blame on the young man whohad his picture taken with a derby hat on the back ofhis head, and also sitting with a girl in the curve ofthe moon. The young man had never for one seconddeserted Mr. Peters. He was always there, tugging atMr. Peters’ elbow, making him do things that werenot becoming in a man of forty-five.

The Alcazar Restaurant was on Sheridan Roadnear Devon Avenue. It was long and narrow, withtables for two along the walls and tables for fourdown the middle. The decoration was art moderne,except for the series of murals depicting the fourseasons, and the sick ferns in the front window.Lymie sat down at the second table from the cashregister, and ordered his dinner. The history book,which he propped against the catsup and the glasssugar bowl, had been used by others before him.Blank pages front and back were filled in with maps,drawings, dates, comic cartoons, and organs of thebody; also with names and messages no longer clearand never absolutely legible. On nearly every otherpage there was some marginal notation, either in inkor in very hard pencil. And unless someone hadupset a glass of water, the marks on page 177 werefrom tears.While Lymie read about the Peace of Paris, signedon the thirtieth of May, 1814, between France andthe Allied powers, his right hand managed again andagain to bring food up to his mouth. Sometimes hechewed, sometimes he swallowed whole the food thathe had no idea he was eating. The Congress ofVienna met, with some allowance for delays, early inNovember of the same year, and all the powersengaged in the war on either side sentplenipotentiaries. It was by far the most splendid andimportant assembly ever convoked to discuss anddetermine the affairs of Europe. The Emperor ofRussia, the King of Prussia, the Kings of Bavaria,Denmark, and Wurttemberg, all were present inperson at the court of the Emperor Francis I in theAustrian capital. When Lymie put down his fork andbegan to count them off, one by one, on the fingersof his left hand, the waitress, whose name was Irma,thought he was through eating and tried to take hisplate away. He stopped her. Prince Metternich (hisright thumb) presided over the Congress, andPrince Talleyrand (the index finger) representedFrance.A party of four, two men and two women, cameinto the restaurant, all talking at once, and tookpossession of the center table nearest Lymie.The women had shingled hair and short tight skirtswhich exposed the underside of their knees whenthey sat down. One of the women had the face of ayoung boy but disguised by one trick or another(rouge, lipstick, powder, wet bangs plastered againstthe high forehead, and a pair of long pendentearrings) to look like a woman of thirty-five, whichas a matter of fact she was. The men were older. Theylaughed more than there seemed any occasion for,while they were deciding between soup and shrimpcocktail, and their laughter was too loud. But it wasthe women’s voices, the terrible not quite sober pitchof the women’s voices which caused Lymie to skimover two whole pages without knowing what was onthem. Fortunately he realized this and went back.Otherwise he might never have known about the secret treaty concluded between England, France,and Austria, when the pretensions of Prussia andRussia, acting in concert, seemed to threaten arenewal of the attack. The results of the Congresswere stated clearly at the bottom of page 67 and atthe top of page 68, but before Lymie got halfwaythrough them, a coat that he recognized as hisfather’s was hung on the hook next to his chair.Lymie closed the book and said, “I didn’t think youwere coming.”Time is probably no more unkind to sportingcharacters than it is to other people, but physicaldecay unsustained by respectability is somehow morenoticeable. Mr. Peters’ hair was turning gray and hisscalp showed through on top. He had lost weightalso; he no longer filled out his clothes the way heused to. His color was poor, and the flower haddisappeared from his buttonhole. In its place was anAmerican Legion button.Apparently he himself was not aware that therehad been any change. He straightened his tieself-consciously and when Irma handed him a menu,he gestured with it so that the two women at the nexttable would notice the diamond ring on the fourthfinger of his right hand. Both of these things, andalso the fact that his hands showed signs of themanicurist, one can blame on the young man whohad his picture taken with a derby hat on the back ofhis head, and also sitting with a girl in the curve ofthe moon. The young man had never for one seconddeserted Mr. Peters. He was always there, tugging atMr. Peters’ elbow, making him do things that werenot becoming in a man of forty-five.

The Alcazar Restaurant was on Sheridan Roadnear Devon Avenue. It was long and narrow, withtables for two along the walls and tables for fourdown the middle. The decoration was art moderne,except for the series of murals depicting the fourseasons, and the sick ferns in the front window.Lymie sat down at the second table from the cashregister, and ordered his dinner. The history book,which he propped against the catsup and the glasssugar bowl, had been used by others before him.Blank pages front and back were filled in with maps,drawings, dates, comic cartoons, and organs of thebody; also with names and messages no longer clearand never absolutely legible. On nearly every otherpage there was some marginal notation, either in inkor in very hard pencil. And unless someone hadupset a glass of water, the marks on page 177 werefrom tears.While Lymie read about the Peace of Paris, signedon the thirtieth of May, 1814, between France andthe Allied powers, his right hand managed again andagain to bring food up to his mouth. Sometimes hechewed, sometimes he swallowed whole the food thathe had no idea he was eating. The Congress ofVienna met, with some allowance for delays, early inNovember of the same year, and all the powersengaged in the war on either side sentplenipotentiaries. It was by far the most splendid andimportant assembly ever convoked to discuss anddetermine the affairs of Europe. The Emperor ofRussia, the King of Prussia, the Kings of Bavaria,Denmark, and Wurttemberg, all were present inperson at the court of the Emperor Francis I in theAustrian capital. When Lymie put down his fork andbegan to count them off, one by one, on the fingersof his left hand, the waitress, whose name was Irma,thought he was through eating and tried to take hisplate away. He stopped her. Prince Metternich (hisright thumb) presided over the Congress, andPrince Talleyrand (the index finger) representedFrance.A party of four, two men and two women, cameinto the restaurant, all talking at once, and tookpossession of the center table nearest Lymie.The women had shingled hair and short tight skirtswhich exposed the underside of their knees whenthey sat down. One of the women had the face of ayoung boy but disguised by one trick or another(rouge, lipstick, powder, wet bangs plastered againstthe high forehead, and a pair of long pendentearrings) to look like a woman of thirty-five, whichas a matter of fact she was. The men were older. Theylaughed more than there seemed any occasion for,while they were deciding between soup and shrimpcocktail, and their laughter was too loud. But it wasthe women’s voices, the terrible not quite sober pitchof the women’s voices which caused Lymie to skimover two whole pages without knowing what was onthem. Fortunately he realized this and went back.Otherwise he might never have known about the secret treaty concluded between England, France,and Austria, when the pretensions of Prussia andRussia, acting in concert, seemed to threaten arenewal of the attack. The results of the Congresswere stated clearly at the bottom of page 67 and atthe top of page 68, but before Lymie got halfwaythrough them, a coat that he recognized as hisfather’s was hung on the hook next to his chair.Lymie closed the book and said, “I didn’t think youwere coming.”Time is probably no more unkind to sportingcharacters than it is to other people, but physicaldecay unsustained by respectability is somehow morenoticeable. Mr. Peters’ hair was turning gray and hisscalp showed through on top. He had lost weightalso; he no longer filled out his clothes the way heused to. His color was poor, and the flower haddisappeared from his buttonhole. In its place was anAmerican Legion button.Apparently he himself was not aware that therehad been any change. He straightened his tieself-consciously and when Irma handed him a menu,he gestured with it so that the two women at the nexttable would notice the diamond ring on the fourthfinger of his right hand. Both of these things, andalso the fact that his hands showed signs of themanicurist, one can blame on the young man whohad his picture taken with a derby hat on the back ofhis head, and also sitting with a girl in the curve ofthe moon. The young man had never for one seconddeserted Mr. Peters. He was always there, tugging atMr. Peters’ elbow, making him do things that werenot becoming in a man of forty-five.

The Alcazar Restaurant was on Sheridan Roadnear Devon Avenue. It was long and narrow, withtables for two along the walls and tables for fourdown the middle. The decoration was art moderne,except for the series of murals depicting the fourseasons, and the sick ferns in the front window.Lymie sat down at the second table from the cashregister, and ordered his dinner. The history book,which he propped against the catsup and the glasssugar bowl, had been used by others before him.Blank pages front and back were filled in with maps,drawings, dates, comic cartoons, and organs of thebody; also with names and messages no longer clearand never absolutely legible. On nearly every otherpage there was some marginal notation, either in inkor in very hard pencil. And unless someone hadupset a glass of water, the marks on page 177 werefrom tears.While Lymie read about the Peace of Paris, signedon the thirtieth of May, 1814, between France andthe Allied powers, his right hand managed again andagain to bring food up to his mouth. Sometimes hechewed, sometimes he swallowed whole the food thathe had no idea he was eating. The Congress ofVienna met, with some allowance for delays, early inNovember of the same year, and all the powersengaged in the war on either side sentplenipotentiaries. It was by far the most splendid andimportant assembly ever convoked to discuss anddetermine the affairs of Europe. The Emperor ofRussia, the King of Prussia, the Kings of Bavaria,Denmark, and Wurttemberg, all were present inperson at the court of the Emperor Francis I in theAustrian capital. When Lymie put down his fork andbegan to count them off, one by one, on the fingersof his left hand, the waitress, whose name was Irma,thought he was through eating and tried to take hisplate away. He stopped her. Prince Metternich (hisright thumb) presided over the Congress, andPrince Talleyrand (the index finger) representedFrance.A party of four, two men and two women, cameinto the restaurant, all talking at once, and tookpossession of the center table nearest Lymie.The women had shingled hair and short tight skirtswhich exposed the underside of their knees whenthey sat down. One of the women had the face of ayoung boy but disguised by one trick or another(rouge, lipstick, powder, wet bangs plastered againstthe high forehead, and a pair of long pendentearrings) to look like a woman of thirty-five, whichas a matter of fact she was. The men were older. Theylaughed more than there seemed any occasion for,while they were deciding between soup and shrimpcocktail, and their laughter was too loud. But it wasthe women’s voices, the terrible not quite sober pitchof the women’s voices which caused Lymie to skimover two whole pages without knowing what was onthem. Fortunately he realized this and went back.Otherwise he might never have known about the secret treaty concluded between England, France,and Austria, when the pretensions of Prussia andRussia, acting in concert, seemed to threaten arenewal of the attack. The results of the Congresswere stated clearly at the bottom of page 67 and atthe top of page 68, but before Lymie got halfwaythrough them, a coat that he recognized as hisfather’s was hung on the hook next to his chair.Lymie closed the book and said, “I didn’t think youwere coming.”Time is probably no more unkind to sportingcharacters than it is to other people, but physicaldecay unsustained by respectability is somehow morenoticeable. Mr. Peters’ hair was turning gray and hisscalp showed through on top. He had lost weightalso; he no longer filled out his clothes the way heused to. His color was poor, and the flower haddisappeared from his buttonhole. In its place was anAmerican Legion button.Apparently he himself was not aware that therehad been any change. He straightened his tieself-consciously and when Irma handed him a menu,he gestured with it so that the two women at the nexttable would notice the diamond ring on the fourthfinger of his right hand. Both of these things, andalso the fact that his hands showed signs of themanicurist, one can blame on the young man whohad his picture taken with a derby hat on the back ofhis head, and also sitting with a girl in the curve ofthe moon. The young man had never for one seconddeserted Mr. Peters. He was always there, tugging atMr. Peters’ elbow, making him do things that werenot becoming in a man of forty-five.

Passage 1Heaven has appointed to one sex the superior,and to the other the subordinate station, and thiswithout any reference to the character or conduct ofeither. It is therefore as much for the dignity as it isfor the interest of females, in all respects to conformto the duties of this relation. . . . But while womanholds a subordinate relation in society to the othersex, it is not because it was designed that her dutiesor her influence should be any the less important, orall-pervading. But it was designed that the mode ofgaining influence and of exercising power should bealtogether different and peculiar....A man may act on society by the collision ofintellect, in public debate; he may urge his measuresby a sense of shame, by fear and by personal interest;he may coerce by the combination of publicsentiment; he may drive by physical force, and hedoes not outstep the boundaries of his sphere. But allthe power, and all the conquests that are lawful towoman, are those only which appeal to the kindly,generous, peaceful and benevolent principles.Woman is to win every thing by peace and love;by making herself so much respected, esteemed andloved, that to yield to her opinions and to gratify herwishes, will be the free-will offering of the heart. Butthis is to be all accomplished in the domestic andsocial circle. There let every woman become socultivated and refined in intellect, that her taste andjudgment will be respected; so benevolent in feelingand action; that her motives will be reverenced;—sounassuming and unambitious, that collision andcompetition will be banished;—so “gentle and easy tobe entreated,” as that every heart will repose in herpresence; then, the fathers, the husbands, and thesons, will find an influence thrown around them,to which they will yield not only willingly butproudly....A woman may seek the aid of co-operation andcombination among her own sex, to assist her in herappropriate offices of piety, charity, maternal anddomestic duty; but whatever, in any measure, throwsa woman into the attitude of a combatant, either forherself or others—whatever binds her in a partyconflict—whatever obliges her in any way to exertcoercive influences, throws her out of herappropriate sphere. If these general principles arecorrect, they are entirely opposed to the plan ofarraying females in any Abolition movement.Passage 2The investigation of the rights of the slave has ledme to a better understanding of my own. I havefound the Anti-Slavery cause to be the high school ofmorals in our land—the school in which humanrights are more fully investigated, and betterunderstood and taught, than in any other. Here agreat fundamental principle is uplifted andilluminated, and from this central light, raysinnumerable stream all around.Human beings have rights, because they are moralbeings: the rights of all men grow out of their moralnature; and as all men have the same moral nature,they have essentially the same rights. These rightsmay be wrested from the slave, but they cannot bealienated: his title to himself is as perfect now, as isthat of Lyman Beecher:1 it is stamped on his moralbeing, and is, like it, imperishable. Now if rights arefounded in the nature of our moral being, then themere circumstance of sex does not give to man higherrights and responsibilities, than to woman. Tosuppose that it does, would be to deny theself-evident truth, that the “physical constitution isthe mere instrument of the moral nature.” Tosuppose that it does, would be to break up utterly therelations, of the two natures, and to reverse theirfunctions, exalting the animal nature into a monarch,and humbling the moral into a slave; making theformer a proprietor, and the latter its property.When human beings are regarded as moralbeings, sex, instead of being enthroned upon thesummit, administering upon rights andresponsibilities, sinks into insignificance andnothingness. My doctrine then is, that whatever it ismorally right for man to do, it is morally right forwoman to do. Our duties originate, not fromdifference of sex, but from the diversity of ourrelations in life, the various gifts and talentscommitted to our care, and the different eras inwhich we live.

Passage 1Heaven has appointed to one sex the superior,and to the other the subordinate station, and thiswithout any reference to the character or conduct ofeither. It is therefore as much for the dignity as it isfor the interest of females, in all respects to conformto the duties of this relation. . . . But while womanholds a subordinate relation in society to the othersex, it is not because it was designed that her dutiesor her influence should be any the less important, orall-pervading. But it was designed that the mode ofgaining influence and of exercising power should bealtogether different and peculiar....A man may act on society by the collision ofintellect, in public debate; he may urge his measuresby a sense of shame, by fear and by personal interest;he may coerce by the combination of publicsentiment; he may drive by physical force, and hedoes not outstep the boundaries of his sphere. But allthe power, and all the conquests that are lawful towoman, are those only which appeal to the kindly,generous, peaceful and benevolent principles.Woman is to win every thing by peace and love;by making herself so much respected, esteemed andloved, that to yield to her opinions and to gratify herwishes, will be the free-will offering of the heart. Butthis is to be all accomplished in the domestic andsocial circle. There let every woman become socultivated and refined in intellect, that her taste andjudgment will be respected; so benevolent in feelingand action; that her motives will be reverenced;—sounassuming and unambitious, that collision andcompetition will be banished;—so “gentle and easy tobe entreated,” as that every heart will repose in herpresence; then, the fathers, the husbands, and thesons, will find an influence thrown around them,to which they will yield not only willingly butproudly....A woman may seek the aid of co-operation andcombination among her own sex, to assist her in herappropriate offices of piety, charity, maternal anddomestic duty; but whatever, in any measure, throwsa woman into the attitude of a combatant, either forherself or others—whatever binds her in a partyconflict—whatever obliges her in any way to exertcoercive influences, throws her out of herappropriate sphere. If these general principles arecorrect, they are entirely opposed to the plan ofarraying females in any Abolition movement.Passage 2The investigation of the rights of the slave has ledme to a better understanding of my own. I havefound the Anti-Slavery cause to be the high school ofmorals in our land—the school in which humanrights are more fully investigated, and betterunderstood and taught, than in any other. Here agreat fundamental principle is uplifted andilluminated, and from this central light, raysinnumerable stream all around.Human beings have rights, because they are moralbeings: the rights of all men grow out of their moralnature; and as all men have the same moral nature,they have essentially the same rights. These rightsmay be wrested from the slave, but they cannot bealienated: his title to himself is as perfect now, as isthat of Lyman Beecher:1 it is stamped on his moralbeing, and is, like it, imperishable. Now if rights arefounded in the nature of our moral being, then themere circumstance of sex does not give to man higherrights and responsibilities, than to woman. Tosuppose that it does, would be to deny theself-evident truth, that the “physical constitution isthe mere instrument of the moral nature.” Tosuppose that it does, would be to break up utterly therelations, of the two natures, and to reverse theirfunctions, exalting the animal nature into a monarch,and humbling the moral into a slave; making theformer a proprietor, and the latter its property.When human beings are regarded as moralbeings, sex, instead of being enthroned upon thesummit, administering upon rights andresponsibilities, sinks into insignificance andnothingness. My doctrine then is, that whatever it ismorally right for man to do, it is morally right forwoman to do. Our duties originate, not fromdifference of sex, but from the diversity of ourrelations in life, the various gifts and talentscommitted to our care, and the different eras inwhich we live.

