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The article discusses the shift in journalism from a local to a global scale due to the impact of the internet on news organizations. It emphasizes the importance of reader revenues and subscription strategies for sustaining newsrooms and serving community information needs. The authors propose a News Subscription Motivations Scale to understand the factors influencing readers' willingness to pay for news subscriptions, highlighting the need for a holistic approach integrating data, social theory, and qualitative research. The article calls for a deeper understanding of local and national subscription motivations, emphasizing the significance of factors like content quality, affordability, convenience, and brand reputation in guiding organizational strategies for news organizations. [Extracted from the article]

Based on a Zambian case study of the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD), this paper applies the behavioural theory of party competition to explain how, through vote-seeking and office-seeking strategies, political parties may employ rapacious predatory co-optation of members from competing political parties as a mobilisation strategy. The paper concludes that in the absence of a dominant political party, parties and political elites may resort to predation to bolster their electoral fortunes. While predatory co-optation may strengthen some parties, it also weakens others and undermines or reverses party system institutionalisation and vertical accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the dominant morality to which wealthy Russians adhered in their vision of how society should be organized and the role they see for themselves. The interviews with, and observations of, eighty Russian multi-millionaires and billionaires, their spouses, and their children, on which the article is based, were conducted from 2008 to 2017, a time when Russia's rich were most settled in their positions. The interview analysis highlights the role of Soviet history and shows how it is integrated into, and harmonizes with, contemporary upper-class Russians' notions of meritocracy. The author argues that drawing on international sociological research considerably advances our understanding of how Russian elites ideologically construe and morally legitimize the concentration of money and power in their own hands and how they model themselves as "good" in their actions and "deserving" of their fortunes. Conversely, the article suggests that these new findings on Russian elites (in particular, their references to their superior genes and their unwavering preference for private capital as a means to develop society—if necessary, to the detriment of democracy) offer great insights into, and have the potential to complement, established scholarship on Western elites (who emphasize hard work but tend to gloss over biology). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sizable group of superwealthy business elites have emerged in China, now home to the world's second-largest number of US dollar billionaires. Whereas existing studies highlight how large fortunes confer enormous power to their holders, this article shows, through an original data set on China's top business tycoons, that they often have trouble sustaining their absolute wealth or relative position. It argues that a key source of concentrated wealth's fragility in China is autonomous and unchecked state power. While the state's developmental orientation has limited predation and facilitated wealth accumulation, its discretion in economic and legal matters allows it to discipline and punish tycoons whose behaviors have contravened its priorities. Leveraging the intensification of state pressure after 2012, the article further finds that business networks among tycoons alleviate threats from the state. The uneasy relations between the state and the largest capitalists set China apart from many capitalist societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the strategic underpinnings of firms' use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) practices. The authors argue that a firm's strategic orientation and commitment to ADR shape its adoption of dispute resolution techniques—such as mediation and arbitration. Firms vary in the benefits they seek to gain from adopting ADR practices, and firm-level use is affected by these anticipated benefits. The authors also propose a link between a firm's commitment to the diffusion, access, and their use of ADR, on the one hand, and employee usage on the other. They test their theory using survey data from Fortune 1000 corporations and identify four distinct strategic orientations toward ADR, which in turn help to explain use of ADR within firms. Finally, they also find that a firm's commitment to ADR is also shown to affect the firm's use of mediation and arbitration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a vast literature on the effect of inequality on trust, establishing that equality must be a pre-condition for the emergence of trust. However, most empirical research either focuses on case studies or uses measures of income inequality, such as the Gini index. In this article, we argue that a measure of inequality of opportunities is preferable to focusing on inequality of outcomes, as it taps into the psychological foundations of trust. In contexts where people feel effort is not adequately rewarded because individuals get ahead due to their family background or individual advantages based on luck, it is difficult to establish the conditions for trustful exchanges and long-lasting relationships. We use data from the European Social Survey to break down income into three different sources: equitable income, inherited social (dis-)advantage, and individual (dis-)advantage. Our measure of inequality of opportunities at the societal level is built on the aggregation of inherited social (dis-)advantage at the individual level. Multilevel models prove the negative effect of personal (dis-)advantages on trust. Panel data analysis indicates that living in societies in which inequality of opportunities is higher leads to lower levels of social trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An influential performance-based authoritarianism thesis attributes China's reform-era economic success to merit-based political selection whereby the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has persistently rewarded with career advancement local leaders overseeing fast GDP growth. Yet voluminous empirical research on whether boosting local economic growth has bestowed career advantages on provincial leaders remains inconclusive due to the assumption of static preferences of the national leadership for unbridled GDP growth and inconsistency in data measurement in studies with disparate time coverage. Employing annual individual-level data consistently coded with a general measure of career mobility and a rigorous measure of relative economic performance, I reexamine how provincial GDP growth affected the career outcomes of the governors and provincial party secretaries under different CCP national chiefs spanning the entire reform era. My findings challenge the sweeping, one-sided conventional wisdom and call for greater attention to shifting political and economic contexts in theoretical and empirical research on contemporary China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Covid-19 pandemic once again brought into sharpened focus the contested relationships of marginalised groups in the criminal law sphere, and the liminal (re-)regulation of space. Over the course of the last four decades, the law has borne witness to an episodic yet regular intertwining of the fortunes of arguably two elements of Britain's counterculture: ravers and travellers, specifically 'new age' travellers. The two groupings of peoples have had a long, complex and often uncomfortable and fractious