Prospero

EXACTLY 23 years ago today Joshua Prager was in a road accident that changed his life. When the day began he was a 19-year-old in rude health, racing to catch a minibus during a visit to Israel. But a collision with a runaway truck broke his neck, leaving him paralysed and wondering if he would die.

Months in the hospital were followed by years in a wheelchair and then a life with a cane. Dreams of becoming a doctor were traded for the more reflective work of a journalist (largely with the Wall Street Journal), as he found people readily confided in him. Questions of whether he would walk again were replaced with more existential ones: in what way did his accident change his fundamental self? How much of identity is informed by circumstance? What continuity links the robust young man who loved playing baseball and the trumpet with the hemiplegic who writes for a living?

After grappling with these questions for years, Mr Prager was finally able to commit some answers to paper. His book, "Half-Life", has been released as an "e-short" from Byliner, a company that publishes long-form stories designed to be read in a sitting or two. (On the subject of digital literature, the author is amusingly ambivalent—grateful to his editor and publisher, and yet squeamish about a book about a spinal-cord injury that lacks a spine.) The result is an impressive work of self-scrutiny, occasionally mournful but often funny, rich with insight about what it means move forward as a divided self. Mr Prager's refreshing mix of self-awareness and humour can also be seen in this recent TED talk, in which he describes the oddity of meeting the man whose reckless driving broke his neck.  

In an e-mail exchange with The Economist, Mr Prager considers the way time shaped his story, describes some misconceptions people have about disability and marvels at the wisdom of Herman Melville.

AN AIRLINER circles above central Spain. Technical problems have left the plane doomed, destined for a crash-landing. Frantic with nerves, passengers and crew-members descend into an orgy of alcohol, drugs and sex. Thus Pedro Almodóvar, the prince of modern Spanish cinema, allegorises the state of his country in his latest film, “Los amantes pasajeros” (released as “I'm So Excited” in the English-speaking world).

Reviewers have lingered on the not-so-subtle allusions to the country's calamitous economy. The film includes scenes in one of Spain’s empty white-elephant airports, built during the pre-crisis boom years. “We have a few little problems,” a flight attendant tells a concerned passenger: “Very serious ones, to be honest: we're drinking to forget.”

THE Economist's data editor discusses his new book, co-authored with Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, about how our unprecedented access to data changes how we live and think

THE original vampires of medieval Slavic myths were described as mindless and decaying, almost pitiable sufferers of the curse they must endure. The popular image of the brooding, seductive and sartorial undead charmer was created in the name of entertainment. Over a century of cinema, this image has been revamped (as it were) many times: the hideous monster of F.W. Murnau's “Nosferatu”, still considered the gold standard by many despite being made in 1922; the sophisticated aristocrat of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula in 1931, followed by Christopher Lee’s dashing count in the Hammer Horror films of the 1950s and 60s; then a brief period in the 1970s when the vampire legend lurched from pastiche to parody.

Over the last 25 years, vampire films have become more stylish and hard-hitting, pushing the boundaries of the genre. In “Byzantium”, a new film directed by Neil Jordan, the bloodsuckers are a mother (Gemma Arterton, pictured above) and daughter (Saoirse Ronan) who have been on the run for centuries from a male brotherhood from whom the mother stole her vampire “gift”. Set in a crumbling seaside resort where they both kill to protect their secret, and struggle to maintain it, “Byzantium” takes the rotting grandeur of the aristocratic vampire legend and places it in an austerity-ravaged British coastal town. The story is as much about the struggles of a single-parent family (albeit one that survives on human blood rather than state benefits) as it is about the curse of the undead.

GREAT expectations in the theatre can become a burden. When they are not met, audiences quickly turn sour. During Sir Nicholas Hytner’s 10 years as director of the National Theatre in London, expectations have rarely been higher than for his “Othello”, which opened on April 23rd. He directs Adrian Lester, who is black and one of the finest actors of his time, as the Moor; and Rory Kinnear, who played a distinguished Hamlet in Sir Nicholas’s 2010 production, as Iago (both pictured above). The play’s initial run was sold out before the curtain rose on the first night.

The expectations were met, and even surpassed. The critics like “Othello” extravagantly, and audiences sit rapt through the three-hour performance. This production is fast-paced, provocative, and clear. And it is not, as is often the case, simply about black and white. Only one character is openly racist, and that is Senator Brabantio, who finds he has no allies. References to the Moor’s negritude appear in the text, but Mr Lester’s poetic Othello is so authoritative that he shrugs off prejudice. Instead, this is a play about two professional soldiers: Mr Lester is a handsome, energetic general who incurs the hatred of his ensign, Iago, when he promotes Cassio over him; Mr Kinnear’s balding Iago, with a hint of North-London vowels, is an edgy, chain-smoking manipulator, intent on revenge.

“IT IS my urgent desire that the growing partnership between government and the arts continue to be developed to the benefit of both.” These are not the words of a left-wing cultural elitist from New York, but of President Richard Nixon in an intergovernmental memo from 1971. In this memo Nixon demanded that the heads of departments and agencies ask themselves how each “can most vigorously assist the arts and artists” and think on how “arts and artists can be of help to your agency and to its programs.”

One of the most enthusiastic responses to Nixon’s appeal was from Arthur Burns, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board who created the Fed’s Fine Arts Program in 1975. Nearly forty years on, the Fed’s art collection—with over 1,400 paintings, photographs and sculptures spread throughout its three buildings—is one of the best-kept secrets in Washington, DC.

The Fine Arts Program does not use government money to buy art. Instead artworks are amassed through donations, or bought with monies donated for the explicit purpose of buying art.

CORALIE COLMEZ was raised in Paris and studied maths at Cambridge University. She is now a maths tutor in London and belongs to the Bayes in Law Research Consortium, an international team who work to improve the use of probability and statistics in criminal trials. She recently co-authored “Math on Trial: How Numbers Get Used and Abused in the Courtroom” with her mother, Leila Schneps.

How does maths come into forensics?

One example is DNA analysis—not an exact science at all. If you do find a perfect sample, and it’s a perfect match, then it is exact. But that’s not what normally happens. A DNA profile looks like a graph that is fairly flat apart from 13 pairs of peaks—these are the pairs of genes that scientists have found are the most different from person to person. The probability that the samples will match on all 13 pairs is 1 in several hundred billion, which is why it is considered to be exact.

But normally you will have a degraded, small or mixed sample, so that even if you do find a match you are not 100% sure you have the right person. There is a case in our book where a defendant matches on 5 peaks, meaning there is 1 in a million chance that this is the wrong person. But, if you think about it, 1 in a million isn’t such a damning probability if you consider the whole world [around 7 billion].

Suggested Reading: “Double Helix and the Law of Evidence” by David Kaye (2010)

But I suppose the chance that more than one or two of these people were near the scene of the crime must be quite low.

If you are considering other evidence, then yes. But if you have no other evidence and you’re considering the whole world it isn’t such a small number.