Passage 1Heaven has appointed to one sex the superior,and to the other the subordinate station, and thiswithout any reference to the character or conduct ofeither. It is therefore as much for the dignity as it isfor the interest of females, in all respects to conformto the duties of this relation. . . . But while womanholds a subordinate relation in society to the othersex, it is not because it was designed that her dutiesor her influence should be any the less important, orall-pervading. But it was designed that the mode ofgaining influence and of exercising power should bealtogether different and peculiar....A man may act on society by the collision ofintellect, in public debate; he may urge his measuresby a sense of shame, by fear and by personal interest;he may coerce by the combination of publicsentiment; he may drive by physical force, and hedoes not outstep the boundaries of his sphere. But allthe power, and all the conquests that are lawful towoman, are those only which appeal to the kindly,generous, peaceful and benevolent principles.Woman is to win every thing by peace and love;by making herself so much respected, esteemed andloved, that to yield to her opinions and to gratify herwishes, will be the free-will offering of the heart. Butthis is to be all accomplished in the domestic andsocial circle. There let every woman become socultivated and refined in intellect, that her taste andjudgment will be respected; so benevolent in feelingand action; that her motives will be reverenced;—sounassuming and unambitious, that collision andcompetition will be banished;—so “gentle and easy tobe entreated,” as that every heart will repose in herpresence; then, the fathers, the husbands, and thesons, will find an influence thrown around them,to which they will yield not only willingly butproudly....A woman may seek the aid of co-operation andcombination among her own sex, to assist her in herappropriate offices of piety, charity, maternal anddomestic duty; but whatever, in any measure, throwsa woman into the attitude of a combatant, either forherself or others—whatever binds her in a partyconflict—whatever obliges her in any way to exertcoercive influences, throws her out of herappropriate sphere. If these general principles arecorrect, they are entirely opposed to the plan ofarraying females in any Abolition movement.Passage 2The investigation of the rights of the slave has ledme to a better understanding of my own. I havefound the Anti-Slavery cause to be the high school ofmorals in our land—the school in which humanrights are more fully investigated, and betterunderstood and taught, than in any other. Here agreat fundamental principle is uplifted andilluminated, and from this central light, raysinnumerable stream all around.Human beings have rights, because they are moralbeings: the rights of all men grow out of their moralnature; and as all men have the same moral nature,they have essentially the same rights. These rightsmay be wrested from the slave, but they cannot bealienated: his title to himself is as perfect now, as isthat of Lyman Beecher:1 it is stamped on his moralbeing, and is, like it, imperishable. Now if rights arefounded in the nature of our moral being, then themere circumstance of sex does not give to man higherrights and responsibilities, than to woman. Tosuppose that it does, would be to deny theself-evident truth, that the “physical constitution isthe mere instrument of the moral nature.” Tosuppose that it does, would be to break up utterly therelations, of the two natures, and to reverse theirfunctions, exalting the animal nature into a monarch,and humbling the moral into a slave; making theformer a proprietor, and the latter its property.When human beings are regarded as moralbeings, sex, instead of being enthroned upon thesummit, administering upon rights andresponsibilities, sinks into insignificance andnothingness. My doctrine then is, that whatever it ismorally right for man to do, it is morally right forwoman to do. Our duties originate, not fromdifference of sex, but from the diversity of ourrelations in life, the various gifts and talentscommitted to our care, and the different eras inwhich we live.

Passage 1Heaven has appointed to one sex the superior,and to the other the subordinate station, and thiswithout any reference to the character or conduct ofeither. It is therefore as much for the dignity as it isfor the interest of females, in all respects to conformto the duties of this relation. . . . But while womanholds a subordinate relation in society to the othersex, it is not because it was designed that her dutiesor her influence should be any the less important, orall-pervading. But it was designed that the mode ofgaining influence and of exercising power should bealtogether different and peculiar....A man may act on society by the collision ofintellect, in public debate; he may urge his measuresby a sense of shame, by fear and by personal interest;he may coerce by the combination of publicsentiment; he may drive by physical force, and hedoes not outstep the boundaries of his sphere. But allthe power, and all the conquests that are lawful towoman, are those only which appeal to the kindly,generous, peaceful and benevolent principles.Woman is to win every thing by peace and love;by making herself so much respected, esteemed andloved, that to yield to her opinions and to gratify herwishes, will be the free-will offering of the heart. Butthis is to be all accomplished in the domestic andsocial circle. There let every woman become socultivated and refined in intellect, that her taste andjudgment will be respected; so benevolent in feelingand action; that her motives will be reverenced;—sounassuming and unambitious, that collision andcompetition will be banished;—so “gentle and easy tobe entreated,” as that every heart will repose in herpresence; then, the fathers, the husbands, and thesons, will find an influence thrown around them,to which they will yield not only willingly butproudly....A woman may seek the aid of co-operation andcombination among her own sex, to assist her in herappropriate offices of piety, charity, maternal anddomestic duty; but whatever, in any measure, throwsa woman into the attitude of a combatant, either forherself or others—whatever binds her in a partyconflict—whatever obliges her in any way to exertcoercive influences, throws her out of herappropriate sphere. If these general principles arecorrect, they are entirely opposed to the plan ofarraying females in any Abolition movement.Passage 2The investigation of the rights of the slave has ledme to a better understanding of my own. I havefound the Anti-Slavery cause to be the high school ofmorals in our land—the school in which humanrights are more fully investigated, and betterunderstood and taught, than in any other. Here agreat fundamental principle is uplifted andilluminated, and from this central light, raysinnumerable stream all around.Human beings have rights, because they are moralbeings: the rights of all men grow out of their moralnature; and as all men have the same moral nature,they have essentially the same rights. These rightsmay be wrested from the slave, but they cannot bealienated: his title to himself is as perfect now, as isthat of Lyman Beecher:1 it is stamped on his moralbeing, and is, like it, imperishable. Now if rights arefounded in the nature of our moral being, then themere circumstance of sex does not give to man higherrights and responsibilities, than to woman. Tosuppose that it does, would be to deny theself-evident truth, that the “physical constitution isthe mere instrument of the moral nature.” Tosuppose that it does, would be to break up utterly therelations, of the two natures, and to reverse theirfunctions, exalting the animal nature into a monarch,and humbling the moral into a slave; making theformer a proprietor, and the latter its property.When human beings are regarded as moralbeings, sex, instead of being enthroned upon thesummit, administering upon rights andresponsibilities, sinks into insignificance andnothingness. My doctrine then is, that whatever it ismorally right for man to do, it is morally right forwoman to do. Our duties originate, not fromdifference of sex, but from the diversity of ourrelations in life, the various gifts and talentscommitted to our care, and the different eras inwhich we live.

Passage 1Heaven has appointed to one sex the superior,and to the other the subordinate station, and thiswithout any reference to the character or conduct ofeither. It is therefore as much for the dignity as it isfor the interest of females, in all respects to conformto the duties of this relation. . . . But while womanholds a subordinate relation in society to the othersex, it is not because it was designed that her dutiesor her influence should be any the less important, orall-pervading. But it was designed that the mode ofgaining influence and of exercising power should bealtogether different and peculiar....A man may act on society by the collision ofintellect, in public debate; he may urge his measuresby a sense of shame, by fear and by personal interest;he may coerce by the combination of publicsentiment; he may drive by physical force, and hedoes not outstep the boundaries of his sphere. But allthe power, and all the conquests that are lawful towoman, are those only which appeal to the kindly,generous, peaceful and benevolent principles.Woman is to win every thing by peace and love;by making herself so much respected, esteemed andloved, that to yield to her opinions and to gratify herwishes, will be the free-will offering of the heart. Butthis is to be all accomplished in the domestic andsocial circle. There let every woman become socultivated and refined in intellect, that her taste andjudgment will be respected; so benevolent in feelingand action; that her motives will be reverenced;—sounassuming and unambitious, that collision andcompetition will be banished;—so “gentle and easy tobe entreated,” as that every heart will repose in herpresence; then, the fathers, the husbands, and thesons, will find an influence thrown around them,to which they will yield not only willingly butproudly....A woman may seek the aid of co-operation andcombination among her own sex, to assist her in herappropriate offices of piety, charity, maternal anddomestic duty; but whatever, in any measure, throwsa woman into the attitude of a combatant, either forherself or others—whatever binds her in a partyconflict—whatever obliges her in any way to exertcoercive influences, throws her out of herappropriate sphere. If these general principles arecorrect, they are entirely opposed to the plan ofarraying females in any Abolition movement.Passage 2The investigation of the rights of the slave has ledme to a better understanding of my own. I havefound the Anti-Slavery cause to be the high school ofmorals in our land—the school in which humanrights are more fully investigated, and betterunderstood and taught, than in any other. Here agreat fundamental principle is uplifted andilluminated, and from this central light, raysinnumerable stream all around.Human beings have rights, because they are moralbeings: the rights of all men grow out of their moralnature; and as all men have the same moral nature,they have essentially the same rights. These rightsmay be wrested from the slave, but they cannot bealienated: his title to himself is as perfect now, as isthat of Lyman Beecher:1 it is stamped on his moralbeing, and is, like it, imperishable. Now if rights arefounded in the nature of our moral being, then themere circumstance of sex does not give to man higherrights and responsibilities, than to woman. Tosuppose that it does, would be to deny theself-evident truth, that the “physical constitution isthe mere instrument of the moral nature.” Tosuppose that it does, would be to break up utterly therelations, of the two natures, and to reverse theirfunctions, exalting the animal nature into a monarch,and humbling the moral into a slave; making theformer a proprietor, and the latter its property.When human beings are regarded as moralbeings, sex, instead of being enthroned upon thesummit, administering upon rights andresponsibilities, sinks into insignificance andnothingness. My doctrine then is, that whatever it ismorally right for man to do, it is morally right forwoman to do. Our duties originate, not fromdifference of sex, but from the diversity of ourrelations in life, the various gifts and talentscommitted to our care, and the different eras inwhich we live.

Passage 1Heaven has appointed to one sex the superior,and to the other the subordinate station, and thiswithout any reference to the character or conduct ofeither. It is therefore as much for the dignity as it isfor the interest of females, in all respects to conformto the duties of this relation. . . . But while womanholds a subordinate relation in society to the othersex, it is not because it was designed that her dutiesor her influence should be any the less important, orall-pervading. But it was designed that the mode ofgaining influence and of exercising power should bealtogether different and peculiar....A man may act on society by the collision ofintellect, in public debate; he may urge his measuresby a sense of shame, by fear and by personal interest;he may coerce by the combination of publicsentiment; he may drive by physical force, and hedoes not outstep the boundaries of his sphere. But allthe power, and all the conquests that are lawful towoman, are those only which appeal to the kindly,generous, peaceful and benevolent principles.Woman is to win every thing by peace and love;by making herself so much respected, esteemed andloved, that to yield to her opinions and to gratify herwishes, will be the free-will offering of the heart. Butthis is to be all accomplished in the domestic andsocial circle. There let every woman become socultivated and refined in intellect, that her taste andjudgment will be respected; so benevolent in feelingand action; that her motives will be reverenced;—sounassuming and unambitious, that collision andcompetition will be banished;—so “gentle and easy tobe entreated,” as that every heart will repose in herpresence; then, the fathers, the husbands, and thesons, will find an influence thrown around them,to which they will yield not only willingly butproudly....A woman may seek the aid of co-operation andcombination among her own sex, to assist her in herappropriate offices of piety, charity, maternal anddomestic duty; but whatever, in any measure, throwsa woman into the attitude of a combatant, either forherself or others—whatever binds her in a partyconflict—whatever obliges her in any way to exertcoercive influences, throws her out of herappropriate sphere. If these general principles arecorrect, they are entirely opposed to the plan ofarraying females in any Abolition movement.Passage 2The investigation of the rights of the slave has ledme to a better understanding of my own. I havefound the Anti-Slavery cause to be the high school ofmorals in our land—the school in which humanrights are more fully investigated, and betterunderstood and taught, than in any other. Here agreat fundamental principle is uplifted andilluminated, and from this central light, raysinnumerable stream all around.Human beings have rights, because they are moralbeings: the rights of all men grow out of their moralnature; and as all men have the same moral nature,they have essentially the same rights. These rightsmay be wrested from the slave, but they cannot bealienated: his title to himself is as perfect now, as isthat of Lyman Beecher:1 it is stamped on his moralbeing, and is, like it, imperishable. Now if rights arefounded in the nature of our moral being, then themere circumstance of sex does not give to man higherrights and responsibilities, than to woman. Tosuppose that it does, would be to deny theself-evident truth, that the “physical constitution isthe mere instrument of the moral nature.” Tosuppose that it does, would be to break up utterly therelations, of the two natures, and to reverse theirfunctions, exalting the animal nature into a monarch,and humbling the moral into a slave; making theformer a proprietor, and the latter its property.When human beings are regarded as moralbeings, sex, instead of being enthroned upon thesummit, administering upon rights andresponsibilities, sinks into insignificance andnothingness. My doctrine then is, that whatever it ismorally right for man to do, it is morally right forwoman to do. Our duties originate, not fromdifference of sex, but from the diversity of ourrelations in life, the various gifts and talentscommitted to our care, and the different eras inwhich we live.

Passage 1Heaven has appointed to one sex the superior,and to the other the subordinate station, and thiswithout any reference to the character or conduct ofeither. It is therefore as much for the dignity as it isfor the interest of females, in all respects to conformto the duties of this relation. . . . But while womanholds a subordinate relation in society to the othersex, it is not because it was designed that her dutiesor her influence should be any the less important, orall-pervading. But it was designed that the mode ofgaining influence and of exercising power should bealtogether different and peculiar....A man may act on society by the collision ofintellect, in public debate; he may urge his measuresby a sense of shame, by fear and by personal interest;he may coerce by the combination of publicsentiment; he may drive by physical force, and hedoes not outstep the boundaries of his sphere. But allthe power, and all the conquests that are lawful towoman, are those only which appeal to the kindly,generous, peaceful and benevolent principles.Woman is to win every thing by peace and love;by making herself so much respected, esteemed andloved, that to yield to her opinions and to gratify herwishes, will be the free-will offering of the heart. Butthis is to be all accomplished in the domestic andsocial circle. There let every woman become socultivated and refined in intellect, that her taste andjudgment will be respected; so benevolent in feelingand action; that her motives will be reverenced;—sounassuming and unambitious, that collision andcompetition will be banished;—so “gentle and easy tobe entreated,” as that every heart will repose in herpresence; then, the fathers, the husbands, and thesons, will find an influence thrown around them,to which they will yield not only willingly butproudly....A woman may seek the aid of co-operation andcombination among her own sex, to assist her in herappropriate offices of piety, charity, maternal anddomestic duty; but whatever, in any measure, throwsa woman into the attitude of a combatant, either forherself or others—whatever binds her in a partyconflict—whatever obliges her in any way to exertcoercive influences, throws her out of herappropriate sphere. If these general principles arecorrect, they are entirely opposed to the plan ofarraying females in any Abolition movement.Passage 2The investigation of the rights of the slave has ledme to a better understanding of my own. I havefound the Anti-Slavery cause to be the high school ofmorals in our land—the school in which humanrights are more fully investigated, and betterunderstood and taught, than in any other. Here agreat fundamental principle is uplifted andilluminated, and from this central light, raysinnumerable stream all around.Human beings have rights, because they are moralbeings: the rights of all men grow out of their moralnature; and as all men have the same moral nature,they have essentially the same rights. These rightsmay be wrested from the slave, but they cannot bealienated: his title to himself is as perfect now, as isthat of Lyman Beecher:1 it is stamped on his moralbeing, and is, like it, imperishable. Now if rights arefounded in the nature of our moral being, then themere circumstance of sex does not give to man higherrights and responsibilities, than to woman. Tosuppose that it does, would be to deny theself-evident truth, that the “physical constitution isthe mere instrument of the moral nature.” Tosuppose that it does, would be to break up utterly therelations, of the two natures, and to reverse theirfunctions, exalting the animal nature into a monarch,and humbling the moral into a slave; making theformer a proprietor, and the latter its property.When human beings are regarded as moralbeings, sex, instead of being enthroned upon thesummit, administering upon rights andresponsibilities, sinks into insignificance andnothingness. My doctrine then is, that whatever it ismorally right for man to do, it is morally right forwoman to do. Our duties originate, not fromdifference of sex, but from the diversity of ourrelations in life, the various gifts and talentscommitted to our care, and the different eras inwhich we live.

Passage 1Heaven has appointed to one sex the superior,and to the other the subordinate station, and thiswithout any reference to the character or conduct ofeither. It is therefore as much for the dignity as it isfor the interest of females, in all respects to conformto the duties of this relation. . . . But while womanholds a subordinate relation in society to the othersex, it is not because it was designed that her dutiesor her influence should be any the less important, orall-pervading. But it was designed that the mode ofgaining influence and of exercising power should bealtogether different and peculiar....A man may act on society by the collision ofintellect, in public debate; he may urge his measuresby a sense of shame, by fear and by personal interest;he may coerce by the combination of publicsentiment; he may drive by physical force, and hedoes not outstep the boundaries of his sphere. But allthe power, and all the conquests that are lawful towoman, are those only which appeal to the kindly,generous, peaceful and benevolent principles.Woman is to win every thing by peace and love;by making herself so much respected, esteemed andloved, that to yield to her opinions and to gratify herwishes, will be the free-will offering of the heart. Butthis is to be all accomplished in the domestic andsocial circle. There let every woman become socultivated and refined in intellect, that her taste andjudgment will be respected; so benevolent in feelingand action; that her motives will be reverenced;—sounassuming and unambitious, that collision andcompetition will be banished;—so “gentle and easy tobe entreated,” as that every heart will repose in herpresence; then, the fathers, the husbands, and thesons, will find an influence thrown around them,to which they will yield not only willingly butproudly....A woman may seek the aid of co-operation andcombination among her own sex, to assist her in herappropriate offices of piety, charity, maternal anddomestic duty; but whatever, in any measure, throwsa woman into the attitude of a combatant, either forherself or others—whatever binds her in a partyconflict—whatever obliges her in any way to exertcoercive influences, throws her out of herappropriate sphere. If these general principles arecorrect, they are entirely opposed to the plan ofarraying females in any Abolition movement.Passage 2The investigation of the rights of the slave has ledme to a better understanding of my own. I havefound the Anti-Slavery cause to be the high school ofmorals in our land—the school in which humanrights are more fully investigated, and betterunderstood and taught, than in any other. Here agreat fundamental principle is uplifted andilluminated, and from this central light, raysinnumerable stream all around.Human beings have rights, because they are moralbeings: the rights of all men grow out of their moralnature; and as all men have the same moral nature,they have essentially the same rights. These rightsmay be wrested from the slave, but they cannot bealienated: his title to himself is as perfect now, as isthat of Lyman Beecher:1 it is stamped on his moralbeing, and is, like it, imperishable. Now if rights arefounded in the nature of our moral being, then themere circumstance of sex does not give to man higherrights and responsibilities, than to woman. Tosuppose that it does, would be to deny theself-evident truth, that the “physical constitution isthe mere instrument of the moral nature.” Tosuppose that it does, would be to break up utterly therelations, of the two natures, and to reverse theirfunctions, exalting the animal nature into a monarch,and humbling the moral into a slave; making theformer a proprietor, and the latter its property.When human beings are regarded as moralbeings, sex, instead of being enthroned upon thesummit, administering upon rights andresponsibilities, sinks into insignificance andnothingness. My doctrine then is, that whatever it ismorally right for man to do, it is morally right forwoman to do. Our duties originate, not fromdifference of sex, but from the diversity of ourrelations in life, the various gifts and talentscommitted to our care, and the different eras inwhich we live.