relationship both with English law, and also its enforcement agencies. This is perhaps particularly evident in the criminal law provisions and sometimes questionable enforcement of the Public Order Act 1986 and the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, through to the social and environmental provisions of the Caravan Sites Act 1968, Entertainments (Increased Penalties) Act 1990, and subsequent provisions. Both the groupings of ravers and travellers have been faced with a series of legislative and administrative measures that, directly or indirectly, curtail or otherwise restrict their choices as to activities, lifestyles and behaviours. The article analyses how the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has led to some long-established legal and regulatory themes being once again played out in relation to these two counter-cultural groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing number of research fields must expect that their projects will be classified as susceptible to misuse or otherwise security relevant, even if the reasons or criteria for this classification have not yet been uniformly developed. Research institutions will commonly distribute the obligation to predict and prevent misuse across multiple members and structures including ethics committees. However, cases of misuse occur even in spite of these precautions, raising the question of the type and distribution of responsibility for the resulting harm. This question becomes even more pressing if research ethics committees in their decisions ask researchers to provide a misuse- specific risk assessment or risk mitigation plan and thereby shift back a part of their responsibility on the researchers. While this kind of requirement may be considered as unsatisfactory by researchers, members of research ethics committees or boards and third-party funders, will argue that it fulfils two important functions. On the one hand, it makes use of the best available source for misuse risk-assessment available to most committees; on the other hand, it guarantees that the researchers at least try to take responsibility. If researchers, committee members and others involved discharge their obligation to predict and mitigate misuse risks with due diligence, any backward-looking responsibility they retain is to show agent regret for the results of their work having been misused. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When are high earnings considered a legitimate target for redistribution, and when not? We design a real-effort laboratory experiment in which we manipulate the assignment of payrates (societal "reward rules") that translate performance on a real-effort counting task into pre-tax earnings. We then ask subjects to vote on a flat tax rate in groups of three. We distinguish three treatment conditions: the same payrate for all group members ("equal" reward rule), differential (low, medium, and high) but random payrates ("luck" rule), and differential payrates based on subjects' performance on a quiz with voluntary preparation opportunity ("merit" rule). Self-interest is the dominant tax voting motivation. Tax levels are lower under "merit" rule than under "luck" rule, and merit reasoning overrides political ideology. But information is needed to activate merit reasoning. Both these latter effects are present only when voters have "full merit knowledge" that signals precisely how others obtained their incomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary authorities invoke luck to explain the arbitrariness of economic success, to emphasize our shared vulnerability to disaster, and to urge more generous policy, legislation, and governance. According to Robert Frank, Martha Nussbaum, and Ronald Dworkin, for example, extreme bad luck can befall individuals no matter what they know or do. By redefining luck as a psychological phenomenon (rather than as a constitutive principle of the world), this article challenges the contemporary consensus. My approach to luck arises out of my engagement with the political thought of Thucydides. Whereas influential interpreters present Thucydides as a witness to the crushing power of bad luck, and whereas they criticize Thucydides' Pericles for being insufficiently deferential to luck, I revisit and defend Pericles' skeptical and psychological approach to luck, and I argue that Thucydides shares this approach, at least in the main. The pathological intellectual and emotional responses to apparent good or bad luck diagnosed by Pericles in his final speech recur throughout the History and influence the evolution of the whole war. Going beyond Pericles, Thucydides shows that the appeal of luck arises out of a human need to explain, beautify, or lament what is merely natural necessity, haphazard coincidence, or awful suffering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine executive compensation data from 78 major U.S. oil and gas companies over a 24-year period. Perhaps in no other industry are the fortunes of so many executives so dependent on a single global commodity price. We find that a 10% increase in oil prices is associated with a 2% increase in executive compensation. This oil price effect holds for both CEOs and non-CEOs and separately for several different individual components of compensation, including bonuses. We find that the oil price effect is larger in companies with more insiders on the board, and asymmetric, with executive compensation rising with increasing oil prices more than it falls with decreasing oil prices. We then discuss potential mechanisms drawn from the broader existing literature on executive compensation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociology has been curiously silent about the concept of luck. The present article argues that this omission is, in fact, an oversight: An explicit and systematic engagement with luck provides a more accurate portrayal of the social world, opens potentially rich veins of empirical and theoretical inquiry, and offers a compelling alternative for challenging dominant meritocratic frames about inequality and the distribution of rewards. This article develops a framework for studying luck, first by proposing a working definition of luck, examining why sociology has ignored luck in the past, and making the case for the value of including luck in sociology's conceptual repertoire. The article then demonstrates the fertile research potential of studying luck by identifying a host of research questions and hypotheses pertaining to the social construction of luck, the real effects of luck, and theoretical interventions related to luck. It concludes by highlighting the distinctive contributions sociology can make to the growing interdisciplinary interest in this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Allocating health care resources based on personal responsibility is a prominent and controversial idea. This article assesses the plausibility of such measures through the lens of luck egalitarianism, a prominent responsibility-sensitive theory of distributive justice. This article presents a framework of luck egalitarianism in health, which integrates other concerns of justice than health, is pluralist, and is compatible with a wide range of measures for giving lower priority to those deemed responsible. Applying this framework to oral health, the allocation of livers among potential transplant recipients and travel insurance demonstrates that this version of luck egalitarianism is a much more attractive and flexible theory than much of the contemporary discussion allows. This also pertains to its ability to provide plausible answers to two prominent critiques of harshness and intrusiveness. The discussion also shows that the luck egalitarian commitment to eliminating the influence of luck on people's lives is likely to require substantial redistribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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There