Music and dance have also always been a communal activity, something that everyone participated in. The thought of a musical concert in which a class of professionals performed for a quiet audience was virtually unknown throughout our species' history.

The history of science and culture is filled with stories of how many of the greatest scientific and artistic discoveries occurred while the creator was not thinking about what he was working on, not consciously anyway - the daydreaming mode solved the problem for him, and the answer appeared suddenly as a stroke of insight.

Across a range of inferences involving not just language but mathematics, logic problems, and spatial reasoning, sleep has been shown to enhance the formation and understanding of abstract relations, so much so that people often wake having solved a problem that was unsolvable the night before.

Critical thinking is not something you do once with an issue and then drop it. It requires that we update our knowledge as new information comes in. Time spent evaluating claims is not just time well spent. It should be considered part of an implicit bargain we've all made.

From the Twitter responses we got with 'Best Friends Forever' and the small feedback we are getting as the show is meted out, I think people are seeing themselves in the show and enjoying seeing female friendship portrayed in the way it really is.

Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.

I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.

I served as the chairman of the India-Israel Parliamentary Friendship Group for three years, during which I also had the pleasure of visiting Israel.