Passage 1Heaven has appointed to one sex the superior,and to the other the subordinate station, and thiswithout any reference to the character or conduct ofeither. It is therefore as much for the dignity as it isfor the interest of females, in all respects to conformto the duties of this relation. . . . But while womanholds a subordinate relation in society to the othersex, it is not because it was designed that her dutiesor her influence should be any the less important, orall-pervading. But it was designed that the mode ofgaining influence and of exercising power should bealtogether different and peculiar....A man may act on society by the collision ofintellect, in public debate; he may urge his measuresby a sense of shame, by fear and by personal interest;he may coerce by the combination of publicsentiment; he may drive by physical force, and hedoes not outstep the boundaries of his sphere. But allthe power, and all the conquests that are lawful towoman, are those only which appeal to the kindly,generous, peaceful and benevolent principles.Woman is to win every thing by peace and love;by making herself so much respected, esteemed andloved, that to yield to her opinions and to gratify herwishes, will be the free-will offering of the heart. Butthis is to be all accomplished in the domestic andsocial circle. There let every woman become socultivated and refined in intellect, that her taste andjudgment will be respected; so benevolent in feelingand action; that her motives will be reverenced;—sounassuming and unambitious, that collision andcompetition will be banished;—so “gentle and easy tobe entreated,” as that every heart will repose in herpresence; then, the fathers, the husbands, and thesons, will find an influence thrown around them,to which they will yield not only willingly butproudly....A woman may seek the aid of co-operation andcombination among her own sex, to assist her in herappropriate offices of piety, charity, maternal anddomestic duty; but whatever, in any measure, throwsa woman into the attitude of a combatant, either forherself or others—whatever binds her in a partyconflict—whatever obliges her in any way to exertcoercive influences, throws her out of herappropriate sphere. If these general principles arecorrect, they are entirely opposed to the plan ofarraying females in any Abolition movement.Passage 2The investigation of the rights of the slave has ledme to a better understanding of my own. I havefound the Anti-Slavery cause to be the high school ofmorals in our land—the school in which humanrights are more fully investigated, and betterunderstood and taught, than in any other. Here agreat fundamental principle is uplifted andilluminated, and from this central light, raysinnumerable stream all around.Human beings have rights, because they are moralbeings: the rights of all men grow out of their moralnature; and as all men have the same moral nature,they have essentially the same rights. These rightsmay be wrested from the slave, but they cannot bealienated: his title to himself is as perfect now, as isthat of Lyman Beecher:1 it is stamped on his moralbeing, and is, like it, imperishable. Now if rights arefounded in the nature of our moral being, then themere circumstance of sex does not give to man higherrights and responsibilities, than to woman. Tosuppose that it does, would be to deny theself-evident truth, that the “physical constitution isthe mere instrument of the moral nature.” Tosuppose that it does, would be to break up utterly therelations, of the two natures, and to reverse theirfunctions, exalting the animal nature into a monarch,and humbling the moral into a slave; making theformer a proprietor, and the latter its property.When human beings are regarded as moralbeings, sex, instead of being enthroned upon thesummit, administering upon rights andresponsibilities, sinks into insignificance andnothingness. My doctrine then is, that whatever it ismorally right for man to do, it is morally right forwoman to do. Our duties originate, not fromdifference of sex, but from the diversity of ourrelations in life, the various gifts and talentscommitted to our care, and the different eras inwhich we live.

Passage 1Heaven has appointed to one sex the superior,and to the other the subordinate station, and thiswithout any reference to the character or conduct ofeither. It is therefore as much for the dignity as it isfor the interest of females, in all respects to conformto the duties of this relation. . . . But while womanholds a subordinate relation in society to the othersex, it is not because it was designed that her dutiesor her influence should be any the less important, orall-pervading. But it was designed that the mode ofgaining influence and of exercising power should bealtogether different and peculiar....A man may act on society by the collision ofintellect, in public debate; he may urge his measuresby a sense of shame, by fear and by personal interest;he may coerce by the combination of publicsentiment; he may drive by physical force, and hedoes not outstep the boundaries of his sphere. But allthe power, and all the conquests that are lawful towoman, are those only which appeal to the kindly,generous, peaceful and benevolent principles.Woman is to win every thing by peace and love;by making herself so much respected, esteemed andloved, that to yield to her opinions and to gratify herwishes, will be the free-will offering of the heart. Butthis is to be all accomplished in the domestic andsocial circle. There let every woman become socultivated and refined in intellect, that her taste andjudgment will be respected; so benevolent in feelingand action; that her motives will be reverenced;—sounassuming and unambitious, that collision andcompetition will be banished;—so “gentle and easy tobe entreated,” as that every heart will repose in herpresence; then, the fathers, the husbands, and thesons, will find an influence thrown around them,to which they will yield not only willingly butproudly....A woman may seek the aid of co-operation andcombination among her own sex, to assist her in herappropriate offices of piety, charity, maternal anddomestic duty; but whatever, in any measure, throwsa woman into the attitude of a combatant, either forherself or others—whatever binds her in a partyconflict—whatever obliges her in any way to exertcoercive influences, throws her out of herappropriate sphere. If these general principles arecorrect, they are entirely opposed to the plan ofarraying females in any Abolition movement.Passage 2The investigation of the rights of the slave has ledme to a better understanding of my own. I havefound the Anti-Slavery cause to be the high school ofmorals in our land—the school in which humanrights are more fully investigated, and betterunderstood and taught, than in any other. Here agreat fundamental principle is uplifted andilluminated, and from this central light, raysinnumerable stream all around.Human beings have rights, because they are moralbeings: the rights of all men grow out of their moralnature; and as all men have the same moral nature,they have essentially the same rights. These rightsmay be wrested from the slave, but they cannot bealienated: his title to himself is as perfect now, as isthat of Lyman Beecher:1 it is stamped on his moralbeing, and is, like it, imperishable. Now if rights arefounded in the nature of our moral being, then themere circumstance of sex does not give to man higherrights and responsibilities, than to woman. Tosuppose that it does, would be to deny theself-evident truth, that the “physical constitution isthe mere instrument of the moral nature.” Tosuppose that it does, would be to break up utterly therelations, of the two natures, and to reverse theirfunctions, exalting the animal nature into a monarch,and humbling the moral into a slave; making theformer a proprietor, and the latter its property.When human beings are regarded as moralbeings, sex, instead of being enthroned upon thesummit, administering upon rights andresponsibilities, sinks into insignificance andnothingness. My doctrine then is, that whatever it ismorally right for man to do, it is morally right forwoman to do. Our duties originate, not fromdifference of sex, but from the diversity of ourrelations in life, the various gifts and talentscommitted to our care, and the different eras inwhich we live.

Passage 1Heaven has appointed to one sex the superior,and to the other the subordinate station, and thiswithout any reference to the character or conduct ofeither. It is therefore as much for the dignity as it isfor the interest of females, in all respects to conformto the duties of this relation. . . . But while womanholds a subordinate relation in society to the othersex, it is not because it was designed that her dutiesor her influence should be any the less important, orall-pervading. But it was designed that the mode ofgaining influence and of exercising power should bealtogether different and peculiar....A man may act on society by the collision ofintellect, in public debate; he may urge his measuresby a sense of shame, by fear and by personal interest;he may coerce by the combination of publicsentiment; he may drive by physical force, and hedoes not outstep the boundaries of his sphere. But allthe power, and all the conquests that are lawful towoman, are those only which appeal to the kindly,generous, peaceful and benevolent principles.Woman is to win every thing by peace and love;by making herself so much respected, esteemed andloved, that to yield to her opinions and to gratify herwishes, will be the free-will offering of the heart. Butthis is to be all accomplished in the domestic andsocial circle. There let every woman become socultivated and refined in intellect, that her taste andjudgment will be respected; so benevolent in feelingand action; that her motives will be reverenced;—sounassuming and unambitious, that collision andcompetition will be banished;—so “gentle and easy tobe entreated,” as that every heart will repose in herpresence; then, the fathers, the husbands, and thesons, will find an influence thrown around them,to which they will yield not only willingly butproudly....A woman may seek the aid of co-operation andcombination among her own sex, to assist her in herappropriate offices of piety, charity, maternal anddomestic duty; but whatever, in any measure, throwsa woman into the attitude of a combatant, either forherself or others—whatever binds her in a partyconflict—whatever obliges her in any way to exertcoercive influences, throws her out of herappropriate sphere. If these general principles arecorrect, they are entirely opposed to the plan ofarraying females in any Abolition movement.Passage 2The investigation of the rights of the slave has ledme to a better understanding of my own. I havefound the Anti-Slavery cause to be the high school ofmorals in our land—the school in which humanrights are more fully investigated, and betterunderstood and taught, than in any other. Here agreat fundamental principle is uplifted andilluminated, and from this central light, raysinnumerable stream all around.Human beings have rights, because they are moralbeings: the rights of all men grow out of their moralnature; and as all men have the same moral nature,they have essentially the same rights. These rightsmay be wrested from the slave, but they cannot bealienated: his title to himself is as perfect now, as isthat of Lyman Beecher:1 it is stamped on his moralbeing, and is, like it, imperishable. Now if rights arefounded in the nature of our moral being, then themere circumstance of sex does not give to man higherrights and responsibilities, than to woman. Tosuppose that it does, would be to deny theself-evident truth, that the “physical constitution isthe mere instrument of the moral nature.” Tosuppose that it does, would be to break up utterly therelations, of the two natures, and to reverse theirfunctions, exalting the animal nature into a monarch,and humbling the moral into a slave; making theformer a proprietor, and the latter its property.When human beings are regarded as moralbeings, sex, instead of being enthroned upon thesummit, administering upon rights andresponsibilities, sinks into insignificance andnothingness. My doctrine then is, that whatever it ismorally right for man to do, it is morally right forwoman to do. Our duties originate, not fromdifference of sex, but from the diversity of ourrelations in life, the various gifts and talentscommitted to our care, and the different eras inwhich we live.

This passage is adapted from Bryan Walsh, “Whole FoodBlues: Why Organic Agriculture May Not Be So Sustainable.”©2012 by Time Inc.When it comes to energy, everyone lovesefficiency. Cutting energy waste is one of those goalsthat both sides of the political divide can agree on,even if they sometimes diverge on how best to getthere. Energy efficiency allows us to get more out ofour given resources, which is good for the economyand (mostly) good for the environment as well. Inan increasingly hot and crowded world, the onlysustainable way to live is to get more out of less.Every environmentalist would agree.But change the conversation to food, andsuddenly efficiency doesn’t look so good.Conventional industrial agriculture has becomeincredibly efficient on a simple land to food basis.Thanks to fertilizers, mechanization and irrigation,each American farmer feeds over 155 peopleworldwide. Conventional farming gets more andmore crop per square foot of cultivated land—over 170 bushels of corn per acre in Iowa, forexample—which can mean less territory needs tobe converted from wilderness to farmland.And since a third of the planet is already used foragriculture—destroying forests and other wildhabitats along the way—anything that could help usproduce more food on less land would seem to begood for the environment.Of course, that’s not how most environmentalistsregard their arugula [a leafy green]. They haveembraced organic food as better for the planet—andhealthier and tastier, too—than the stuff produced byagricultural corporations. Environmentalists disdainthe enormous amounts of energy needed and wastecreated by conventional farming, while organicpractices—forgoing artificial fertilizers and chemicalpesticides—are considered far more sustainable.Sales of organic food rose 7.7% in 2010, up to $26.7billion—and people are making those purchases fortheir consciences as much as their taste buds.Yet a new meta-analysis in Nature does the mathand comes to a hard conclusion: organic farmingyields 25% fewer crops on average than conventionalagriculture. More land is therefore needed toproduce fewer crops—and that means organicfarming may not be as good for the planet aswe think.In the Nature analysis, scientists from McGillUniversity in Montreal and the University ofMinnesota performed an analysis of 66 studiescomparing conventional and organic methods across34 different crop species, from fruits to grains tolegumes. They found that organic farming delivereda lower yield for every crop type, though the disparityvaried widely. For rain-watered legume crops likebeans or perennial crops like fruit trees, organictrailed conventional agriculture by just 5%. Yet formajor cereal crops like corn or wheat, as well as mostvegetables—all of which provide the bulk of theworld’s calories—conventional agricultureoutperformed organics by more than 25%.The main difference is nitrogen, the chemical keyto plant growth. Conventional agriculture makes useof 171 million metric tons of synthetic fertilizer eachyear, and all that nitrogen enables much faster plantgrowth than the slower release of nitrogen from thecompost or cover crops used in organic farming.When we talk about a Green Revolution, we reallymean a nitrogen revolution—along with a lotof water.But not all the nitrogen used in conventionalfertilizer ends up in crops—much of it ends uprunning off the soil and into the oceans, creating vastpolluted dead zones. We’re already putting morenitrogen into the soil than the planet can stand overthe long term. And conventional agriculture alsodepends heavily on chemical pesticides, which canhave unintended side effects.What that means is that while conventionalagriculture is more efficient—sometimes much moreefficient—than organic farming, there are trade-offswith each. So an ideal global agriculture system, inthe views of the study’s authors, may borrow the bestfrom both systems, as Jonathan Foley of theUniversity of Minnesota explained:The bottom line? Today’s organic farmingpractices are probably best deployed in fruit andvegetable farms, where growing nutrition (notjust bulk calories) is the primary goal. But fordelivering sheer calories, especially in our staplecrops of wheat, rice, maize, soybeans and so on,conventional farms have the advantage rightnow.Looking forward, I think we will need to deploydifferent kinds of practices (especially new,mixed approaches that take the best of organicand conventional farming systems) where theyare best suited—geographically, economically,socially, etc.

This passage is adapted from Bryan Walsh, “Whole FoodBlues: Why Organic Agriculture May Not Be So Sustainable.”©2012 by Time Inc.When it comes to energy, everyone lovesefficiency. Cutting energy waste is one of those goalsthat both sides of the political divide can agree on,even if they sometimes diverge on how best to getthere. Energy efficiency allows us to get more out ofour given resources, which is good for the economyand (mostly) good for the environment as well. Inan increasingly hot and crowded world, the onlysustainable way to live is to get more out of less.Every environmentalist would agree.But change the conversation to food, andsuddenly efficiency doesn’t look so good.Conventional industrial agriculture has becomeincredibly efficient on a simple land to food basis.Thanks to fertilizers, mechanization and irrigation,each American farmer feeds over 155 peopleworldwide. Conventional farming gets more andmore crop per square foot of cultivated land—over 170 bushels of corn per acre in Iowa, forexample—which can mean less territory needs tobe converted from wilderness to farmland.And since a third of the planet is already used foragriculture—destroying forests and other wildhabitats along the way—anything that could help usproduce more food on less land would seem to begood for the environment.Of course, that’s not how most environmentalistsregard their arugula [a leafy green]. They haveembraced organic food as better for the planet—andhealthier and tastier, too—than the stuff produced byagricultural corporations. Environmentalists disdainthe enormous amounts of energy needed and wastecreated by conventional farming, while organicpractices—forgoing artificial fertilizers and chemicalpesticides—are considered far more sustainable.Sales of organic food rose 7.7% in 2010, up to $26.7billion—and people are making those purchases fortheir consciences as much as their taste buds.Yet a new meta-analysis in Nature does the mathand comes to a hard conclusion: organic farmingyields 25% fewer crops on average than conventionalagriculture. More land is therefore needed toproduce fewer crops—and that means organicfarming may not be as good for the planet aswe think.In the Nature analysis, scientists from McGillUniversity in Montreal and the University ofMinnesota performed an analysis of 66 studiescomparing conventional and organic methods across34 different crop species, from fruits to grains tolegumes. They found that organic farming delivereda lower yield for every crop type, though the disparityvaried widely. For rain-watered legume crops likebeans or perennial crops like fruit trees, organictrailed conventional agriculture by just 5%. Yet formajor cereal crops like corn or wheat, as well as mostvegetables—all of which provide the bulk of theworld’s calories—conventional agricultureoutperformed organics by more than 25%.The main difference is nitrogen, the chemical keyto plant growth. Conventional agriculture makes useof 171 million metric tons of synthetic fertilizer eachyear, and all that nitrogen enables much faster plantgrowth than the slower release of nitrogen from thecompost or cover crops used in organic farming.When we talk about a Green Revolution, we reallymean a nitrogen revolution—along with a lotof water.But not all the nitrogen used in conventionalfertilizer ends up in crops—much of it ends uprunning off the soil and into the oceans, creating vastpolluted dead zones. We’re already putting morenitrogen into the soil than the planet can stand overthe long term. And conventional agriculture alsodepends heavily on chemical pesticides, which canhave unintended side effects.What that means is that while conventionalagriculture is more efficient—sometimes much moreefficient—than organic farming, there are trade-offswith each. So an ideal global agriculture system, inthe views of the study’s authors, may borrow the bestfrom both systems, as Jonathan Foley of theUniversity of Minnesota explained:The bottom line? Today’s organic farmingpractices are probably best deployed in fruit andvegetable farms, where growing nutrition (notjust bulk calories) is the primary goal. But fordelivering sheer calories, especially in our staplecrops of wheat, rice, maize, soybeans and so on,conventional farms have the advantage rightnow.Looking forward, I think we will need to deploydifferent kinds of practices (especially new,mixed approaches that take the best of organicand conventional farming systems) where theyare best suited—geographically, economically,socially, etc.

This passage is adapted from Bryan Walsh, “Whole FoodBlues: Why Organic Agriculture May Not Be So Sustainable.”©2012 by Time Inc.When it comes to energy, everyone lovesefficiency. Cutting energy waste is one of those goalsthat both sides of the political divide can agree on,even if they sometimes diverge on how best to getthere. Energy efficiency allows us to get more out ofour given resources, which is good for the economyand (mostly) good for the environment as well. Inan increasingly hot and crowded world, the onlysustainable way to live is to get more out of less.Every environmentalist would agree.But change the conversation to food, andsuddenly efficiency doesn’t look so good.Conventional industrial agriculture has becomeincredibly efficient on a simple land to food basis.Thanks to fertilizers, mechanization and irrigation,each American farmer feeds over 155 peopleworldwide. Conventional farming gets more andmore crop per square foot of cultivated land—over 170 bushels of corn per acre in Iowa, forexample—which can mean less territory needs tobe converted from wilderness to farmland.And since a third of the planet is already used foragriculture—destroying forests and other wildhabitats along the way—anything that could help usproduce more food on less land would seem to begood for the environment.Of course, that’s not how most environmentalistsregard their arugula [a leafy green]. They haveembraced organic food as better for the planet—andhealthier and tastier, too—than the stuff produced byagricultural corporations. Environmentalists disdainthe enormous amounts of energy needed and wastecreated by conventional farming, while organicpractices—forgoing artificial fertilizers and chemicalpesticides—are considered far more sustainable.Sales of organic food rose 7.7% in 2010, up to $26.7billion—and people are making those purchases fortheir consciences as much as their taste buds.Yet a new meta-analysis in Nature does the mathand comes to a hard conclusion: organic farmingyields 25% fewer crops on average than conventionalagriculture. More land is therefore needed toproduce fewer crops—and that means organicfarming may not be as good for the planet aswe think.In the Nature analysis, scientists from McGillUniversity in Montreal and the University ofMinnesota performed an analysis of 66 studiescomparing conventional and organic methods across34 different crop species, from fruits to grains tolegumes. They found that organic farming delivereda lower yield for every crop type, though the disparityvaried widely. For rain-watered legume crops likebeans or perennial crops like fruit trees, organictrailed conventional agriculture by just 5%. Yet formajor cereal crops like corn or wheat, as well as mostvegetables—all of which provide the bulk of theworld’s calories—conventional agricultureoutperformed organics by more than 25%.The main difference is nitrogen, the chemical keyto plant growth. Conventional agriculture makes useof 171 million metric tons of synthetic fertilizer eachyear, and all that nitrogen enables much faster plantgrowth than the slower release of nitrogen from thecompost or cover crops used in organic farming.When we talk about a Green Revolution, we reallymean a nitrogen revolution—along with a lotof water.But not all the nitrogen used in conventionalfertilizer ends up in crops—much of it ends uprunning off the soil and into the oceans, creating vastpolluted dead zones. We’re already putting morenitrogen into the soil than the planet can stand overthe long term. And conventional agriculture alsodepends heavily on chemical pesticides, which canhave unintended side effects.What that means is that while conventionalagriculture is more efficient—sometimes much moreefficient—than organic farming, there are trade-offswith each. So an ideal global agriculture system, inthe views of the study’s authors, may borrow the bestfrom both systems, as Jonathan Foley of theUniversity of Minnesota explained:The bottom line? Today’s organic farmingpractices are probably best deployed in fruit andvegetable farms, where growing nutrition (notjust bulk calories) is the primary goal. But fordelivering sheer calories, especially in our staplecrops of wheat, rice, maize, soybeans and so on,conventional farms have the advantage rightnow.Looking forward, I think we will need to deploydifferent kinds of practices (especially new,mixed approaches that take the best of organicand conventional farming systems) where theyare best suited—geographically, economically,socially, etc.

