‘God bless you, little boy. Bless you.” The mother’s voice coos at her 4-month-old, who is clearly pleased. ”Oh, everybody’s getting smiles now,” the mother observes. ”You’re a cutie.. . .”
A soothing voice, a blessing, a cherubic smile. It has all the nuzzling intimacy of a quiet conversation between mother and child, except for the [...]

The radio was on in the background the other day, low volume as usual, when I found myself inclining toward vaguely familiar music. It was something I had once known very well, and as I began to listen more intently, a few swells of melody pushed a button somewhere in my brainpan: Gershwin. The [...]

At 8:30 A.M. on a Friday morning, as trainloads of sleepy commuters rolled past heading north for San Francisco, David Goeddel’s lab group convened in a conference room of a low-slung, two-story building hard by the railroad tracks. One by one, young biologists drifted into the room: mostly 20-something, willfully underdressed, a rainbow coalition of [...]