WHAT YOUR DOCTOR LOOKS AT WHILE YOU WAIT

What Figure 1 does is take conversations that doctors or students might have had in private — over email, over coffee, at the golf course, after class — and puts them in a semi-public place. They are therefore conducted with professional familiarity verging on casualness. They read like I imagine actual doctors talk, when they're looking at something weird or novel or horrible or confounding or even funny.

POSSIBILITY OF CIVIL RIGHTS CHARGES DOUBTFUL

The police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., two months ago has told investigators that he was pinned in his vehicle and in fear for his life as he struggled over his gun with Mr. Brown, according to government officials briefed on the federal civil rights investigation into the matter.

THE HUMOUROUS LOGICK OF JAVA-SCRIPTE

"While it’s easy to dismiss coding as rote exercise — a matter of following rules — it’s worth remembering that natural language is subject to rules of its own: grammar, syntax, spelling. [...] With that in mind, I wanted to apply the quirks and transgressions of the great authors to JavaScript, to see where that pushed the language."

WINNING A (LITERAL) SEAT AT THE TABLE

You walk into a fancy dinner and pick up the little envelope that reveals your fate: the seat assignment for the evening. Did you score a prized spot at the best table? Or are you in “Siberia,” consigned to a seat in the back of the room? In a city full of status symbols, nothing distills power more quickly than your literal place at the table.

THE TASTE OF MADELEINES

Can we use adult recollections of childhood as a source of scientific data or as a basis for charging someone with child abuse years after the alleged offense? Can we trust eyewitness identifications in the courtroom? Can we put an understanding of how memory works to practical use by, say, devising treatments for people with disabling post-traumatic stress disorder? Recent work on the biology of memory retrieval offers some disturbing answers and some encouraging ones.