This passage is adapted from Bryan Walsh, “Whole FoodBlues: Why Organic Agriculture May Not Be So Sustainable.”©2012 by Time Inc.When it comes to energy, everyone lovesefficiency. Cutting energy waste is one of those goalsthat both sides of the political divide can agree on,even if they sometimes diverge on how best to getthere. Energy efficiency allows us to get more out ofour given resources, which is good for the economyand (mostly) good for the environment as well. Inan increasingly hot and crowded world, the onlysustainable way to live is to get more out of less.Every environmentalist would agree.But change the conversation to food, andsuddenly efficiency doesn’t look so good.Conventional industrial agriculture has becomeincredibly efficient on a simple land to food basis.Thanks to fertilizers, mechanization and irrigation,each American farmer feeds over 155 peopleworldwide. Conventional farming gets more andmore crop per square foot of cultivated land—over 170 bushels of corn per acre in Iowa, forexample—which can mean less territory needs tobe converted from wilderness to farmland.And since a third of the planet is already used foragriculture—destroying forests and other wildhabitats along the way—anything that could help usproduce more food on less land would seem to begood for the environment.Of course, that’s not how most environmentalistsregard their arugula [a leafy green]. They haveembraced organic food as better for the planet—andhealthier and tastier, too—than the stuff produced byagricultural corporations. Environmentalists disdainthe enormous amounts of energy needed and wastecreated by conventional farming, while organicpractices—forgoing artificial fertilizers and chemicalpesticides—are considered far more sustainable.Sales of organic food rose 7.7% in 2010, up to $26.7billion—and people are making those purchases fortheir consciences as much as their taste buds.Yet a new meta-analysis in Nature does the mathand comes to a hard conclusion: organic farmingyields 25% fewer crops on average than conventionalagriculture. More land is therefore needed toproduce fewer crops—and that means organicfarming may not be as good for the planet aswe think.In the Nature analysis, scientists from McGillUniversity in Montreal and the University ofMinnesota performed an analysis of 66 studiescomparing conventional and organic methods across34 different crop species, from fruits to grains tolegumes. They found that organic farming delivereda lower yield for every crop type, though the disparityvaried widely. For rain-watered legume crops likebeans or perennial crops like fruit trees, organictrailed conventional agriculture by just 5%. Yet formajor cereal crops like corn or wheat, as well as mostvegetables—all of which provide the bulk of theworld’s calories—conventional agricultureoutperformed organics by more than 25%.The main difference is nitrogen, the chemical keyto plant growth. Conventional agriculture makes useof 171 million metric tons of synthetic fertilizer eachyear, and all that nitrogen enables much faster plantgrowth than the slower release of nitrogen from thecompost or cover crops used in organic farming.When we talk about a Green Revolution, we reallymean a nitrogen revolution—along with a lotof water.But not all the nitrogen used in conventionalfertilizer ends up in crops—much of it ends uprunning off the soil and into the oceans, creating vastpolluted dead zones. We’re already putting morenitrogen into the soil than the planet can stand overthe long term. And conventional agriculture alsodepends heavily on chemical pesticides, which canhave unintended side effects.What that means is that while conventionalagriculture is more efficient—sometimes much moreefficient—than organic farming, there are trade-offswith each. So an ideal global agriculture system, inthe views of the study’s authors, may borrow the bestfrom both systems, as Jonathan Foley of theUniversity of Minnesota explained:The bottom line? Today’s organic farmingpractices are probably best deployed in fruit andvegetable farms, where growing nutrition (notjust bulk calories) is the primary goal. But fordelivering sheer calories, especially in our staplecrops of wheat, rice, maize, soybeans and so on,conventional farms have the advantage rightnow.Looking forward, I think we will need to deploydifferent kinds of practices (especially new,mixed approaches that take the best of organicand conventional farming systems) where theyare best suited—geographically, economically,socially, etc.

This passage is adapted from Bryan Walsh, “Whole FoodBlues: Why Organic Agriculture May Not Be So Sustainable.”©2012 by Time Inc.When it comes to energy, everyone lovesefficiency. Cutting energy waste is one of those goalsthat both sides of the political divide can agree on,even if they sometimes diverge on how best to getthere. Energy efficiency allows us to get more out ofour given resources, which is good for the economyand (mostly) good for the environment as well. Inan increasingly hot and crowded world, the onlysustainable way to live is to get more out of less.Every environmentalist would agree.But change the conversation to food, andsuddenly efficiency doesn’t look so good.Conventional industrial agriculture has becomeincredibly efficient on a simple land to food basis.Thanks to fertilizers, mechanization and irrigation,each American farmer feeds over 155 peopleworldwide. Conventional farming gets more andmore crop per square foot of cultivated land—over 170 bushels of corn per acre in Iowa, forexample—which can mean less territory needs tobe converted from wilderness to farmland.And since a third of the planet is already used foragriculture—destroying forests and other wildhabitats along the way—anything that could help usproduce more food on less land would seem to begood for the environment.Of course, that’s not how most environmentalistsregard their arugula [a leafy green]. They haveembraced organic food as better for the planet—andhealthier and tastier, too—than the stuff produced byagricultural corporations. Environmentalists disdainthe enormous amounts of energy needed and wastecreated by conventional farming, while organicpractices—forgoing artificial fertilizers and chemicalpesticides—are considered far more sustainable.Sales of organic food rose 7.7% in 2010, up to $26.7billion—and people are making those purchases fortheir consciences as much as their taste buds.Yet a new meta-analysis in Nature does the mathand comes to a hard conclusion: organic farmingyields 25% fewer crops on average than conventionalagriculture. More land is therefore needed toproduce fewer crops—and that means organicfarming may not be as good for the planet aswe think.In the Nature analysis, scientists from McGillUniversity in Montreal and the University ofMinnesota performed an analysis of 66 studiescomparing conventional and organic methods across34 different crop species, from fruits to grains tolegumes. They found that organic farming delivereda lower yield for every crop type, though the disparityvaried widely. For rain-watered legume crops likebeans or perennial crops like fruit trees, organictrailed conventional agriculture by just 5%. Yet formajor cereal crops like corn or wheat, as well as mostvegetables—all of which provide the bulk of theworld’s calories—conventional agricultureoutperformed organics by more than 25%.The main difference is nitrogen, the chemical keyto plant growth. Conventional agriculture makes useof 171 million metric tons of synthetic fertilizer eachyear, and all that nitrogen enables much faster plantgrowth than the slower release of nitrogen from thecompost or cover crops used in organic farming.When we talk about a Green Revolution, we reallymean a nitrogen revolution—along with a lotof water.But not all the nitrogen used in conventionalfertilizer ends up in crops—much of it ends uprunning off the soil and into the oceans, creating vastpolluted dead zones. We’re already putting morenitrogen into the soil than the planet can stand overthe long term. And conventional agriculture alsodepends heavily on chemical pesticides, which canhave unintended side effects.What that means is that while conventionalagriculture is more efficient—sometimes much moreefficient—than organic farming, there are trade-offswith each. So an ideal global agriculture system, inthe views of the study’s authors, may borrow the bestfrom both systems, as Jonathan Foley of theUniversity of Minnesota explained:The bottom line? Today’s organic farmingpractices are probably best deployed in fruit andvegetable farms, where growing nutrition (notjust bulk calories) is the primary goal. But fordelivering sheer calories, especially in our staplecrops of wheat, rice, maize, soybeans and so on,conventional farms have the advantage rightnow.Looking forward, I think we will need to deploydifferent kinds of practices (especially new,mixed approaches that take the best of organicand conventional farming systems) where theyare best suited—geographically, economically,socially, etc.

This passage is adapted from Bryan Walsh, “Whole FoodBlues: Why Organic Agriculture May Not Be So Sustainable.”©2012 by Time Inc.When it comes to energy, everyone lovesefficiency. Cutting energy waste is one of those goalsthat both sides of the political divide can agree on,even if they sometimes diverge on how best to getthere. Energy efficiency allows us to get more out ofour given resources, which is good for the economyand (mostly) good for the environment as well. Inan increasingly hot and crowded world, the onlysustainable way to live is to get more out of less.Every environmentalist would agree.But change the conversation to food, andsuddenly efficiency doesn’t look so good.Conventional industrial agriculture has becomeincredibly efficient on a simple land to food basis.Thanks to fertilizers, mechanization and irrigation,each American farmer feeds over 155 peopleworldwide. Conventional farming gets more andmore crop per square foot of cultivated land—over 170 bushels of corn per acre in Iowa, forexample—which can mean less territory needs tobe converted from wilderness to farmland.And since a third of the planet is already used foragriculture—destroying forests and other wildhabitats along the way—anything that could help usproduce more food on less land would seem to begood for the environment.Of course, that’s not how most environmentalistsregard their arugula [a leafy green]. They haveembraced organic food as better for the planet—andhealthier and tastier, too—than the stuff produced byagricultural corporations. Environmentalists disdainthe enormous amounts of energy needed and wastecreated by conventional farming, while organicpractices—forgoing artificial fertilizers and chemicalpesticides—are considered far more sustainable.Sales of organic food rose 7.7% in 2010, up to $26.7billion—and people are making those purchases fortheir consciences as much as their taste buds.Yet a new meta-analysis in Nature does the mathand comes to a hard conclusion: organic farmingyields 25% fewer crops on average than conventionalagriculture. More land is therefore needed toproduce fewer crops—and that means organicfarming may not be as good for the planet aswe think.In the Nature analysis, scientists from McGillUniversity in Montreal and the University ofMinnesota performed an analysis of 66 studiescomparing conventional and organic methods across34 different crop species, from fruits to grains tolegumes. They found that organic farming delivereda lower yield for every crop type, though the disparityvaried widely. For rain-watered legume crops likebeans or perennial crops like fruit trees, organictrailed conventional agriculture by just 5%. Yet formajor cereal crops like corn or wheat, as well as mostvegetables—all of which provide the bulk of theworld’s calories—conventional agricultureoutperformed organics by more than 25%.The main difference is nitrogen, the chemical keyto plant growth. Conventional agriculture makes useof 171 million metric tons of synthetic fertilizer eachyear, and all that nitrogen enables much faster plantgrowth than the slower release of nitrogen from thecompost or cover crops used in organic farming.When we talk about a Green Revolution, we reallymean a nitrogen revolution—along with a lotof water.But not all the nitrogen used in conventionalfertilizer ends up in crops—much of it ends uprunning off the soil and into the oceans, creating vastpolluted dead zones. We’re already putting morenitrogen into the soil than the planet can stand overthe long term. And conventional agriculture alsodepends heavily on chemical pesticides, which canhave unintended side effects.What that means is that while conventionalagriculture is more efficient—sometimes much moreefficient—than organic farming, there are trade-offswith each. So an ideal global agriculture system, inthe views of the study’s authors, may borrow the bestfrom both systems, as Jonathan Foley of theUniversity of Minnesota explained:The bottom line? Today’s organic farmingpractices are probably best deployed in fruit andvegetable farms, where growing nutrition (notjust bulk calories) is the primary goal. But fordelivering sheer calories, especially in our staplecrops of wheat, rice, maize, soybeans and so on,conventional farms have the advantage rightnow.Looking forward, I think we will need to deploydifferent kinds of practices (especially new,mixed approaches that take the best of organicand conventional farming systems) where theyare best suited—geographically, economically,socially, etc.

This passage is adapted from Bryan Walsh, “Whole FoodBlues: Why Organic Agriculture May Not Be So Sustainable.”©2012 by Time Inc.When it comes to energy, everyone lovesefficiency. Cutting energy waste is one of those goalsthat both sides of the political divide can agree on,even if they sometimes diverge on how best to getthere. Energy efficiency allows us to get more out ofour given resources, which is good for the economyand (mostly) good for the environment as well. Inan increasingly hot and crowded world, the onlysustainable way to live is to get more out of less.Every environmentalist would agree.But change the conversation to food, andsuddenly efficiency doesn’t look so good.Conventional industrial agriculture has becomeincredibly efficient on a simple land to food basis.Thanks to fertilizers, mechanization and irrigation,each American farmer feeds over 155 peopleworldwide. Conventional farming gets more andmore crop per square foot of cultivated land—over 170 bushels of corn per acre in Iowa, forexample—which can mean less territory needs tobe converted from wilderness to farmland.And since a third of the planet is already used foragriculture—destroying forests and other wildhabitats along the way—anything that could help usproduce more food on less land would seem to begood for the environment.Of course, that’s not how most environmentalistsregard their arugula [a leafy green]. They haveembraced organic food as better for the planet—andhealthier and tastier, too—than the stuff produced byagricultural corporations. Environmentalists disdainthe enormous amounts of energy needed and wastecreated by conventional farming, while organicpractices—forgoing artificial fertilizers and chemicalpesticides—are considered far more sustainable.Sales of organic food rose 7.7% in 2010, up to $26.7billion—and people are making those purchases fortheir consciences as much as their taste buds.Yet a new meta-analysis in Nature does the mathand comes to a hard conclusion: organic farmingyields 25% fewer crops on average than conventionalagriculture. More land is therefore needed toproduce fewer crops—and that means organicfarming may not be as good for the planet aswe think.In the Nature analysis, scientists from McGillUniversity in Montreal and the University ofMinnesota performed an analysis of 66 studiescomparing conventional and organic methods across34 different crop species, from fruits to grains tolegumes. They found that organic farming delivereda lower yield for every crop type, though the disparityvaried widely. For rain-watered legume crops likebeans or perennial crops like fruit trees, organictrailed conventional agriculture by just 5%. Yet formajor cereal crops like corn or wheat, as well as mostvegetables—all of which provide the bulk of theworld’s calories—conventional agricultureoutperformed organics by more than 25%.The main difference is nitrogen, the chemical keyto plant growth. Conventional agriculture makes useof 171 million metric tons of synthetic fertilizer eachyear, and all that nitrogen enables much faster plantgrowth than the slower release of nitrogen from thecompost or cover crops used in organic farming.When we talk about a Green Revolution, we reallymean a nitrogen revolution—along with a lotof water.But not all the nitrogen used in conventionalfertilizer ends up in crops—much of it ends uprunning off the soil and into the oceans, creating vastpolluted dead zones. We’re already putting morenitrogen into the soil than the planet can stand overthe long term. And conventional agriculture alsodepends heavily on chemical pesticides, which canhave unintended side effects.What that means is that while conventionalagriculture is more efficient—sometimes much moreefficient—than organic farming, there are trade-offswith each. So an ideal global agriculture system, inthe views of the study’s authors, may borrow the bestfrom both systems, as Jonathan Foley of theUniversity of Minnesota explained:The bottom line? Today’s organic farmingpractices are probably best deployed in fruit andvegetable farms, where growing nutrition (notjust bulk calories) is the primary goal. But fordelivering sheer calories, especially in our staplecrops of wheat, rice, maize, soybeans and so on,conventional farms have the advantage rightnow.Looking forward, I think we will need to deploydifferent kinds of practices (especially new,mixed approaches that take the best of organicand conventional farming systems) where theyare best suited—geographically, economically,socially, etc.

This passage is adapted from Bryan Walsh, “Whole FoodBlues: Why Organic Agriculture May Not Be So Sustainable.”©2012 by Time Inc.When it comes to energy, everyone lovesefficiency. Cutting energy waste is one of those goalsthat both sides of the political divide can agree on,even if they sometimes diverge on how best to getthere. Energy efficiency allows us to get more out ofour given resources, which is good for the economyand (mostly) good for the environment as well. Inan increasingly hot and crowded world, the onlysustainable way to live is to get more out of less.Every environmentalist would agree.But change the conversation to food, andsuddenly efficiency doesn’t look so good.Conventional industrial agriculture has becomeincredibly efficient on a simple land to food basis.Thanks to fertilizers, mechanization and irrigation,each American farmer feeds over 155 peopleworldwide. Conventional farming gets more andmore crop per square foot of cultivated land—over 170 bushels of corn per acre in Iowa, forexample—which can mean less territory needs tobe converted from wilderness to farmland.And since a third of the planet is already used foragriculture—destroying forests and other wildhabitats along the way—anything that could help usproduce more food on less land would seem to begood for the environment.Of course, that’s not how most environmentalistsregard their arugula [a leafy green]. They haveembraced organic food as better for the planet—andhealthier and tastier, too—than the stuff produced byagricultural corporations. Environmentalists disdainthe enormous amounts of energy needed and wastecreated by conventional farming, while organicpractices—forgoing artificial fertilizers and chemicalpesticides—are considered far more sustainable.Sales of organic food rose 7.7% in 2010, up to $26.7billion—and people are making those purchases fortheir consciences as much as their taste buds.Yet a new meta-analysis in Nature does the mathand comes to a hard conclusion: organic farmingyields 25% fewer crops on average than conventionalagriculture. More land is therefore needed toproduce fewer crops—and that means organicfarming may not be as good for the planet aswe think.In the Nature analysis, scientists from McGillUniversity in Montreal and the University ofMinnesota performed an analysis of 66 studiescomparing conventional and organic methods across34 different crop species, from fruits to grains tolegumes. They found that organic farming delivereda lower yield for every crop type, though the disparityvaried widely. For rain-watered legume crops likebeans or perennial crops like fruit trees, organictrailed conventional agriculture by just 5%. Yet formajor cereal crops like corn or wheat, as well as mostvegetables—all of which provide the bulk of theworld’s calories—conventional agricultureoutperformed organics by more than 25%.The main difference is nitrogen, the chemical keyto plant growth. Conventional agriculture makes useof 171 million metric tons of synthetic fertilizer eachyear, and all that nitrogen enables much faster plantgrowth than the slower release of nitrogen from thecompost or cover crops used in organic farming.When we talk about a Green Revolution, we reallymean a nitrogen revolution—along with a lotof water.But not all the nitrogen used in conventionalfertilizer ends up in crops—much of it ends uprunning off the soil and into the oceans, creating vastpolluted dead zones. We’re already putting morenitrogen into the soil than the planet can stand overthe long term. And conventional agriculture alsodepends heavily on chemical pesticides, which canhave unintended side effects.What that means is that while conventionalagriculture is more efficient—sometimes much moreefficient—than organic farming, there are trade-offswith each. So an ideal global agriculture system, inthe views of the study’s authors, may borrow the bestfrom both systems, as Jonathan Foley of theUniversity of Minnesota explained:The bottom line? Today’s organic farmingpractices are probably best deployed in fruit andvegetable farms, where growing nutrition (notjust bulk calories) is the primary goal. But fordelivering sheer calories, especially in our staplecrops of wheat, rice, maize, soybeans and so on,conventional farms have the advantage rightnow.Looking forward, I think we will need to deploydifferent kinds of practices (especially new,mixed approaches that take the best of organicand conventional farming systems) where theyare best suited—geographically, economically,socially, etc.

