Taiho's Corner

     "All right, open page 124 of the book, children."      Ms. Rudi was writing something on the whiteboard in the center of the classroom as she announced the instructions. A flurry of shifting books and shuffling pages followed, and she turned back to face the class, the words QUADRATIC FORMULA written on the board.      "Right, today I will be teaching you the quadratic formula. So far, we have had only basic algebraic expressions. This one is a bit more advanced, but it simplifies things a bit...," Ms. Rudi said.      Sitting in the rightmost row of the class, Baran peered into his textbook, and horror flashed in his eyes.      Simplifies things! You must be crazy! Thought Baran, in chagrin.      He peered over his left, at his close friend Amar, and he seemed unfazed. Baran seemed to calm down. He doesn't seem bothered in the least, he thought, and looking back at his textbook, took a sigh of relief. Meanwhile, the teacher continued with the lesson and be

        Long ago, mankind used to live in isolated groups in the wilderness of earth, and engaged in hunting and gathering for its subsistence. Almost every activity needed for survival could be performed by every single individual. Yet, for convenience, the various essential tasks were divided among the members of the group or clan, usually at the whim of the clan leader or group of elders. The smallness of the group, however, did not require an elaborate scheme of apportionment of duties and specialization of functions. According to Yuval Noah Harari in his book Sapiens, the size of such hunter-gatherer groups peaked at 150, before it splintered. Everyone could still do everything, yet they found it more suitable in sticking to one particular task and doing it more efficiently.      With the dawn of agriculture, the social units grew bigger than small tribal clans, and the division of labor among the people of such groups also grew more pronounced. Society became more complex, and a