“... making phone calls, surfing the web. What has become clear is that, however much information may be being gathered by whatever agencies, it’s very hard reliably to connect it to individuals. For one thing, a name – which is all you need to give when buying a plane ticket – is a very bad way of identifying people, not just because it can be ...”

“... surrounding biodefence in the US, Klotz and Sylvester say, only encourages nations that fear they may be potential targets of America’s ‘biodefence programme’ to embark on ‘biodefence programmes’ of their own. And so it escalates. Klotz and Sylvester argue that the biological threat from terrorists has been grossly ...”

“... or cure infelicities. Editorial care can express reverence for such a text; the editor’s reward may be the insights thoughtful analysis brings him or her rather than new readings discovered. The work put into a new edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, say, is not going to result in a text so different from the last that even the most careful reader will feel ...”

“... our deepest fantasies that the least prepossessing, the least styled, the most innocent among us may carry the power to amaze the world. That notion lies at the sentimental heart of showbusiness. Turning defeat to triumph, jeers to cheers, is a piece of schmaltz fans of transformation find irresistible, and most people with an interest in the wiles of human ...”

“... already know the book they came to shop for. If they pause and look, pick up and read, they may also buy. The product and the advertisement are bound up together. Berthold Wolpe’s 1950s Faber cover design for Le Corbusier’s ‘Modulor 2’ Two books are just out which chart the transition from essentially utilitarian, intermittently decorative ...”

“... 230,000 hawk moths – but much of what accompanies the new displays comes from field trips. They may take a scientist to a distant jungle-covered mountain or to a local bog. Once there foliage is snipped, soil sampled and bugs trapped. Clips from video diaries show you the tools of the trade (light traps for moths, pitfall traps for beetles, lots of local ...”

“... to horizon-occluding features. The observatory has been long in the making – a website says it may be open to the public next year; photographs suggest that, like Walter De Maria’s lightning field in New Mexico and Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, it will become one of those places of pilgrimage, which for one practical reason or another are very ...”

“... prophesied. We moan how rapidly life runs away when violent death sweeps towns like this aside. May it prove false what I’m about to say and brand liar rightly on the poet’s brow when he predicts Rome too will die one day. The ploughman striking sparks with his shoved plough says: ‘See that rubble? Them heaps used to be Napoli, once famous but not ...”

“... street?’ ‘Why not?’ her dad said. ‘What’s wrong with that?’ A dress’s best destiny may be to hear it’s the most interesting at a party, but there is also the whoosh of casting a spell over yourself: the woman who bought a wedding gown when single and put it in a chest ‘had found something that would be perfect for an occasion that might ...”

“... at the Propaganda Ministry, where business continued. She heard about her boss’s suicide on 1 May 1945, and spent the next five years in a Russian prison camp. On her release, she returned to work in broadcasting, for Südwestrundfunk in Baden-Baden. I went to see her at her flat in Munich. She had grey hair, a brisk manner and sharp eyes behind her ...”

“... air. Angela Merkel is a big fan of it, and says that ventilating a room – lüften – may be the saving of mankind, and the cheapest way to contain the virus. She can become quite deep on the subject – a friend of mine used to call it ‘Black Forest thinking’. Stosslüften requires that a window be opened wide at least once a day to give a ...”

“... of the homo sacer – the criminal excluded from society who loses his rights as a citizen and ‘may be killed and yet not sacrificed’. His theory centres on the idea that sovereignty necessarily produces bare life, and keeps humans in this ambivalent state, caught in the law but also excluded from it. The state of exception or emergency is the clearest ...”

“... of his book Mr McCowen casts doubt on the Virgin Birth – he is prepared to accept that his Lord may have been illegitimate. In claiming God was his father Jesus avoided the embarrassment of bastardy and when he is baptised he experiences for the first time the validity of his claim. He is a very scared man indeed and departs for a spell in the ...”

“... gallery-going set about David Shrigley’s Brain Activity exhibition at the Hayward (until 13 May). People who value the power of art to shock far too highly ever to be shocked by it themselves, have nevertheless been somewhat put out, complaining that Shrigley, who is best known as a cartoonist, should have been given a solo show in such a prominent ...”

“... concentric circles around him. His proposals to reduce the social ‘safety net’ for the unlucky may be seen as drawing a convenient but contortedly wrong lesson from his own life. Ryan learned his anti-government ideology from an intoxicated early exposure to the writings of Ayn Rand.* It is now clear that Rand has been the most influential thinker in ...”