This passage is adapted from Bryan Walsh, “Whole FoodBlues: Why Organic Agriculture May Not Be So Sustainable.”©2012 by Time Inc.When it comes to energy, everyone lovesefficiency. Cutting energy waste is one of those goalsthat both sides of the political divide can agree on,even if they sometimes diverge on how best to getthere. Energy efficiency allows us to get more out ofour given resources, which is good for the economyand (mostly) good for the environment as well. Inan increasingly hot and crowded world, the onlysustainable way to live is to get more out of less.Every environmentalist would agree.But change the conversation to food, andsuddenly efficiency doesn’t look so good.Conventional industrial agriculture has becomeincredibly efficient on a simple land to food basis.Thanks to fertilizers, mechanization and irrigation,each American farmer feeds over 155 peopleworldwide. Conventional farming gets more andmore crop per square foot of cultivated land—over 170 bushels of corn per acre in Iowa, forexample—which can mean less territory needs tobe converted from wilderness to farmland.And since a third of the planet is already used foragriculture—destroying forests and other wildhabitats along the way—anything that could help usproduce more food on less land would seem to begood for the environment.Of course, that’s not how most environmentalistsregard their arugula [a leafy green]. They haveembraced organic food as better for the planet—andhealthier and tastier, too—than the stuff produced byagricultural corporations. Environmentalists disdainthe enormous amounts of energy needed and wastecreated by conventional farming, while organicpractices—forgoing artificial fertilizers and chemicalpesticides—are considered far more sustainable.Sales of organic food rose 7.7% in 2010, up to $26.7billion—and people are making those purchases fortheir consciences as much as their taste buds.Yet a new meta-analysis in Nature does the mathand comes to a hard conclusion: organic farmingyields 25% fewer crops on average than conventionalagriculture. More land is therefore needed toproduce fewer crops—and that means organicfarming may not be as good for the planet aswe think.In the Nature analysis, scientists from McGillUniversity in Montreal and the University ofMinnesota performed an analysis of 66 studiescomparing conventional and organic methods across34 different crop species, from fruits to grains tolegumes. They found that organic farming delivereda lower yield for every crop type, though the disparityvaried widely. For rain-watered legume crops likebeans or perennial crops like fruit trees, organictrailed conventional agriculture by just 5%. Yet formajor cereal crops like corn or wheat, as well as mostvegetables—all of which provide the bulk of theworld’s calories—conventional agricultureoutperformed organics by more than 25%.The main difference is nitrogen, the chemical keyto plant growth. Conventional agriculture makes useof 171 million metric tons of synthetic fertilizer eachyear, and all that nitrogen enables much faster plantgrowth than the slower release of nitrogen from thecompost or cover crops used in organic farming.When we talk about a Green Revolution, we reallymean a nitrogen revolution—along with a lotof water.But not all the nitrogen used in conventionalfertilizer ends up in crops—much of it ends uprunning off the soil and into the oceans, creating vastpolluted dead zones. We’re already putting morenitrogen into the soil than the planet can stand overthe long term. And conventional agriculture alsodepends heavily on chemical pesticides, which canhave unintended side effects.What that means is that while conventionalagriculture is more efficient—sometimes much moreefficient—than organic farming, there are trade-offswith each. So an ideal global agriculture system, inthe views of the study’s authors, may borrow the bestfrom both systems, as Jonathan Foley of theUniversity of Minnesota explained:The bottom line? Today’s organic farmingpractices are probably best deployed in fruit andvegetable farms, where growing nutrition (notjust bulk calories) is the primary goal. But fordelivering sheer calories, especially in our staplecrops of wheat, rice, maize, soybeans and so on,conventional farms have the advantage rightnow.Looking forward, I think we will need to deploydifferent kinds of practices (especially new,mixed approaches that take the best of organicand conventional farming systems) where theyare best suited—geographically, economically,socially, etc.

This passage is adapted from Bryan Walsh, “Whole FoodBlues: Why Organic Agriculture May Not Be So Sustainable.”©2012 by Time Inc.When it comes to energy, everyone lovesefficiency. Cutting energy waste is one of those goalsthat both sides of the political divide can agree on,even if they sometimes diverge on how best to getthere. Energy efficiency allows us to get more out ofour given resources, which is good for the economyand (mostly) good for the environment as well. Inan increasingly hot and crowded world, the onlysustainable way to live is to get more out of less.Every environmentalist would agree.But change the conversation to food, andsuddenly efficiency doesn’t look so good.Conventional industrial agriculture has becomeincredibly efficient on a simple land to food basis.Thanks to fertilizers, mechanization and irrigation,each American farmer feeds over 155 peopleworldwide. Conventional farming gets more andmore crop per square foot of cultivated land—over 170 bushels of corn per acre in Iowa, forexample—which can mean less territory needs tobe converted from wilderness to farmland.And since a third of the planet is already used foragriculture—destroying forests and other wildhabitats along the way—anything that could help usproduce more food on less land would seem to begood for the environment.Of course, that’s not how most environmentalistsregard their arugula [a leafy green]. They haveembraced organic food as better for the planet—andhealthier and tastier, too—than the stuff produced byagricultural corporations. Environmentalists disdainthe enormous amounts of energy needed and wastecreated by conventional farming, while organicpractices—forgoing artificial fertilizers and chemicalpesticides—are considered far more sustainable.Sales of organic food rose 7.7% in 2010, up to $26.7billion—and people are making those purchases fortheir consciences as much as their taste buds.Yet a new meta-analysis in Nature does the mathand comes to a hard conclusion: organic farmingyields 25% fewer crops on average than conventionalagriculture. More land is therefore needed toproduce fewer crops—and that means organicfarming may not be as good for the planet aswe think.In the Nature analysis, scientists from McGillUniversity in Montreal and the University ofMinnesota performed an analysis of 66 studiescomparing conventional and organic methods across34 different crop species, from fruits to grains tolegumes. They found that organic farming delivereda lower yield for every crop type, though the disparityvaried widely. For rain-watered legume crops likebeans or perennial crops like fruit trees, organictrailed conventional agriculture by just 5%. Yet formajor cereal crops like corn or wheat, as well as mostvegetables—all of which provide the bulk of theworld’s calories—conventional agricultureoutperformed organics by more than 25%.The main difference is nitrogen, the chemical keyto plant growth. Conventional agriculture makes useof 171 million metric tons of synthetic fertilizer eachyear, and all that nitrogen enables much faster plantgrowth than the slower release of nitrogen from thecompost or cover crops used in organic farming.When we talk about a Green Revolution, we reallymean a nitrogen revolution—along with a lotof water.But not all the nitrogen used in conventionalfertilizer ends up in crops—much of it ends uprunning off the soil and into the oceans, creating vastpolluted dead zones. We’re already putting morenitrogen into the soil than the planet can stand overthe long term. And conventional agriculture alsodepends heavily on chemical pesticides, which canhave unintended side effects.What that means is that while conventionalagriculture is more efficient—sometimes much moreefficient—than organic farming, there are trade-offswith each. So an ideal global agriculture system, inthe views of the study’s authors, may borrow the bestfrom both systems, as Jonathan Foley of theUniversity of Minnesota explained:The bottom line? Today’s organic farmingpractices are probably best deployed in fruit andvegetable farms, where growing nutrition (notjust bulk calories) is the primary goal. But fordelivering sheer calories, especially in our staplecrops of wheat, rice, maize, soybeans and so on,conventional farms have the advantage rightnow.Looking forward, I think we will need to deploydifferent kinds of practices (especially new,mixed approaches that take the best of organicand conventional farming systems) where theyare best suited—geographically, economically,socially, etc.

The “wisdom of crowds” has become a mantra ofthe Internet age. Need to choose a new vacuumcleaner? Check out the reviews on online merchantAmazon. But a new study suggests that such onlinescores don’t always reveal the best choice. A massivecontrolled experiment of Web users finds that suchratings are highly susceptible to irrational “herdbehavior”—and that the herd can be manipulated.Sometimes the crowd really is wiser than you. Theclassic examples are guessing the weight of a bull orthe number of gumballs in a jar. Your guess isprobably going to be far from the mark, whereas theaverage of many people’s choices is remarkably closeto the true number.But what happens when the goal is to judgesomething less tangible, such as the quality or worthof a product? According to one theory, the wisdomof the crowd still holds—measuring the aggregate ofpeople’s opinions produces a stable, reliablevalue. Skeptics, however, argue that people’sopinions are easily swayed by those of others. Sonudging a crowd early on by presenting contraryopinions—for example, exposing them to some verygood or very bad attitudes—will steer the crowd in adifferent direction. To test which hypothesis is true,you would need to manipulate huge numbers ofpeople, exposing them to false information anddetermining how it affects their opinions.A team led by Sinan Aral, a network scientist atthe Massachusetts Institute of Technology inCambridge, did exactly that. Aral has been secretlyworking with a popular website that aggregates newsstories. The website allows users to make commentsabout news stories and vote each other’s commentsup or down. The vote tallies are visible as a numbernext to each comment, and the position of thecomments is chronological. (Stories on the site get anaverage of about ten comments and about three votesper comment.) It’s a follow-up to his experimentusing people’s ratings of movies to measure howmuch individual people influence each other online(answer: a lot). This time, he wanted to know howmuch the crowd influences the individual, andwhether it can be controlled from outside.For five months, every comment submitted by auser randomly received an “up” vote (positive); a“down” vote (negative); or as a control, no vote at all.The team then observed how users rated thosecomments. The users generated more than100,000 comments that were viewed more than10 million times and rated more than 300,000 timesby other users.At least when it comes to comments on newssites, the crowd is more herdlike than wise.Comments that received fake positive votes from theresearchers were 32% more likely to receive morepositive votes compared with a control, the teamreports. And those comments were no more likelythan the control to be down-voted by the next viewerto see them. By the end of the study, positivelymanipulated comments got an overall boost of about25%. However, the same did not hold true fornegative manipulation. The ratings of comments thatgot a fake down vote were usually negated by an upvote by the next user to see them.“Our experiment does not reveal the psychologybehind people’s decisions,” Aral says, “but anintuitive explanation is that people are moreskeptical of negative social influence. They’re morewilling to go along with positive opinions from otherpeople.”Duncan Watts, a network scientist at MicrosoftResearch in New York City, agrees with thatconclusion. “[But] one question is whether thepositive [herding] bias is specific to this site” or truein general, Watts says. He points out that thecategory of the news items in the experiment had astrong effect on how much people could bemanipulated. “I would have thought that ‘business’ ispretty similar to ‘economics,’ yet they find a muchstronger effect (almost 50% stronger) for the formerthan the latter. What explains this difference? If we’regoing to apply these findings in the real world, we’llneed to know the answers.”Will companies be able to boost their products bymanipulating online ratings on a massive scale?“That is easier said than done,” Watts says. If peopledetect—or learn—that comments on a website arebeing manipulated, the herd may spook and leave entirely.

The “wisdom of crowds” has become a mantra ofthe Internet age. Need to choose a new vacuumcleaner? Check out the reviews on online merchantAmazon. But a new study suggests that such onlinescores don’t always reveal the best choice. A massivecontrolled experiment of Web users finds that suchratings are highly susceptible to irrational “herdbehavior”—and that the herd can be manipulated.Sometimes the crowd really is wiser than you. Theclassic examples are guessing the weight of a bull orthe number of gumballs in a jar. Your guess isprobably going to be far from the mark, whereas theaverage of many people’s choices is remarkably closeto the true number.But what happens when the goal is to judgesomething less tangible, such as the quality or worthof a product? According to one theory, the wisdomof the crowd still holds—measuring the aggregate ofpeople’s opinions produces a stable, reliablevalue. Skeptics, however, argue that people’sopinions are easily swayed by those of others. Sonudging a crowd early on by presenting contraryopinions—for example, exposing them to some verygood or very bad attitudes—will steer the crowd in adifferent direction. To test which hypothesis is true,you would need to manipulate huge numbers ofpeople, exposing them to false information anddetermining how it affects their opinions.A team led by Sinan Aral, a network scientist atthe Massachusetts Institute of Technology inCambridge, did exactly that. Aral has been secretlyworking with a popular website that aggregates newsstories. The website allows users to make commentsabout news stories and vote each other’s commentsup or down. The vote tallies are visible as a numbernext to each comment, and the position of thecomments is chronological. (Stories on the site get anaverage of about ten comments and about three votesper comment.) It’s a follow-up to his experimentusing people’s ratings of movies to measure howmuch individual people influence each other online(answer: a lot). This time, he wanted to know howmuch the crowd influences the individual, andwhether it can be controlled from outside.For five months, every comment submitted by auser randomly received an “up” vote (positive); a“down” vote (negative); or as a control, no vote at all.The team then observed how users rated thosecomments. The users generated more than100,000 comments that were viewed more than10 million times and rated more than 300,000 timesby other users.At least when it comes to comments on newssites, the crowd is more herdlike than wise.Comments that received fake positive votes from theresearchers were 32% more likely to receive morepositive votes compared with a control, the teamreports. And those comments were no more likelythan the control to be down-voted by the next viewerto see them. By the end of the study, positivelymanipulated comments got an overall boost of about25%. However, the same did not hold true fornegative manipulation. The ratings of comments thatgot a fake down vote were usually negated by an upvote by the next user to see them.“Our experiment does not reveal the psychologybehind people’s decisions,” Aral says, “but anintuitive explanation is that people are moreskeptical of negative social influence. They’re morewilling to go along with positive opinions from otherpeople.”Duncan Watts, a network scientist at MicrosoftResearch in New York City, agrees with thatconclusion. “[But] one question is whether thepositive [herding] bias is specific to this site” or truein general, Watts says. He points out that thecategory of the news items in the experiment had astrong effect on how much people could bemanipulated. “I would have thought that ‘business’ ispretty similar to ‘economics,’ yet they find a muchstronger effect (almost 50% stronger) for the formerthan the latter. What explains this difference? If we’regoing to apply these findings in the real world, we’llneed to know the answers.”Will companies be able to boost their products bymanipulating online ratings on a massive scale?“That is easier said than done,” Watts says. If peopledetect—or learn—that comments on a website arebeing manipulated, the herd may spook and leave entirely.

The “wisdom of crowds” has become a mantra ofthe Internet age. Need to choose a new vacuumcleaner? Check out the reviews on online merchantAmazon. But a new study suggests that such onlinescores don’t always reveal the best choice. A massivecontrolled experiment of Web users finds that suchratings are highly susceptible to irrational “herdbehavior”—and that the herd can be manipulated.Sometimes the crowd really is wiser than you. Theclassic examples are guessing the weight of a bull orthe number of gumballs in a jar. Your guess isprobably going to be far from the mark, whereas theaverage of many people’s choices is remarkably closeto the true number.But what happens when the goal is to judgesomething less tangible, such as the quality or worthof a product? According to one theory, the wisdomof the crowd still holds—measuring the aggregate ofpeople’s opinions produces a stable, reliablevalue. Skeptics, however, argue that people’sopinions are easily swayed by those of others. Sonudging a crowd early on by presenting contraryopinions—for example, exposing them to some verygood or very bad attitudes—will steer the crowd in adifferent direction. To test which hypothesis is true,you would need to manipulate huge numbers ofpeople, exposing them to false information anddetermining how it affects their opinions.A team led by Sinan Aral, a network scientist atthe Massachusetts Institute of Technology inCambridge, did exactly that. Aral has been secretlyworking with a popular website that aggregates newsstories. The website allows users to make commentsabout news stories and vote each other’s commentsup or down. The vote tallies are visible as a numbernext to each comment, and the position of thecomments is chronological. (Stories on the site get anaverage of about ten comments and about three votesper comment.) It’s a follow-up to his experimentusing people’s ratings of movies to measure howmuch individual people influence each other online(answer: a lot). This time, he wanted to know howmuch the crowd influences the individual, andwhether it can be controlled from outside.For five months, every comment submitted by auser randomly received an “up” vote (positive); a“down” vote (negative); or as a control, no vote at all.The team then observed how users rated thosecomments. The users generated more than100,000 comments that were viewed more than10 million times and rated more than 300,000 timesby other users.At least when it comes to comments on newssites, the crowd is more herdlike than wise.Comments that received fake positive votes from theresearchers were 32% more likely to receive morepositive votes compared with a control, the teamreports. And those comments were no more likelythan the control to be down-voted by the next viewerto see them. By the end of the study, positivelymanipulated comments got an overall boost of about25%. However, the same did not hold true fornegative manipulation. The ratings of comments thatgot a fake down vote were usually negated by an upvote by the next user to see them.“Our experiment does not reveal the psychologybehind people’s decisions,” Aral says, “but anintuitive explanation is that people are moreskeptical of negative social influence. They’re morewilling to go along with positive opinions from otherpeople.”Duncan Watts, a network scientist at MicrosoftResearch in New York City, agrees with thatconclusion. “[But] one question is whether thepositive [herding] bias is specific to this site” or truein general, Watts says. He points out that thecategory of the news items in the experiment had astrong effect on how much people could bemanipulated. “I would have thought that ‘business’ ispretty similar to ‘economics,’ yet they find a muchstronger effect (almost 50% stronger) for the formerthan the latter. What explains this difference? If we’regoing to apply these findings in the real world, we’llneed to know the answers.”Will companies be able to boost their products bymanipulating online ratings on a massive scale?“That is easier said than done,” Watts says. If peopledetect—or learn—that comments on a website arebeing manipulated, the herd may spook and leave entirely.

The “wisdom of crowds” has become a mantra ofthe Internet age. Need to choose a new vacuumcleaner? Check out the reviews on online merchantAmazon. But a new study suggests that such onlinescores don’t always reveal the best choice. A massivecontrolled experiment of Web users finds that suchratings are highly susceptible to irrational “herdbehavior”—and that the herd can be manipulated.Sometimes the crowd really is wiser than you. Theclassic examples are guessing the weight of a bull orthe number of gumballs in a jar. Your guess isprobably going to be far from the mark, whereas theaverage of many people’s choices is remarkably closeto the true number.But what happens when the goal is to judgesomething less tangible, such as the quality or worthof a product? According to one theory, the wisdomof the crowd still holds—measuring the aggregate ofpeople’s opinions produces a stable, reliablevalue. Skeptics, however, argue that people’sopinions are easily swayed by those of others. Sonudging a crowd early on by presenting contraryopinions—for example, exposing them to some verygood or very bad attitudes—will steer the crowd in adifferent direction. To test which hypothesis is true,you would need to manipulate huge numbers ofpeople, exposing them to false information anddetermining how it affects their opinions.A team led by Sinan Aral, a network scientist atthe Massachusetts Institute of Technology inCambridge, did exactly that. Aral has been secretlyworking with a popular website that aggregates newsstories. The website allows users to make commentsabout news stories and vote each other’s commentsup or down. The vote tallies are visible as a numbernext to each comment, and the position of thecomments is chronological. (Stories on the site get anaverage of about ten comments and about three votesper comment.) It’s a follow-up to his experimentusing people’s ratings of movies to measure howmuch individual people influence each other online(answer: a lot). This time, he wanted to know howmuch the crowd influences the individual, andwhether it can be controlled from outside.For five months, every comment submitted by auser randomly received an “up” vote (positive); a“down” vote (negative); or as a control, no vote at all.The team then observed how users rated thosecomments. The users generated more than100,000 comments that were viewed more than10 million times and rated more than 300,000 timesby other users.At least when it comes to comments on newssites, the crowd is more herdlike than wise.Comments that received fake positive votes from theresearchers were 32% more likely to receive morepositive votes compared with a control, the teamreports. And those comments were no more likelythan the control to be down-voted by the next viewerto see them. By the end of the study, positivelymanipulated comments got an overall boost of about25%. However, the same did not hold true fornegative manipulation. The ratings of comments thatgot a fake down vote were usually negated by an upvote by the next user to see them.“Our experiment does not reveal the psychologybehind people’s decisions,” Aral says, “but anintuitive explanation is that people are moreskeptical of negative social influence. They’re morewilling to go along with positive opinions from otherpeople.”Duncan Watts, a network scientist at MicrosoftResearch in New York City, agrees with thatconclusion. “[But] one question is whether thepositive [herding] bias is specific to this site” or truein general, Watts says. He points out that thecategory of the news items in the experiment had astrong effect on how much people could bemanipulated. “I would have thought that ‘business’ ispretty similar to ‘economics,’ yet they find a muchstronger effect (almost 50% stronger) for the formerthan the latter. What explains this difference? If we’regoing to apply these findings in the real world, we’llneed to know the answers.”Will companies be able to boost their products bymanipulating online ratings on a massive scale?“That is easier said than done,” Watts says. If peopledetect—or learn—that comments on a website arebeing manipulated, the herd may spook and leave entirely.