is something attractive about combining the values of equality and responsibility, even though the view most commonly associated with doing so, of luck egalitarianism, is beset with objections. This article hence proposes an alternative approach to being a responsibility-sensitive egalitarian: one grounded on our valuable social practices of responsibility, rather than on a desire to mitigate the influence of luck on people's prospects. First, I argue that this practice-based approach better captures the very reasons that responsibility is significant for justice than does the prevalent approach among luck egalitarians: namely, the values of fairness, choice and respect. Second, I show that the remaining motivation of the luck egalitarian approach, of being 'anti-luck', is impoverished. I conclude by suggesting that this practice-based approach is better motivated and more palatable than existing forms of luck egalitarianism, even for those relational egalitarians who standardly criticise making egalitarianism responsibility-sensitive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Rawls' A Theory of Justice has served as an important basis for theorizing merit, deservedness, and fairness, and in turn, continues to influence the intellectual development of many disciplines, including political thought, public administration, and the practical application of democratic governance. Yet, Rawls' failure to account for luck and historical difference renders his work an incomplete framework for pursing the end of justice in public administration. We argue for a more comprehensive treatment of merit, deservedness, and fairness, one that incorporates luck and takes into account social values rooted in historical preference and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I distinguish four different interpretations of ‘equality of opportunity.’ We get four interpretations because a neglected ambiguity in ‘opportunity’ intersects a well-known ambiguity in ‘equality.’ The neglected ambiguity holds between substantive and non-substantive conceptions of ‘opportunity’ and the well-known ambiguity holds between comparative and non-comparative conceptions of ‘equality.’ Among other things, distinguishing these four interpretations reveals how misleading ‘equal opportunity for advantage’ formulations of luck egalitarianism can be. These formulations are misleading in so far as they obscure the difference between two separate claims about which inequalities are consistent with true equality. Luck egalitarianism claims that inequalities that have been chosen in some suitable sense are consistent with true equality, while the traditional ideal of equality of opportunity only claims that inevitable inequalities that have been determined through fair competitions are consistent with true equality. Obscuring the difference between these two claims therefore serves both to arrogate the rhetorical advantages of the traditional ideal to luck egalitarianism and to cover over a limitation to luck egalitarianism’s ambition to provide a comprehensive principle of distributive justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the timing abilities of Australian managed fund managers. To examine timing abilities, the cross-sectional bootstrap approach is adopted to determine whether timing ability is due to skill or luck. Based on three alternative timing measures, we find that top-ranked Australian fund managers have genuine timing abilities. In addition, the poor timing ability with bottom-ranked funds is not likely to be due to luck either, implying that the market exposure of some Australian managed funds is mistakenly adjusted when the stock market improves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keith Dowding argues that business is systematically lucky in a capitalist society because it often gets what it wants without trying due to the way society is structured. But what ought to count here is not only how society is structured but why it is structured in certain ways and this means grappling with the dynamics of the structure-agency dialectic. Dowding overestimates the degree to which business is systematically lucky and underestimates the degree to which it is powerful because he fails to recognise the way in which business can shape the structures whose existence allows it to get what it wants without trying. We examine the position of two very different groups: British farmers and US bankers. British farmers were systematically lucky in the post-war years in the sense that they benefited from events outside their control. The US banking sector was lucky in 2008 because it was 'too big to fail'. But the banks had previously used their power to shape this outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cultural consensus model (CCM) is a frequently used model of cultural diversity, which predicts how individuals from a common cultural background would share knowledge in a specific domain. Cultural competence, or the degree to which an individual agrees with a local cultural truth, is a central concept in CCM, and many uses of competence estimates rest on the assumption that they reflect real variation among individuals in their knowledge of a cultural truth. However, Weller has shown that even in situations where there are no real differences among individuals in their underlying competences, the CCM will still estimate individual competences that appear to vary, sometimes substantially. To address this issue, we describe a test of the null hypothesis that there is no real difference in competence among individuals. We also present tables with specific cutoffs for this test across a range of data set characteristics. These can help researchers decide whether a specific set of data warrants further analyses of individual differences in competence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, we examine how language and linguistic membership might feature in luck egalitarianism, what a luck-egalitarian theory of linguistic justice would look like, and, finally, what the emphasis on language teaches us about the validity of standard luck-egalitarian assumptions. We show that belonging to one language group rather than another is a morally arbitrary feature and that where membership of a specific linguistic group affects individual chances, the effects of such bad brute luck ought to be neutralized on the luck-egalitarian view. We assess two ways of redressing those kinds of unjustified inequalities: the ‘universal language’ option and the ‘linguistic advantages for all’ option. But we also argue, in the second part, that exploring luck egalitarianism through the lens of language exposes some difficulties intrinsic in many existent luck-egalitarian theories. We argue that treating circumstances one identifies with as choices is problematic. In addition, we argue that the linguistic preconditions of both the capacity to be responsible as well the exercise of responsibility complicate the idea of individual responsibility on which most luck-egalitarian theories rely. We conclude by suggesting the need to develop a luck-egalitarian theory of justice which is less reliant on causal features of the distinction between choice and circumstance and which is more sensitive to the idea of collective cooperation as opposed to individual responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the difference on fortunes of the two British novels including "White Teeth," by Zadie Smith and "Forever and Ever Amen," by Joe Pemberton. The author emphasized the significance of many black British novels that emerge from non-metropolitan localities by urging the people for a sustained focus by literary scholarship on the discomforting links between the political and literary economy. The two novels provide the scholars with a useful focus for understanding the cultural, commercial and ideological processes that determine the fortunes of British novels.

