"The End of the World: Interpreting the Plague" is a pretty fascinating look at what happens to a society of scared little monkeys when a bunch of them start dropping dead all of a sudden.

"Jesus in the Classroom" is an detailed and impressively balanced history of the Cupertino school situation, where the Declaration of Indepence Was Banned From a Fifth Grade Classroom (but of course not really). This article does an amazing job of presenting both sides of the issue, painting Williams (the teacher involved) not as a cynical schemer (as you might expect if you've read any of the details of the case), but instead as a man who (a) was trying to teach to the California state standards as he understood them as best he could (b) did an good-to-exemplary job of teaching about a number of other religions (c) underwent a radical conversion experience one day and was simply unable to stop talking about it. ADF, the legal defense group fronting the case, doesn't come off quite as well, but isn't portrayed in a negative light, either.

Obviously, I'm basically sympathetic to the school district in this dispute, so it's hard for me to tell if this even-handedness works both ways, but I do know that I came out of the article with a little bit more of an understanding of where Williams' suit is coming from (though needless to say I still think he and his lawyers are wrong). It's not online, though. Why won't The New Yorker just put everything online? It'd make my life a lot easier.