The “wisdom of crowds” has become a mantra ofthe Internet age. Need to choose a new vacuumcleaner? Check out the reviews on online merchantAmazon. But a new study suggests that such onlinescores don’t always reveal the best choice. A massivecontrolled experiment of Web users finds that suchratings are highly susceptible to irrational “herdbehavior”—and that the herd can be manipulated.Sometimes the crowd really is wiser than you. Theclassic examples are guessing the weight of a bull orthe number of gumballs in a jar. Your guess isprobably going to be far from the mark, whereas theaverage of many people’s choices is remarkably closeto the true number.But what happens when the goal is to judgesomething less tangible, such as the quality or worthof a product? According to one theory, the wisdomof the crowd still holds—measuring the aggregate ofpeople’s opinions produces a stable, reliablevalue. Skeptics, however, argue that people’sopinions are easily swayed by those of others. Sonudging a crowd early on by presenting contraryopinions—for example, exposing them to some verygood or very bad attitudes—will steer the crowd in adifferent direction. To test which hypothesis is true,you would need to manipulate huge numbers ofpeople, exposing them to false information anddetermining how it affects their opinions.A team led by Sinan Aral, a network scientist atthe Massachusetts Institute of Technology inCambridge, did exactly that. Aral has been secretlyworking with a popular website that aggregates newsstories. The website allows users to make commentsabout news stories and vote each other’s commentsup or down. The vote tallies are visible as a numbernext to each comment, and the position of thecomments is chronological. (Stories on the site get anaverage of about ten comments and about three votesper comment.) It’s a follow-up to his experimentusing people’s ratings of movies to measure howmuch individual people influence each other online(answer: a lot). This time, he wanted to know howmuch the crowd influences the individual, andwhether it can be controlled from outside.For five months, every comment submitted by auser randomly received an “up” vote (positive); a“down” vote (negative); or as a control, no vote at all.The team then observed how users rated thosecomments. The users generated more than100,000 comments that were viewed more than10 million times and rated more than 300,000 timesby other users.At least when it comes to comments on newssites, the crowd is more herdlike than wise.Comments that received fake positive votes from theresearchers were 32% more likely to receive morepositive votes compared with a control, the teamreports. And those comments were no more likelythan the control to be down-voted by the next viewerto see them. By the end of the study, positivelymanipulated comments got an overall boost of about25%. However, the same did not hold true fornegative manipulation. The ratings of comments thatgot a fake down vote were usually negated by an upvote by the next user to see them.“Our experiment does not reveal the psychologybehind people’s decisions,” Aral says, “but anintuitive explanation is that people are moreskeptical of negative social influence. They’re morewilling to go along with positive opinions from otherpeople.”Duncan Watts, a network scientist at MicrosoftResearch in New York City, agrees with thatconclusion. “[But] one question is whether thepositive [herding] bias is specific to this site” or truein general, Watts says. He points out that thecategory of the news items in the experiment had astrong effect on how much people could bemanipulated. “I would have thought that ‘business’ ispretty similar to ‘economics,’ yet they find a muchstronger effect (almost 50% stronger) for the formerthan the latter. What explains this difference? If we’regoing to apply these findings in the real world, we’llneed to know the answers.”Will companies be able to boost their products bymanipulating online ratings on a massive scale?“That is easier said than done,” Watts says. If peopledetect—or learn—that comments on a website arebeing manipulated, the herd may spook and leave entirely.

The “wisdom of crowds” has become a mantra ofthe Internet age. Need to choose a new vacuumcleaner? Check out the reviews on online merchantAmazon. But a new study suggests that such onlinescores don’t always reveal the best choice. A massivecontrolled experiment of Web users finds that suchratings are highly susceptible to irrational “herdbehavior”—and that the herd can be manipulated.Sometimes the crowd really is wiser than you. Theclassic examples are guessing the weight of a bull orthe number of gumballs in a jar. Your guess isprobably going to be far from the mark, whereas theaverage of many people’s choices is remarkably closeto the true number.But what happens when the goal is to judgesomething less tangible, such as the quality or worthof a product? According to one theory, the wisdomof the crowd still holds—measuring the aggregate ofpeople’s opinions produces a stable, reliablevalue. Skeptics, however, argue that people’sopinions are easily swayed by those of others. Sonudging a crowd early on by presenting contraryopinions—for example, exposing them to some verygood or very bad attitudes—will steer the crowd in adifferent direction. To test which hypothesis is true,you would need to manipulate huge numbers ofpeople, exposing them to false information anddetermining how it affects their opinions.A team led by Sinan Aral, a network scientist atthe Massachusetts Institute of Technology inCambridge, did exactly that. Aral has been secretlyworking with a popular website that aggregates newsstories. The website allows users to make commentsabout news stories and vote each other’s commentsup or down. The vote tallies are visible as a numbernext to each comment, and the position of thecomments is chronological. (Stories on the site get anaverage of about ten comments and about three votesper comment.) It’s a follow-up to his experimentusing people’s ratings of movies to measure howmuch individual people influence each other online(answer: a lot). This time, he wanted to know howmuch the crowd influences the individual, andwhether it can be controlled from outside.For five months, every comment submitted by auser randomly received an “up” vote (positive); a“down” vote (negative); or as a control, no vote at all.The team then observed how users rated thosecomments. The users generated more than100,000 comments that were viewed more than10 million times and rated more than 300,000 timesby other users.At least when it comes to comments on newssites, the crowd is more herdlike than wise.Comments that received fake positive votes from theresearchers were 32% more likely to receive morepositive votes compared with a control, the teamreports. And those comments were no more likelythan the control to be down-voted by the next viewerto see them. By the end of the study, positivelymanipulated comments got an overall boost of about25%. However, the same did not hold true fornegative manipulation. The ratings of comments thatgot a fake down vote were usually negated by an upvote by the next user to see them.“Our experiment does not reveal the psychologybehind people’s decisions,” Aral says, “but anintuitive explanation is that people are moreskeptical of negative social influence. They’re morewilling to go along with positive opinions from otherpeople.”Duncan Watts, a network scientist at MicrosoftResearch in New York City, agrees with thatconclusion. “[But] one question is whether thepositive [herding] bias is specific to this site” or truein general, Watts says. He points out that thecategory of the news items in the experiment had astrong effect on how much people could bemanipulated. “I would have thought that ‘business’ ispretty similar to ‘economics,’ yet they find a muchstronger effect (almost 50% stronger) for the formerthan the latter. What explains this difference? If we’regoing to apply these findings in the real world, we’llneed to know the answers.”Will companies be able to boost their products bymanipulating online ratings on a massive scale?“That is easier said than done,” Watts says. If peopledetect—or learn—that comments on a website arebeing manipulated, the herd may spook and leave entirely.

The “wisdom of crowds” has become a mantra ofthe Internet age. Need to choose a new vacuumcleaner? Check out the reviews on online merchantAmazon. But a new study suggests that such onlinescores don’t always reveal the best choice. A massivecontrolled experiment of Web users finds that suchratings are highly susceptible to irrational “herdbehavior”—and that the herd can be manipulated.Sometimes the crowd really is wiser than you. Theclassic examples are guessing the weight of a bull orthe number of gumballs in a jar. Your guess isprobably going to be far from the mark, whereas theaverage of many people’s choices is remarkably closeto the true number.But what happens when the goal is to judgesomething less tangible, such as the quality or worthof a product? According to one theory, the wisdomof the crowd still holds—measuring the aggregate ofpeople’s opinions produces a stable, reliablevalue. Skeptics, however, argue that people’sopinions are easily swayed by those of others. Sonudging a crowd early on by presenting contraryopinions—for example, exposing them to some verygood or very bad attitudes—will steer the crowd in adifferent direction. To test which hypothesis is true,you would need to manipulate huge numbers ofpeople, exposing them to false information anddetermining how it affects their opinions.A team led by Sinan Aral, a network scientist atthe Massachusetts Institute of Technology inCambridge, did exactly that. Aral has been secretlyworking with a popular website that aggregates newsstories. The website allows users to make commentsabout news stories and vote each other’s commentsup or down. The vote tallies are visible as a numbernext to each comment, and the position of thecomments is chronological. (Stories on the site get anaverage of about ten comments and about three votesper comment.) It’s a follow-up to his experimentusing people’s ratings of movies to measure howmuch individual people influence each other online(answer: a lot). This time, he wanted to know howmuch the crowd influences the individual, andwhether it can be controlled from outside.For five months, every comment submitted by auser randomly received an “up” vote (positive); a“down” vote (negative); or as a control, no vote at all.The team then observed how users rated thosecomments. The users generated more than100,000 comments that were viewed more than10 million times and rated more than 300,000 timesby other users.At least when it comes to comments on newssites, the crowd is more herdlike than wise.Comments that received fake positive votes from theresearchers were 32% more likely to receive morepositive votes compared with a control, the teamreports. And those comments were no more likelythan the control to be down-voted by the next viewerto see them. By the end of the study, positivelymanipulated comments got an overall boost of about25%. However, the same did not hold true fornegative manipulation. The ratings of comments thatgot a fake down vote were usually negated by an upvote by the next user to see them.“Our experiment does not reveal the psychologybehind people’s decisions,” Aral says, “but anintuitive explanation is that people are moreskeptical of negative social influence. They’re morewilling to go along with positive opinions from otherpeople.”Duncan Watts, a network scientist at MicrosoftResearch in New York City, agrees with thatconclusion. “[But] one question is whether thepositive [herding] bias is specific to this site” or truein general, Watts says. He points out that thecategory of the news items in the experiment had astrong effect on how much people could bemanipulated. “I would have thought that ‘business’ ispretty similar to ‘economics,’ yet they find a muchstronger effect (almost 50% stronger) for the formerthan the latter. What explains this difference? If we’regoing to apply these findings in the real world, we’llneed to know the answers.”Will companies be able to boost their products bymanipulating online ratings on a massive scale?“That is easier said than done,” Watts says. If peopledetect—or learn—that comments on a website arebeing manipulated, the herd may spook and leave entirely.

The “wisdom of crowds” has become a mantra ofthe Internet age. Need to choose a new vacuumcleaner? Check out the reviews on online merchantAmazon. But a new study suggests that such onlinescores don’t always reveal the best choice. A massivecontrolled experiment of Web users finds that suchratings are highly susceptible to irrational “herdbehavior”—and that the herd can be manipulated.Sometimes the crowd really is wiser than you. Theclassic examples are guessing the weight of a bull orthe number of gumballs in a jar. Your guess isprobably going to be far from the mark, whereas theaverage of many people’s choices is remarkably closeto the true number.But what happens when the goal is to judgesomething less tangible, such as the quality or worthof a product? According to one theory, the wisdomof the crowd still holds—measuring the aggregate ofpeople’s opinions produces a stable, reliablevalue. Skeptics, however, argue that people’sopinions are easily swayed by those of others. Sonudging a crowd early on by presenting contraryopinions—for example, exposing them to some verygood or very bad attitudes—will steer the crowd in adifferent direction. To test which hypothesis is true,you would need to manipulate huge numbers ofpeople, exposing them to false information anddetermining how it affects their opinions.A team led by Sinan Aral, a network scientist atthe Massachusetts Institute of Technology inCambridge, did exactly that. Aral has been secretlyworking with a popular website that aggregates newsstories. The website allows users to make commentsabout news stories and vote each other’s commentsup or down. The vote tallies are visible as a numbernext to each comment, and the position of thecomments is chronological. (Stories on the site get anaverage of about ten comments and about three votesper comment.) It’s a follow-up to his experimentusing people’s ratings of movies to measure howmuch individual people influence each other online(answer: a lot). This time, he wanted to know howmuch the crowd influences the individual, andwhether it can be controlled from outside.For five months, every comment submitted by auser randomly received an “up” vote (positive); a“down” vote (negative); or as a control, no vote at all.The team then observed how users rated thosecomments. The users generated more than100,000 comments that were viewed more than10 million times and rated more than 300,000 timesby other users.At least when it comes to comments on newssites, the crowd is more herdlike than wise.Comments that received fake positive votes from theresearchers were 32% more likely to receive morepositive votes compared with a control, the teamreports. And those comments were no more likelythan the control to be down-voted by the next viewerto see them. By the end of the study, positivelymanipulated comments got an overall boost of about25%. However, the same did not hold true fornegative manipulation. The ratings of comments thatgot a fake down vote were usually negated by an upvote by the next user to see them.“Our experiment does not reveal the psychologybehind people’s decisions,” Aral says, “but anintuitive explanation is that people are moreskeptical of negative social influence. They’re morewilling to go along with positive opinions from otherpeople.”Duncan Watts, a network scientist at MicrosoftResearch in New York City, agrees with thatconclusion. “[But] one question is whether thepositive [herding] bias is specific to this site” or truein general, Watts says. He points out that thecategory of the news items in the experiment had astrong effect on how much people could bemanipulated. “I would have thought that ‘business’ ispretty similar to ‘economics,’ yet they find a muchstronger effect (almost 50% stronger) for the formerthan the latter. What explains this difference? If we’regoing to apply these findings in the real world, we’llneed to know the answers.”Will companies be able to boost their products bymanipulating online ratings on a massive scale?“That is easier said than done,” Watts says. If peopledetect—or learn—that comments on a website arebeing manipulated, the herd may spook and leave entirely.

The “wisdom of crowds” has become a mantra ofthe Internet age. Need to choose a new vacuumcleaner? Check out the reviews on online merchantAmazon. But a new study suggests that such onlinescores don’t always reveal the best choice. A massivecontrolled experiment of Web users finds that suchratings are highly susceptible to irrational “herdbehavior”—and that the herd can be manipulated.Sometimes the crowd really is wiser than you. Theclassic examples are guessing the weight of a bull orthe number of gumballs in a jar. Your guess isprobably going to be far from the mark, whereas theaverage of many people’s choices is remarkably closeto the true number.But what happens when the goal is to judgesomething less tangible, such as the quality or worthof a product? According to one theory, the wisdomof the crowd still holds—measuring the aggregate ofpeople’s opinions produces a stable, reliablevalue. Skeptics, however, argue that people’sopinions are easily swayed by those of others. Sonudging a crowd early on by presenting contraryopinions—for example, exposing them to some verygood or very bad attitudes—will steer the crowd in adifferent direction. To test which hypothesis is true,you would need to manipulate huge numbers ofpeople, exposing them to false information anddetermining how it affects their opinions.A team led by Sinan Aral, a network scientist atthe Massachusetts Institute of Technology inCambridge, did exactly that. Aral has been secretlyworking with a popular website that aggregates newsstories. The website allows users to make commentsabout news stories and vote each other’s commentsup or down. The vote tallies are visible as a numbernext to each comment, and the position of thecomments is chronological. (Stories on the site get anaverage of about ten comments and about three votesper comment.) It’s a follow-up to his experimentusing people’s ratings of movies to measure howmuch individual people influence each other online(answer: a lot). This time, he wanted to know howmuch the crowd influences the individual, andwhether it can be controlled from outside.For five months, every comment submitted by auser randomly received an “up” vote (positive); a“down” vote (negative); or as a control, no vote at all.The team then observed how users rated thosecomments. The users generated more than100,000 comments that were viewed more than10 million times and rated more than 300,000 timesby other users.At least when it comes to comments on newssites, the crowd is more herdlike than wise.Comments that received fake positive votes from theresearchers were 32% more likely to receive morepositive votes compared with a control, the teamreports. And those comments were no more likelythan the control to be down-voted by the next viewerto see them. By the end of the study, positivelymanipulated comments got an overall boost of about25%. However, the same did not hold true fornegative manipulation. The ratings of comments thatgot a fake down vote were usually negated by an upvote by the next user to see them.“Our experiment does not reveal the psychologybehind people’s decisions,” Aral says, “but anintuitive explanation is that people are moreskeptical of negative social influence. They’re morewilling to go along with positive opinions from otherpeople.”Duncan Watts, a network scientist at MicrosoftResearch in New York City, agrees with thatconclusion. “[But] one question is whether thepositive [herding] bias is specific to this site” or truein general, Watts says. He points out that thecategory of the news items in the experiment had astrong effect on how much people could bemanipulated. “I would have thought that ‘business’ ispretty similar to ‘economics,’ yet they find a muchstronger effect (almost 50% stronger) for the formerthan the latter. What explains this difference? If we’regoing to apply these findings in the real world, we’llneed to know the answers.”Will companies be able to boost their products bymanipulating online ratings on a massive scale?“That is easier said than done,” Watts says. If peopledetect—or learn—that comments on a website arebeing manipulated, the herd may spook and leave entirely.