The aim of this article is to explore some aspects of the significance of Simone Weil's work for the question of reconciliation. Focusing on Weil's notion of power, and investigating its plausibility, the article argues that her thinking is less useful than is sometimes supposed for grounding a cosmopolitan ethic. It further argues that Weil's philosophical outlook, with its emphasis on loving everything that happens as an expression of God's will, is in danger of being incapable of taking seriously others' suffering. By picking up on the themes of punishment and forgiveness in her work, it is contended that she does not have readily available a proper conception in this context of our status as political agents. However, it is suggested that there is to be found a more promising line on reconciliation in her work in the notion of luck, and that this concept is one that, more generally, may have a more important role to play in understanding reconciliation than is often supposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commentators have frequently noted the discrepancy in il Principe between the figure of the new prince and the impossibility of exemplifying him. Against interpretations that claim Machiavelli's text either traps a prince in a web of self-destructive advice or destabilizes the very political knowledge it provides, the author argues that it uses the figure of the new prince to locate us in the primordial moment of acquisition of political power, a moment that is never overcome but is constantly replayed in maintaining states and beneath established institutions. Thus given the impossibility for a new prince to ever get beyond "the primordial moment of acquisition," there can be no overall theoretical resolution to this tension, and thus no closure to this text. Therefore the text addresses a reader-actor who has to assemble the maxims and examples in light of the necessities governing primordial acquisition as they play out in his/her historical location. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the study was to explore the patterns of belief in luck in a Turkish sample. For this purpose, a shorter version of Freedman and Darke's Belief in Good Luck Scale was given, including some more items related to the beliefs in 'consistent' versus 'variant' patterns of luck. This scale, together with Turkish versions of Rosenberg's measure of Global Self-esteem, Rotter's Internal-External Locus of Control Scale, and the Satisfaction With Life Scale of Diener, Emmons, Larsen, and Griffin, was administered to a group of 173 (96 men, 77 women) undergraduate students from the Middle East Technical University attending an elective general psychology course. The mean age was 21 yr. (SD=2.1). The factor composition of the extended scale consisted of three scales, similar to the original version. Loading of new items on the General Belief in Luck factor indicates that this factor may describe a belief in an organised pattern of luck. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the rights of people to get what they deserve. Factors to consider on what the people deserve; Roles of luck on the natural and positional advantages of people; Difference between deserving and earning.

