Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too. GDP measures the total value of output in an economic territory. Its apparent simplicity explains why it is scrutinised down to tenths of a percentage point every month.

That little terraformed planetoid, outside the mines and the drift, had been the base of supplies for Freedonia.

In Elephant Butte, the couple's main criteria --temperate climate, a semirural location and affordability -- were met.

A little Wall lay sculking about this Territory of the Dead, which we suppos'd was plac'd there as a Bulwark to their Ashes, but it prov'd but a feeble Fence against the Intrusion of the Lambs, who made frequent Capreols into this adjacent Dormitory.