Given the current divorce rate of nearly 50 percent, that amounts to millions of cases in the United States every year — a virtual epidemic of failed conversation.
We chased it unflaggingly for a full hour, and I'd begun to think it would prove too difficult to capture, when the animal got the untimely idea of taking revenge on us, a notion it would soon have cause to regret.
But the phenomenon is generally thought to be exaggerated there: a toxic consequence of Confucian respect for authority and an academic system borrowed lock, stock and barrel from 19th-century Germany.
Decades of overgrazing, climate change-induced droughts, and poor farming practices are stripping not only the Sudanian grasslands of their once fertile topsoil but hundreds of other regions like it across the world.
Fees also tend to soar because, even when they rise, captive parents are loth to pull out, not least because the alternative is likely to be an undersubscribed and underperforming state school.
Fava beans, also known as broad beans, can cause some people to experience a sudden, rapid breakdown of their red blood cells — a condition known as hemolytic anemia.
The beginnings of this problem can be traced back to America, where people with a poor credit history were allowed to take out mortgages, which they were unable to repay.