The “wisdom of crowds” has become a mantra ofthe Internet age. Need to choose a new vacuumcleaner? Check out the reviews on online merchantAmazon. But a new study suggests that such onlinescores don’t always reveal the best choice. A massivecontrolled experiment of Web users finds that suchratings are highly susceptible to irrational “herdbehavior”—and that the herd can be manipulated.Sometimes the crowd really is wiser than you. Theclassic examples are guessing the weight of a bull orthe number of gumballs in a jar. Your guess isprobably going to be far from the mark, whereas theaverage of many people’s choices is remarkably closeto the true number.But what happens when the goal is to judgesomething less tangible, such as the quality or worthof a product? According to one theory, the wisdomof the crowd still holds—measuring the aggregate ofpeople’s opinions produces a stable, reliablevalue. Skeptics, however, argue that people’sopinions are easily swayed by those of others. Sonudging a crowd early on by presenting contraryopinions—for example, exposing them to some verygood or very bad attitudes—will steer the crowd in adifferent direction. To test which hypothesis is true,you would need to manipulate huge numbers ofpeople, exposing them to false information anddetermining how it affects their opinions.A team led by Sinan Aral, a network scientist atthe Massachusetts Institute of Technology inCambridge, did exactly that. Aral has been secretlyworking with a popular website that aggregates newsstories. The website allows users to make commentsabout news stories and vote each other’s commentsup or down. The vote tallies are visible as a numbernext to each comment, and the position of thecomments is chronological. (Stories on the site get anaverage of about ten comments and about three votesper comment.) It’s a follow-up to his experimentusing people’s ratings of movies to measure howmuch individual people influence each other online(answer: a lot). This time, he wanted to know howmuch the crowd influences the individual, andwhether it can be controlled from outside.For five months, every comment submitted by auser randomly received an “up” vote (positive); a“down” vote (negative); or as a control, no vote at all.The team then observed how users rated thosecomments. The users generated more than100,000 comments that were viewed more than10 million times and rated more than 300,000 timesby other users.At least when it comes to comments on newssites, the crowd is more herdlike than wise.Comments that received fake positive votes from theresearchers were 32% more likely to receive morepositive votes compared with a control, the teamreports. And those comments were no more likelythan the control to be down-voted by the next viewerto see them. By the end of the study, positivelymanipulated comments got an overall boost of about25%. However, the same did not hold true fornegative manipulation. The ratings of comments thatgot a fake down vote were usually negated by an upvote by the next user to see them.“Our experiment does not reveal the psychologybehind people’s decisions,” Aral says, “but anintuitive explanation is that people are moreskeptical of negative social influence. They’re morewilling to go along with positive opinions from otherpeople.”Duncan Watts, a network scientist at MicrosoftResearch in New York City, agrees with thatconclusion. “[But] one question is whether thepositive [herding] bias is specific to this site” or truein general, Watts says. He points out that thecategory of the news items in the experiment had astrong effect on how much people could bemanipulated. “I would have thought that ‘business’ ispretty similar to ‘economics,’ yet they find a muchstronger effect (almost 50% stronger) for the formerthan the latter. What explains this difference? If we’regoing to apply these findings in the real world, we’llneed to know the answers.”Will companies be able to boost their products bymanipulating online ratings on a massive scale?“That is easier said than done,” Watts says. If peopledetect—or learn—that comments on a website arebeing manipulated, the herd may spook and leave entirely.

In 2000, a neuroscientist at University CollegeLondon named Eleanor Maguire wanted to find outwhat effect, if any, all that driving around thelabyrinthine streets of London might have oncabbies’ brains. When she brought sixteen taxidrivers into her lab and examined their brains in anMRI scanner, she found one surprising andimportant difference. The right posteriorhippocampus, a part of the brain known to beinvolved in spatial navigation, was 7 percent largerthan normal in the cabbies—a small but verysignificant difference. Maguire concluded that all ofthat way-finding around London had physicallyaltered the gross structure of their brains. The moreyears a cabbie had been on the road, the morepronounced the effect.The brain is a mutable organ, capable—withinlimits—of reorganizing itself and readapting to newkinds of sensory input, a phenomenon known asneuroplasticity. It had long been thought that theadult brain was incapable of spawning newneurons—that while learning caused synapses torearrange themselves and new links between braincells to form, the brain’s basic anatomical structurewas more or less static. Maguire’s study suggested theold inherited wisdom was simply not true.After her groundbreaking study of Londoncabbies, Maguire decided to turn her attention tomental athletes. She teamed up with ElizabethValentine and John Wilding, authors of the academicmonograph Superior Memory, to study tenindividuals who had finished near the top of theWorld Memory Championship. They wanted to findout if the memorizers’ brains were—like the Londoncabbies’—structurally different from the rest of ours,or if they were somehow just making better use ofmemory abilities that we all possess.The researchers put both the mental athletes and agroup of matched control subjects into MRI scannersand asked them to memorize three-digit numbers,black-and-white photographs of people’s faces, andmagnified images of snowflakes, while their brainswere being scanned. Maguire and her team thought itwas possible that they might discover anatomicaldifferences in the brains of the memory champs,evidence that their brains had somehow reorganizedthemselves in the process of doing all that intensiveremembering. But when the researchers reviewed theimaging data, not a single significant structuraldifference turned up. The brains of the mentalathletes appeared to be indistinguishable from thoseof the control subjects. What’s more, on every singletest of general cognitive ability, the mental athletes’scores came back well within the normal range. Thememory champs weren’t smarter, and they didn’thave special brains.But there was one telling difference between thebrains of the mental athletes and the control subjects:When the researchers looked at which parts of thebrain were lighting up when the mental athletes werememorizing, they found that they were activatingentirely different circuitry. According to thefunctional MRIs [fMRIs], regions of the brain thatwere less active in the control subjects seemed to beworking in overdrive for the mental athletes.Surprisingly, when the mental athletes werelearning new information, they were engagingseveral regions of the brain known to be involved intwo specific tasks: visual memory and spatialnavigation, including the same right posteriorhippocampal region that the London cabbies hadenlarged with all their daily way-finding. At firstglance, this wouldn’t seem to make any sense.Why would mental athletes be conjuring images intheir mind’s eye when they were trying to learnthree-digit numbers? Why should they be navigatinglike London cabbies when they’re supposed to beremembering the shapes of snowflakes?Maguire and her team asked the mental athletesto describe exactly what was going through theirminds as they memorized. The mental athletes saidthey were consciously converting the informationthey were being asked to memorize into images, anddistributing those images along familiar spatialjourneys. They weren’t doing this automatically, orbecause it was an inborn talent they’d nurtured sincechildhood. Rather, the unexpected patterns of neuralactivity that Maguire’s fMRIs turned up were theresult of training and practice.

In 2000, a neuroscientist at University CollegeLondon named Eleanor Maguire wanted to find outwhat effect, if any, all that driving around thelabyrinthine streets of London might have oncabbies’ brains. When she brought sixteen taxidrivers into her lab and examined their brains in anMRI scanner, she found one surprising andimportant difference. The right posteriorhippocampus, a part of the brain known to beinvolved in spatial navigation, was 7 percent largerthan normal in the cabbies—a small but verysignificant difference. Maguire concluded that all ofthat way-finding around London had physicallyaltered the gross structure of their brains. The moreyears a cabbie had been on the road, the morepronounced the effect.The brain is a mutable organ, capable—withinlimits—of reorganizing itself and readapting to newkinds of sensory input, a phenomenon known asneuroplasticity. It had long been thought that theadult brain was incapable of spawning newneurons—that while learning caused synapses torearrange themselves and new links between braincells to form, the brain’s basic anatomical structurewas more or less static. Maguire’s study suggested theold inherited wisdom was simply not true.After her groundbreaking study of Londoncabbies, Maguire decided to turn her attention tomental athletes. She teamed up with ElizabethValentine and John Wilding, authors of the academicmonograph Superior Memory, to study tenindividuals who had finished near the top of theWorld Memory Championship. They wanted to findout if the memorizers’ brains were—like the Londoncabbies’—structurally different from the rest of ours,or if they were somehow just making better use ofmemory abilities that we all possess.The researchers put both the mental athletes and agroup of matched control subjects into MRI scannersand asked them to memorize three-digit numbers,black-and-white photographs of people’s faces, andmagnified images of snowflakes, while their brainswere being scanned. Maguire and her team thought itwas possible that they might discover anatomicaldifferences in the brains of the memory champs,evidence that their brains had somehow reorganizedthemselves in the process of doing all that intensiveremembering. But when the researchers reviewed theimaging data, not a single significant structuraldifference turned up. The brains of the mentalathletes appeared to be indistinguishable from thoseof the control subjects. What’s more, on every singletest of general cognitive ability, the mental athletes’scores came back well within the normal range. Thememory champs weren’t smarter, and they didn’thave special brains.But there was one telling difference between thebrains of the mental athletes and the control subjects:When the researchers looked at which parts of thebrain were lighting up when the mental athletes werememorizing, they found that they were activatingentirely different circuitry. According to thefunctional MRIs [fMRIs], regions of the brain thatwere less active in the control subjects seemed to beworking in overdrive for the mental athletes.Surprisingly, when the mental athletes werelearning new information, they were engagingseveral regions of the brain known to be involved intwo specific tasks: visual memory and spatialnavigation, including the same right posteriorhippocampal region that the London cabbies hadenlarged with all their daily way-finding. At firstglance, this wouldn’t seem to make any sense.Why would mental athletes be conjuring images intheir mind’s eye when they were trying to learnthree-digit numbers? Why should they be navigatinglike London cabbies when they’re supposed to beremembering the shapes of snowflakes?Maguire and her team asked the mental athletesto describe exactly what was going through theirminds as they memorized. The mental athletes saidthey were consciously converting the informationthey were being asked to memorize into images, anddistributing those images along familiar spatialjourneys. They weren’t doing this automatically, orbecause it was an inborn talent they’d nurtured sincechildhood. Rather, the unexpected patterns of neuralactivity that Maguire’s fMRIs turned up were theresult of training and practice.

In 2000, a neuroscientist at University CollegeLondon named Eleanor Maguire wanted to find outwhat effect, if any, all that driving around thelabyrinthine streets of London might have oncabbies’ brains. When she brought sixteen taxidrivers into her lab and examined their brains in anMRI scanner, she found one surprising andimportant difference. The right posteriorhippocampus, a part of the brain known to beinvolved in spatial navigation, was 7 percent largerthan normal in the cabbies—a small but verysignificant difference. Maguire concluded that all ofthat way-finding around London had physicallyaltered the gross structure of their brains. The moreyears a cabbie had been on the road, the morepronounced the effect.The brain is a mutable organ, capable—withinlimits—of reorganizing itself and readapting to newkinds of sensory input, a phenomenon known asneuroplasticity. It had long been thought that theadult brain was incapable of spawning newneurons—that while learning caused synapses torearrange themselves and new links between braincells to form, the brain’s basic anatomical structurewas more or less static. Maguire’s study suggested theold inherited wisdom was simply not true.After her groundbreaking study of Londoncabbies, Maguire decided to turn her attention tomental athletes. She teamed up with ElizabethValentine and John Wilding, authors of the academicmonograph Superior Memory, to study tenindividuals who had finished near the top of theWorld Memory Championship. They wanted to findout if the memorizers’ brains were—like the Londoncabbies’—structurally different from the rest of ours,or if they were somehow just making better use ofmemory abilities that we all possess.The researchers put both the mental athletes and agroup of matched control subjects into MRI scannersand asked them to memorize three-digit numbers,black-and-white photographs of people’s faces, andmagnified images of snowflakes, while their brainswere being scanned. Maguire and her team thought itwas possible that they might discover anatomicaldifferences in the brains of the memory champs,evidence that their brains had somehow reorganizedthemselves in the process of doing all that intensiveremembering. But when the researchers reviewed theimaging data, not a single significant structuraldifference turned up. The brains of the mentalathletes appeared to be indistinguishable from thoseof the control subjects. What’s more, on every singletest of general cognitive ability, the mental athletes’scores came back well within the normal range. Thememory champs weren’t smarter, and they didn’thave special brains.But there was one telling difference between thebrains of the mental athletes and the control subjects:When the researchers looked at which parts of thebrain were lighting up when the mental athletes werememorizing, they found that they were activatingentirely different circuitry. According to thefunctional MRIs [fMRIs], regions of the brain thatwere less active in the control subjects seemed to beworking in overdrive for the mental athletes.Surprisingly, when the mental athletes werelearning new information, they were engagingseveral regions of the brain known to be involved intwo specific tasks: visual memory and spatialnavigation, including the same right posteriorhippocampal region that the London cabbies hadenlarged with all their daily way-finding. At firstglance, this wouldn’t seem to make any sense.Why would mental athletes be conjuring images intheir mind’s eye when they were trying to learnthree-digit numbers? Why should they be navigatinglike London cabbies when they’re supposed to beremembering the shapes of snowflakes?Maguire and her team asked the mental athletesto describe exactly what was going through theirminds as they memorized. The mental athletes saidthey were consciously converting the informationthey were being asked to memorize into images, anddistributing those images along familiar spatialjourneys. They weren’t doing this automatically, orbecause it was an inborn talent they’d nurtured sincechildhood. Rather, the unexpected patterns of neuralactivity that Maguire’s fMRIs turned up were theresult of training and practice.

In 2000, a neuroscientist at University CollegeLondon named Eleanor Maguire wanted to find outwhat effect, if any, all that driving around thelabyrinthine streets of London might have oncabbies’ brains. When she brought sixteen taxidrivers into her lab and examined their brains in anMRI scanner, she found one surprising andimportant difference. The right posteriorhippocampus, a part of the brain known to beinvolved in spatial navigation, was 7 percent largerthan normal in the cabbies—a small but verysignificant difference. Maguire concluded that all ofthat way-finding around London had physicallyaltered the gross structure of their brains. The moreyears a cabbie had been on the road, the morepronounced the effect.The brain is a mutable organ, capable—withinlimits—of reorganizing itself and readapting to newkinds of sensory input, a phenomenon known asneuroplasticity. It had long been thought that theadult brain was incapable of spawning newneurons—that while learning caused synapses torearrange themselves and new links between braincells to form, the brain’s basic anatomical structurewas more or less static. Maguire’s study suggested theold inherited wisdom was simply not true.After her groundbreaking study of Londoncabbies, Maguire decided to turn her attention tomental athletes. She teamed up with ElizabethValentine and John Wilding, authors of the academicmonograph Superior Memory, to study tenindividuals who had finished near the top of theWorld Memory Championship. They wanted to findout if the memorizers’ brains were—like the Londoncabbies’—structurally different from the rest of ours,or if they were somehow just making better use ofmemory abilities that we all possess.The researchers put both the mental athletes and agroup of matched control subjects into MRI scannersand asked them to memorize three-digit numbers,black-and-white photographs of people’s faces, andmagnified images of snowflakes, while their brainswere being scanned. Maguire and her team thought itwas possible that they might discover anatomicaldifferences in the brains of the memory champs,evidence that their brains had somehow reorganizedthemselves in the process of doing all that intensiveremembering. But when the researchers reviewed theimaging data, not a single significant structuraldifference turned up. The brains of the mentalathletes appeared to be indistinguishable from thoseof the control subjects. What’s more, on every singletest of general cognitive ability, the mental athletes’scores came back well within the normal range. Thememory champs weren’t smarter, and they didn’thave special brains.But there was one telling difference between thebrains of the mental athletes and the control subjects:When the researchers looked at which parts of thebrain were lighting up when the mental athletes werememorizing, they found that they were activatingentirely different circuitry. According to thefunctional MRIs [fMRIs], regions of the brain thatwere less active in the control subjects seemed to beworking in overdrive for the mental athletes.Surprisingly, when the mental athletes werelearning new information, they were engagingseveral regions of the brain known to be involved intwo specific tasks: visual memory and spatialnavigation, including the same right posteriorhippocampal region that the London cabbies hadenlarged with all their daily way-finding. At firstglance, this wouldn’t seem to make any sense.Why would mental athletes be conjuring images intheir mind’s eye when they were trying to learnthree-digit numbers? Why should they be navigatinglike London cabbies when they’re supposed to beremembering the shapes of snowflakes?Maguire and her team asked the mental athletesto describe exactly what was going through theirminds as they memorized. The mental athletes saidthey were consciously converting the informationthey were being asked to memorize into images, anddistributing those images along familiar spatialjourneys. They weren’t doing this automatically, orbecause it was an inborn talent they’d nurtured sincechildhood. Rather, the unexpected patterns of neuralactivity that Maguire’s fMRIs turned up were theresult of training and practice.

In 2000, a neuroscientist at University CollegeLondon named Eleanor Maguire wanted to find outwhat effect, if any, all that driving around thelabyrinthine streets of London might have oncabbies’ brains. When she brought sixteen taxidrivers into her lab and examined their brains in anMRI scanner, she found one surprising andimportant difference. The right posteriorhippocampus, a part of the brain known to beinvolved in spatial navigation, was 7 percent largerthan normal in the cabbies—a small but verysignificant difference. Maguire concluded that all ofthat way-finding around London had physicallyaltered the gross structure of their brains. The moreyears a cabbie had been on the road, the morepronounced the effect.The brain is a mutable organ, capable—withinlimits—of reorganizing itself and readapting to newkinds of sensory input, a phenomenon known asneuroplasticity. It had long been thought that theadult brain was incapable of spawning newneurons—that while learning caused synapses torearrange themselves and new links between braincells to form, the brain’s basic anatomical structurewas more or less static. Maguire’s study suggested theold inherited wisdom was simply not true.After her groundbreaking study of Londoncabbies, Maguire decided to turn her attention tomental athletes. She teamed up with ElizabethValentine and John Wilding, authors of the academicmonograph Superior Memory, to study tenindividuals who had finished near the top of theWorld Memory Championship. They wanted to findout if the memorizers’ brains were—like the Londoncabbies’—structurally different from the rest of ours,or if they were somehow just making better use ofmemory abilities that we all possess.The researchers put both the mental athletes and agroup of matched control subjects into MRI scannersand asked them to memorize three-digit numbers,black-and-white photographs of people’s faces, andmagnified images of snowflakes, while their brainswere being scanned. Maguire and her team thought itwas possible that they might discover anatomicaldifferences in the brains of the memory champs,evidence that their brains had somehow reorganizedthemselves in the process of doing all that intensiveremembering. But when the researchers reviewed theimaging data, not a single significant structuraldifference turned up. The brains of the mentalathletes appeared to be indistinguishable from thoseof the control subjects. What’s more, on every singletest of general cognitive ability, the mental athletes’scores came back well within the normal range. Thememory champs weren’t smarter, and they didn’thave special brains.But there was one telling difference between thebrains of the mental athletes and the control subjects:When the researchers looked at which parts of thebrain were lighting up when the mental athletes werememorizing, they found that they were activatingentirely different circuitry. According to thefunctional MRIs [fMRIs], regions of the brain thatwere less active in the control subjects seemed to beworking in overdrive for the mental athletes.Surprisingly, when the mental athletes werelearning new information, they were engagingseveral regions of the brain known to be involved intwo specific tasks: visual memory and spatialnavigation, including the same right posteriorhippocampal region that the London cabbies hadenlarged with all their daily way-finding. At firstglance, this wouldn’t seem to make any sense.Why would mental athletes be conjuring images intheir mind’s eye when they were trying to learnthree-digit numbers? Why should they be navigatinglike London cabbies when they’re supposed to beremembering the shapes of snowflakes?Maguire and her team asked the mental athletesto describe exactly what was going through theirminds as they memorized. The mental athletes saidthey were consciously converting the informationthey were being asked to memorize into images, anddistributing those images along familiar spatialjourneys. They weren’t doing this automatically, orbecause it was an inborn talent they’d nurtured sincechildhood. Rather, the unexpected patterns of neuralactivity that Maguire’s fMRIs turned up were theresult of training and practice.

