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A school in Tibet: Altruism remains a mysterious force

On an ordinary day some ten years ago, when I was in the midst of a long-forgotten project, a call came from preschool: “You need to pick up Andy. The nurse found head lice.” So began my first encounter with the horror, the shame, the benightedness—I had no idea then how common and manageable it could be—of this medieval infestation. I rushed over, and a solemn-faced nurse relinquished our child from his quarantine, along with an instruction sheet calculated to provoke alarm.

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