Presents information on a study which tested the hypothesis that schadenfreude or pleasure in another's misfortune would be more closely related to resentment and a wish to correct a perceived injustice than to envy, and that sympathy would involve different processes. Methods; Results; Discussion.

Abstract: Recognition of the place of good fortune in people?s lives occupies an important place in the liberal egalitarian perspective on social justice. Elaboration of this notion sets the scene for a discussion of three senses of moral progress in human geography. The first is the creation of a more equal world, in which the morally arbitrary contingencies of good or bad fortune are transcended. The second is the undertaking of geographical research which might promote a process of equalization. The third is the pursuit of professional practice and institutions sensitive to the needs of persons in places of misfortune. Moral progress in human geography involves a spatially extensive ethic of care, to combat contemporary forces encouraging parochialism and the perpetuation of inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes the role of luck in society, examining the common sense approach and Samuelson's account of the effect of luck on mobility. Description of the common sense approach and Samuelson's account of luck's effect on mobility; Arguments about luck and expected outcomes; Examination of the effect of luck on the capacity of individuals to accumulate wealth.

Proposes a way of thinking about power. Alternative to standard power indices; Luck and decisiveness as ingredients of success; Example of the United States Constitutional Convention; Definition of power in terms of the condition under which an actor can be decisive; Suggestion that power should increase in importance to an actor the more uncertain that actor is of the likely alignment of forces in the relevant period of time.

The author questions history professor Quentin Skinner's interpretation of the classical, Christian, and humanist understandings of virtue and fortune. He also questions his interpretation of the light they shed on Niccolo Machiavelli's comparative originality as a political thinker. He argues that there is scant suggestion among Greek and Roman thinkers that virtue can be understood as the creative will to overcome a capricious fortune so as to shape it to human needs.

Examines the effects of a lucky event and irrational beliefs about luck. Completion of an unrelated decision task; Confidence rating; Placement of a bet; Individual beliefs on causal properties of luck; Increased expectations following initial luck; Gamblers' fallacy.

The bicultural development of Mexican-American college women is studied here by comparing the manifest content of their dreams with that of their Mexican national and Anglo-American counterparts. On five of seven measures, Mexican-American women are the median group, demonstrating that they have more in common with each of their counterparts than do the other two with each other. Mexican national women identify significantly more emotions in their dreams than do Anglo Americans, but not significantly more than Mexican Americans. However, Mexican nationals do dream of significantly more experiences of good fortune and misfortune than either of the American groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the study was to investigate the association between fatalism and seatbelt use. The sample included 100 Black and 100 White drivers recruited from shopping complexes and petrol stations in an urban area in the Northern Province of South Africa. Seatbelt use of drivers was recorded unobtrusively, and self-reported seatbelt use and belief in destiny (fatalism) were subsequently obtained by interview. A total of 44% Black and 50% White drivers (47% men and 47% women) were observed wearing their seatbelts. The majority of the drivers (84% of Blacks and 79% of Whites) did not have a fatalistic orientation. A nonfatalistic orientation was significantly associated with observed seatbelt use and self-reported seatbelt use. Logistic regression analysis identified a nonfatalistic orientation as independent predictor for observed seatbelt use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigates the relationship between good luck and general health by administering the 12-item Belief in Good Luck Scale and the General Health Questionnaire on 62 undergraduate university students. Significant correlation of scores on belief in good luck with anxiety and depression but insignificant correlation with somatic symptom and social dysfunction.