In 2000, a neuroscientist at University CollegeLondon named Eleanor Maguire wanted to find outwhat effect, if any, all that driving around thelabyrinthine streets of London might have oncabbies’ brains. When she brought sixteen taxidrivers into her lab and examined their brains in anMRI scanner, she found one surprising andimportant difference. The right posteriorhippocampus, a part of the brain known to beinvolved in spatial navigation, was 7 percent largerthan normal in the cabbies—a small but verysignificant difference. Maguire concluded that all ofthat way-finding around London had physicallyaltered the gross structure of their brains. The moreyears a cabbie had been on the road, the morepronounced the effect.The brain is a mutable organ, capable—withinlimits—of reorganizing itself and readapting to newkinds of sensory input, a phenomenon known asneuroplasticity. It had long been thought that theadult brain was incapable of spawning newneurons—that while learning caused synapses torearrange themselves and new links between braincells to form, the brain’s basic anatomical structurewas more or less static. Maguire’s study suggested theold inherited wisdom was simply not true.After her groundbreaking study of Londoncabbies, Maguire decided to turn her attention tomental athletes. She teamed up with ElizabethValentine and John Wilding, authors of the academicmonograph Superior Memory, to study tenindividuals who had finished near the top of theWorld Memory Championship. They wanted to findout if the memorizers’ brains were—like the Londoncabbies’—structurally different from the rest of ours,or if they were somehow just making better use ofmemory abilities that we all possess.The researchers put both the mental athletes and agroup of matched control subjects into MRI scannersand asked them to memorize three-digit numbers,black-and-white photographs of people’s faces, andmagnified images of snowflakes, while their brainswere being scanned. Maguire and her team thought itwas possible that they might discover anatomicaldifferences in the brains of the memory champs,evidence that their brains had somehow reorganizedthemselves in the process of doing all that intensiveremembering. But when the researchers reviewed theimaging data, not a single significant structuraldifference turned up. The brains of the mentalathletes appeared to be indistinguishable from thoseof the control subjects. What’s more, on every singletest of general cognitive ability, the mental athletes’scores came back well within the normal range. Thememory champs weren’t smarter, and they didn’thave special brains.But there was one telling difference between thebrains of the mental athletes and the control subjects:When the researchers looked at which parts of thebrain were lighting up when the mental athletes werememorizing, they found that they were activatingentirely different circuitry. According to thefunctional MRIs [fMRIs], regions of the brain thatwere less active in the control subjects seemed to beworking in overdrive for the mental athletes.Surprisingly, when the mental athletes werelearning new information, they were engagingseveral regions of the brain known to be involved intwo specific tasks: visual memory and spatialnavigation, including the same right posteriorhippocampal region that the London cabbies hadenlarged with all their daily way-finding. At firstglance, this wouldn’t seem to make any sense.Why would mental athletes be conjuring images intheir mind’s eye when they were trying to learnthree-digit numbers? Why should they be navigatinglike London cabbies when they’re supposed to beremembering the shapes of snowflakes?Maguire and her team asked the mental athletesto describe exactly what was going through theirminds as they memorized. The mental athletes saidthey were consciously converting the informationthey were being asked to memorize into images, anddistributing those images along familiar spatialjourneys. They weren’t doing this automatically, orbecause it was an inborn talent they’d nurtured sincechildhood. Rather, the unexpected patterns of neuralactivity that Maguire’s fMRIs turned up were theresult of training and practice.

In 2000, a neuroscientist at University CollegeLondon named Eleanor Maguire wanted to find outwhat effect, if any, all that driving around thelabyrinthine streets of London might have oncabbies’ brains. When she brought sixteen taxidrivers into her lab and examined their brains in anMRI scanner, she found one surprising andimportant difference. The right posteriorhippocampus, a part of the brain known to beinvolved in spatial navigation, was 7 percent largerthan normal in the cabbies—a small but verysignificant difference. Maguire concluded that all ofthat way-finding around London had physicallyaltered the gross structure of their brains. The moreyears a cabbie had been on the road, the morepronounced the effect.The brain is a mutable organ, capable—withinlimits—of reorganizing itself and readapting to newkinds of sensory input, a phenomenon known asneuroplasticity. It had long been thought that theadult brain was incapable of spawning newneurons—that while learning caused synapses torearrange themselves and new links between braincells to form, the brain’s basic anatomical structurewas more or less static. Maguire’s study suggested theold inherited wisdom was simply not true.After her groundbreaking study of Londoncabbies, Maguire decided to turn her attention tomental athletes. She teamed up with ElizabethValentine and John Wilding, authors of the academicmonograph Superior Memory, to study tenindividuals who had finished near the top of theWorld Memory Championship. They wanted to findout if the memorizers’ brains were—like the Londoncabbies’—structurally different from the rest of ours,or if they were somehow just making better use ofmemory abilities that we all possess.The researchers put both the mental athletes and agroup of matched control subjects into MRI scannersand asked them to memorize three-digit numbers,black-and-white photographs of people’s faces, andmagnified images of snowflakes, while their brainswere being scanned. Maguire and her team thought itwas possible that they might discover anatomicaldifferences in the brains of the memory champs,evidence that their brains had somehow reorganizedthemselves in the process of doing all that intensiveremembering. But when the researchers reviewed theimaging data, not a single significant structuraldifference turned up. The brains of the mentalathletes appeared to be indistinguishable from thoseof the control subjects. What’s more, on every singletest of general cognitive ability, the mental athletes’scores came back well within the normal range. Thememory champs weren’t smarter, and they didn’thave special brains.But there was one telling difference between thebrains of the mental athletes and the control subjects:When the researchers looked at which parts of thebrain were lighting up when the mental athletes werememorizing, they found that they were activatingentirely different circuitry. According to thefunctional MRIs [fMRIs], regions of the brain thatwere less active in the control subjects seemed to beworking in overdrive for the mental athletes.Surprisingly, when the mental athletes werelearning new information, they were engagingseveral regions of the brain known to be involved intwo specific tasks: visual memory and spatialnavigation, including the same right posteriorhippocampal region that the London cabbies hadenlarged with all their daily way-finding. At firstglance, this wouldn’t seem to make any sense.Why would mental athletes be conjuring images intheir mind’s eye when they were trying to learnthree-digit numbers? Why should they be navigatinglike London cabbies when they’re supposed to beremembering the shapes of snowflakes?Maguire and her team asked the mental athletesto describe exactly what was going through theirminds as they memorized. The mental athletes saidthey were consciously converting the informationthey were being asked to memorize into images, anddistributing those images along familiar spatialjourneys. They weren’t doing this automatically, orbecause it was an inborn talent they’d nurtured sincechildhood. Rather, the unexpected patterns of neuralactivity that Maguire’s fMRIs turned up were theresult of training and practice.

In 2000, a neuroscientist at University CollegeLondon named Eleanor Maguire wanted to find outwhat effect, if any, all that driving around thelabyrinthine streets of London might have oncabbies’ brains. When she brought sixteen taxidrivers into her lab and examined their brains in anMRI scanner, she found one surprising andimportant difference. The right posteriorhippocampus, a part of the brain known to beinvolved in spatial navigation, was 7 percent largerthan normal in the cabbies—a small but verysignificant difference. Maguire concluded that all ofthat way-finding around London had physicallyaltered the gross structure of their brains. The moreyears a cabbie had been on the road, the morepronounced the effect.The brain is a mutable organ, capable—withinlimits—of reorganizing itself and readapting to newkinds of sensory input, a phenomenon known asneuroplasticity. It had long been thought that theadult brain was incapable of spawning newneurons—that while learning caused synapses torearrange themselves and new links between braincells to form, the brain’s basic anatomical structurewas more or less static. Maguire’s study suggested theold inherited wisdom was simply not true.After her groundbreaking study of Londoncabbies, Maguire decided to turn her attention tomental athletes. She teamed up with ElizabethValentine and John Wilding, authors of the academicmonograph Superior Memory, to study tenindividuals who had finished near the top of theWorld Memory Championship. They wanted to findout if the memorizers’ brains were—like the Londoncabbies’—structurally different from the rest of ours,or if they were somehow just making better use ofmemory abilities that we all possess.The researchers put both the mental athletes and agroup of matched control subjects into MRI scannersand asked them to memorize three-digit numbers,black-and-white photographs of people’s faces, andmagnified images of snowflakes, while their brainswere being scanned. Maguire and her team thought itwas possible that they might discover anatomicaldifferences in the brains of the memory champs,evidence that their brains had somehow reorganizedthemselves in the process of doing all that intensiveremembering. But when the researchers reviewed theimaging data, not a single significant structuraldifference turned up. The brains of the mentalathletes appeared to be indistinguishable from thoseof the control subjects. What’s more, on every singletest of general cognitive ability, the mental athletes’scores came back well within the normal range. Thememory champs weren’t smarter, and they didn’thave special brains.But there was one telling difference between thebrains of the mental athletes and the control subjects:When the researchers looked at which parts of thebrain were lighting up when the mental athletes werememorizing, they found that they were activatingentirely different circuitry. According to thefunctional MRIs [fMRIs], regions of the brain thatwere less active in the control subjects seemed to beworking in overdrive for the mental athletes.Surprisingly, when the mental athletes werelearning new information, they were engagingseveral regions of the brain known to be involved intwo specific tasks: visual memory and spatialnavigation, including the same right posteriorhippocampal region that the London cabbies hadenlarged with all their daily way-finding. At firstglance, this wouldn’t seem to make any sense.Why would mental athletes be conjuring images intheir mind’s eye when they were trying to learnthree-digit numbers? Why should they be navigatinglike London cabbies when they’re supposed to beremembering the shapes of snowflakes?Maguire and her team asked the mental athletesto describe exactly what was going through theirminds as they memorized. The mental athletes saidthey were consciously converting the informationthey were being asked to memorize into images, anddistributing those images along familiar spatialjourneys. They weren’t doing this automatically, orbecause it was an inborn talent they’d nurtured sincechildhood. Rather, the unexpected patterns of neuralactivity that Maguire’s fMRIs turned up were theresult of training and practice.

In 2000, a neuroscientist at University CollegeLondon named Eleanor Maguire wanted to find outwhat effect, if any, all that driving around thelabyrinthine streets of London might have oncabbies’ brains. When she brought sixteen taxidrivers into her lab and examined their brains in anMRI scanner, she found one surprising andimportant difference. The right posteriorhippocampus, a part of the brain known to beinvolved in spatial navigation, was 7 percent largerthan normal in the cabbies—a small but verysignificant difference. Maguire concluded that all ofthat way-finding around London had physicallyaltered the gross structure of their brains. The moreyears a cabbie had been on the road, the morepronounced the effect.The brain is a mutable organ, capable—withinlimits—of reorganizing itself and readapting to newkinds of sensory input, a phenomenon known asneuroplasticity. It had long been thought that theadult brain was incapable of spawning newneurons—that while learning caused synapses torearrange themselves and new links between braincells to form, the brain’s basic anatomical structurewas more or less static. Maguire’s study suggested theold inherited wisdom was simply not true.After her groundbreaking study of Londoncabbies, Maguire decided to turn her attention tomental athletes. She teamed up with ElizabethValentine and John Wilding, authors of the academicmonograph Superior Memory, to study tenindividuals who had finished near the top of theWorld Memory Championship. They wanted to findout if the memorizers’ brains were—like the Londoncabbies’—structurally different from the rest of ours,or if they were somehow just making better use ofmemory abilities that we all possess.The researchers put both the mental athletes and agroup of matched control subjects into MRI scannersand asked them to memorize three-digit numbers,black-and-white photographs of people’s faces, andmagnified images of snowflakes, while their brainswere being scanned. Maguire and her team thought itwas possible that they might discover anatomicaldifferences in the brains of the memory champs,evidence that their brains had somehow reorganizedthemselves in the process of doing all that intensiveremembering. But when the researchers reviewed theimaging data, not a single significant structuraldifference turned up. The brains of the mentalathletes appeared to be indistinguishable from thoseof the control subjects. What’s more, on every singletest of general cognitive ability, the mental athletes’scores came back well within the normal range. Thememory champs weren’t smarter, and they didn’thave special brains.But there was one telling difference between thebrains of the mental athletes and the control subjects:When the researchers looked at which parts of thebrain were lighting up when the mental athletes werememorizing, they found that they were activatingentirely different circuitry. According to thefunctional MRIs [fMRIs], regions of the brain thatwere less active in the control subjects seemed to beworking in overdrive for the mental athletes.Surprisingly, when the mental athletes werelearning new information, they were engagingseveral regions of the brain known to be involved intwo specific tasks: visual memory and spatialnavigation, including the same right posteriorhippocampal region that the London cabbies hadenlarged with all their daily way-finding. At firstglance, this wouldn’t seem to make any sense.Why would mental athletes be conjuring images intheir mind’s eye when they were trying to learnthree-digit numbers? Why should they be navigatinglike London cabbies when they’re supposed to beremembering the shapes of snowflakes?Maguire and her team asked the mental athletesto describe exactly what was going through theirminds as they memorized. The mental athletes saidthey were consciously converting the informationthey were being asked to memorize into images, anddistributing those images along familiar spatialjourneys. They weren’t doing this automatically, orbecause it was an inborn talent they’d nurtured sincechildhood. Rather, the unexpected patterns of neuralactivity that Maguire’s fMRIs turned up were theresult of training and practice.

In 2000, a neuroscientist at University CollegeLondon named Eleanor Maguire wanted to find outwhat effect, if any, all that driving around thelabyrinthine streets of London might have oncabbies’ brains. When she brought sixteen taxidrivers into her lab and examined their brains in anMRI scanner, she found one surprising andimportant difference. The right posteriorhippocampus, a part of the brain known to beinvolved in spatial navigation, was 7 percent largerthan normal in the cabbies—a small but verysignificant difference. Maguire concluded that all ofthat way-finding around London had physicallyaltered the gross structure of their brains. The moreyears a cabbie had been on the road, the morepronounced the effect.The brain is a mutable organ, capable—withinlimits—of reorganizing itself and readapting to newkinds of sensory input, a phenomenon known asneuroplasticity. It had long been thought that theadult brain was incapable of spawning newneurons—that while learning caused synapses torearrange themselves and new links between braincells to form, the brain’s basic anatomical structurewas more or less static. Maguire’s study suggested theold inherited wisdom was simply not true.After her groundbreaking study of Londoncabbies, Maguire decided to turn her attention tomental athletes. She teamed up with ElizabethValentine and John Wilding, authors of the academicmonograph Superior Memory, to study tenindividuals who had finished near the top of theWorld Memory Championship. They wanted to findout if the memorizers’ brains were—like the Londoncabbies’—structurally different from the rest of ours,or if they were somehow just making better use ofmemory abilities that we all possess.The researchers put both the mental athletes and agroup of matched control subjects into MRI scannersand asked them to memorize three-digit numbers,black-and-white photographs of people’s faces, andmagnified images of snowflakes, while their brainswere being scanned. Maguire and her team thought itwas possible that they might discover anatomicaldifferences in the brains of the memory champs,evidence that their brains had somehow reorganizedthemselves in the process of doing all that intensiveremembering. But when the researchers reviewed theimaging data, not a single significant structuraldifference turned up. The brains of the mentalathletes appeared to be indistinguishable from thoseof the control subjects. What’s more, on every singletest of general cognitive ability, the mental athletes’scores came back well within the normal range. Thememory champs weren’t smarter, and they didn’thave special brains.But there was one telling difference between thebrains of the mental athletes and the control subjects:When the researchers looked at which parts of thebrain were lighting up when the mental athletes werememorizing, they found that they were activatingentirely different circuitry. According to thefunctional MRIs [fMRIs], regions of the brain thatwere less active in the control subjects seemed to beworking in overdrive for the mental athletes.Surprisingly, when the mental athletes werelearning new information, they were engagingseveral regions of the brain known to be involved intwo specific tasks: visual memory and spatialnavigation, including the same right posteriorhippocampal region that the London cabbies hadenlarged with all their daily way-finding. At firstglance, this wouldn’t seem to make any sense.Why would mental athletes be conjuring images intheir mind’s eye when they were trying to learnthree-digit numbers? Why should they be navigatinglike London cabbies when they’re supposed to beremembering the shapes of snowflakes?Maguire and her team asked the mental athletesto describe exactly what was going through theirminds as they memorized. The mental athletes saidthey were consciously converting the informationthey were being asked to memorize into images, anddistributing those images along familiar spatialjourneys. They weren’t doing this automatically, orbecause it was an inborn talent they’d nurtured sincechildhood. Rather, the unexpected patterns of neuralactivity that Maguire’s fMRIs turned up were theresult of training and practice.

In 2000, a neuroscientist at University CollegeLondon named Eleanor Maguire wanted to find outwhat effect, if any, all that driving around thelabyrinthine streets of London might have oncabbies’ brains. When she brought sixteen taxidrivers into her lab and examined their brains in anMRI scanner, she found one surprising andimportant difference. The right posteriorhippocampus, a part of the brain known to beinvolved in spatial navigation, was 7 percent largerthan normal in the cabbies—a small but verysignificant difference. Maguire concluded that all ofthat way-finding around London had physicallyaltered the gross structure of their brains. The moreyears a cabbie had been on the road, the morepronounced the effect.The brain is a mutable organ, capable—withinlimits—of reorganizing itself and readapting to newkinds of sensory input, a phenomenon known asneuroplasticity. It had long been thought that theadult brain was incapable of spawning newneurons—that while learning caused synapses torearrange themselves and new links between braincells to form, the brain’s basic anatomical structurewas more or less static. Maguire’s study suggested theold inherited wisdom was simply not true.After her groundbreaking study of Londoncabbies, Maguire decided to turn her attention tomental athletes. She teamed up with ElizabethValentine and John Wilding, authors of the academicmonograph Superior Memory, to study tenindividuals who had finished near the top of theWorld Memory Championship. They wanted to findout if the memorizers’ brains were—like the Londoncabbies’—structurally different from the rest of ours,or if they were somehow just making better use ofmemory abilities that we all possess.The researchers put both the mental athletes and agroup of matched control subjects into MRI scannersand asked them to memorize three-digit numbers,black-and-white photographs of people’s faces, andmagnified images of snowflakes, while their brainswere being scanned. Maguire and her team thought itwas possible that they might discover anatomicaldifferences in the brains of the memory champs,evidence that their brains had somehow reorganizedthemselves in the process of doing all that intensiveremembering. But when the researchers reviewed theimaging data, not a single significant structuraldifference turned up. The brains of the mentalathletes appeared to be indistinguishable from thoseof the control subjects. What’s more, on every singletest of general cognitive ability, the mental athletes’scores came back well within the normal range. Thememory champs weren’t smarter, and they didn’thave special brains.But there was one telling difference between thebrains of the mental athletes and the control subjects:When the researchers looked at which parts of thebrain were lighting up when the mental athletes werememorizing, they found that they were activatingentirely different circuitry. According to thefunctional MRIs [fMRIs], regions of the brain thatwere less active in the control subjects seemed to beworking in overdrive for the mental athletes.Surprisingly, when the mental athletes werelearning new information, they were engagingseveral regions of the brain known to be involved intwo specific tasks: visual memory and spatialnavigation, including the same right posteriorhippocampal region that the London cabbies hadenlarged with all their daily way-finding. At firstglance, this wouldn’t seem to make any sense.Why would mental athletes be conjuring images intheir mind’s eye when they were trying to learnthree-digit numbers? Why should they be navigatinglike London cabbies when they’re supposed to beremembering the shapes of snowflakes?Maguire and her team asked the mental athletesto describe exactly what was going through theirminds as they memorized. The mental athletes saidthey were consciously converting the informationthey were being asked to memorize into images, anddistributing those images along familiar spatialjourneys. They weren’t doing this automatically, orbecause it was an inborn talent they’d nurtured sincechildhood. Rather, the unexpected patterns of neuralactivity that Maguire’s fMRIs turned up were theresult of training and practice.