Issue of June 30, 2008

Little Green Men Dept.: Space Dirt
Building robots for Mars exploration.
by Ben McGrath

Q. So, is there life on Mars? Does it matter?

Altered State
Scenes from a Pennsylvania girlhood.
by Andrea Lee

Q. Would you want to meet the author? What questions would you ask regarding the events in her article?

The Itch
A new science of scratching.
by Atul Gawande

Audio: Gawande on the science behind itching.

Q. Your mother always told you to stop scratching that mosquito bite... "it'll get infected!" HA! Little did she know. What other things surprise in the piece? How does this compare with AG's previous medical articles? Better, worse?

Issue of June 23, 2008

Second Acts: Citizen Mayhill
The stay-at-home mom who scooped the media.
by Ben McGrath

Art Dept.: Water, Water
Olafur Eliasson’s waterfalls.
by Calvin Tomkins

Hello, HAL
The battle to make computers understand.
by John Seabrook

First Impressions
What were the earliest painters thinking?
by Judith Thurman

Issue of June 9 & 16, 2008--more

The Academy: Goombah 101
A four-day conference on “The Sopranos.”
by Joan Acocella

“Tits-Up in a Ditch”

Annie Proulx

Mysteries of Flight

Mohammed Naseehu Ali

Hypocrites

George Saunders

The work of Ezra Pound.

Louis Menand

Issue of June 9 & 16, 2008

Dymaxion Man

Elizabeth Kolbert

Buckminster Fuller’s peculiar legacy.

Q. Bucky Fuller, genius or failure? Why? How does he compare to Edison or Ford? to Ray Bradbury or Arthur C. Clarke?

“Sex and the City.”

Anthony Lane

Q. How does Lane know the plot before seeing the movie? Is his review viciously wicked or wickedly vicious? Does he "get" what the SatC urban myth is all about?

God and the problem of suffering.

James Wood

Q. What are JW's strongest points arguing that God is dead? Weakest? Should logic and rationality be applied to religion and belief?

Auto-Tune’s power to correct and distort.

Sasha Frere-Jones

Q. Is Auto-Tune a distortion of sound or is it just another color in a musician's palette? (to badly mix a metaphor) When was the last time you saw "ain't" in a NYer article?

“Swingtown.”

Nancy Franklin

Q. Does NF consider "Swingtown" merely bad TV or is it "Craptastic!"? Or were the 70's just a bad time to be alive? Is she nostalgic? How does her review compare to Anthony Lane?

Issue of June 2, 2008

Non-Lethal Force

Alec Wilkinson

Crime fighting of the future.

Q. What are the dangers of using new technology on the public? Using military weapons? What's the upside?

The Rebellion Within

Lawrence Wright

An Al Qaeda mentor rethinks terrorism.

Q. What's the conclusion of the author? Does a mentor get a do-over? Without consequence from "enemy" or mentoree? Can logic and rationality be applied here?