Innholdsfortegnelse for Jun-01-15 i The New Yorker

READING MAGNA CARTA The central tenet of Jill Lepore’s essay on Magna Carta is that its importance has been overhyped (“The Rule of History,” April 20th). But it is not surprising that a thirteenth-century document from a feudal kingdom doesn’t have a literal counterpart in American law. What is surprising—and important— is that some of the ideas in it have resounded through the English Civil War, the English Revolution of 1688, the formation of the United States, the rise of modern American democracy, the American Civil War, the fights for racial and gender equality, and on to today’s battles. Magna Carta continues to play a role in the demand for meaningful rule of law as opposed to arbitrary and capricious exercises of power and coercion. To commemorate Magna Carta’s…

World Science Festival With the advent of the Internet, mobile phones, apps, and robots that can write prose and the prospect of self-driving cars, science is taking over our lives. This gathering, an annual affair since 2008, is organized by the string theorist Brian Greene and the journalist Tracy Day. It features fifty events in museums, parks, and other venues across all five boroughs. Highlights include a celebration of the hundredth anniversary of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, a stargazing session accompanied by live music, catch-and-release fish counts, and a daylong science street fair in Washington Square Park. If those activities don’t sound intellectually rigorous enough, there are also presentations with the physicist and string theorist Edward Witten; NASA’s chief scientist, Ellen Stofan; the paleoanthropologist Lee Berger; the Nobel-winning…

digitizefrom the Latin “to fingeror handle” as ifto sink your fingersdeeplyinto thisflood of light*hard not to griphard not to shape handfulsloavesfor the hooded basketsomething to store away for latersomething to place upon the slab*the lighta richer color nowwrong to regretthe reddish undertones of daywrong to regard themas a kind of ripening*the young morninggrommetedwith minutesthreadedwith wisps of wool*no signs of resentmentfurrowthe infiniteamenability of dawnno soundssuggesting discordfrom the songbirdstetheredto their wheels…