Social fortune the author hope adequately for present purposes as contact with conditions tending to bring to the particular social entity immediate success or failure that is more or less independent of and therefore does not correspond to its true character and quality. And the author would suggest that all such lack of correspondence tends in a general way to be made good by the subsequent course of events. Unequal, largely by reason of the element of good luck in its too easy and rapid success, to the difficulties and temptations of the situation that supervened thereon, it was rapidly crumbling away, gentes and plebs alike, while others, Roman in name and culture but by descent chiefly aliens from the conquered lands and even from the unconquered regions beyond, took over the vacant seats and the great inheritance. Respecting fortune as an element in world affairs, that its influence has perhaps been both overrated and misconceived through failure to take due account of subsequent reactions tending to neutralize its immediate results. The same holds, too, of all world-success or world-failure that may be considered so far fortunate or otherwise as being unrelated or only partially related to desert. For instance, a nation by unduly specializing in military matters may achieve military success on so considerable a scale as to place it in a position of supremacy in the international system to which it belongs.

Presents several quotations about fame and fortune from newspaperman Herbert Kaufman. Difference between great fortune and great thoughts; Inability of people to achieve posterity if they only aim for prosperity; Immortalization of men due to money-making.

Focuses on the luck and magic in bringing up boys. Information on the three phases of the public view of bringing up a boy namely luck, magic and sacrifice; Background on the luck sentiment as the bane of life.

The author reflects on "hard luck" as a common alibi of a person's incompetency or carelessness which is the result of saying pleasure first and duty second. He argues that there is general agreement that reverses, disappointment, adversity, losses and failure come to all sometimes in life to a greater or lesser degree. He points out that there is no person that is a victim of hard luck which is just an alibi.

Cites several instances that demonstrate the principle of chance and fate. Details of the two incidents that led to the recovery of a pin that was lost twice; Fate of a man to find a woman with the name and address that sounded similar to a woman he previously met; Accidental meeting between a private secretary and a person with the same name and destination of the person that he was told to look for.

The author presents a reflection on the shining sun. He compares this shining to the lives of the people where he emphasizes the need for people not to feel depressed but for them to shine and wait for the good things to come their way. He also advises to people not to be impatient when waiting for good fortune and opportunity.

The article explores the persistent belief of humans in extra human power such as luck, which has evolved from tradition, superstition, myths, legends, paganism, pseudoscience, and the like. A survey of students in the U.S. showed that a great percentage of them believed in predestination and chance. However, this fortuitous circumstance that they call chance, luck, or destiny is a manifestation of their time and place of birth, parentage, and great events in life that is not their doings.

The article comments on the fact that opportunity is like luck in several aspects. According to the author, opportunity does not always appear to be governed by sensitive rules or regulated by intelligence. He stresses that chance and luck play important roles on the stage of life. Lastly, until civilization advances sufficiently to offer equal chances to all, the environment is still counting for success.

The article provides comments about the role of opportunity in man's life.

Presents a joke about the response of a woman to a question about luck.

The article discusses the ways in which young men can use the opportunities in best possible way to achieve success. The young people usually try to begin where their fathers left off. But they remain unable to understand that to begin a career in life one needs certain qualities. The young people are thus advised to study their own character and find out their weaknesses and make up their own mind regarding the qualities that are necessary to push one ahead, and then cultivate them.

The article suggests that men of vast fortune acquired their wealth through special privileges. Statistically speaking, it is improbable for the rich people of today to have amassed their wealth by depending on minimum wage earnings alone. If they were to work on an average man's earnings, the rich would have to toil around 5,000 years before they can acquire their fortune. Accordingly, they must have obtained their riches through patronage.