The New York Times

Faking It

Michael Lewis article on cautionary tale of Marcus Arnold, 15-year-old son of Belize immigrants in California who became top-rated 'legal expert' on AskMe Web Site; photos (M)

Lost and Found

Colson Whitehead essay about when he first defined himself as New Yorker through memories of riding subway; says New Yorkers always see city through eyes of first glimpse; each person defines it for him or herself from personal experience, and everyone's experience of city is unique; small changes go unheralded and neighborhoods morph from one thing to another in almost-unnoticed steps as familiar shops become chain stores; compares streets to calendar, marking time and progress of each individual; mourns World Trade Center collapse, but claims towers are still there, that each New Yorker carries them in memory; photo (M)

A Mighty Fortress

The Rights-Free Workplace

Barbara Ehrenreich article says the American worker has suffered a palpable decline in dignity and autonomy over the last few years; says employers are monitoring employees' workplace behavior rights down to a single computer keystroke or bathroom break, even probing into their personal concerns and leisure activities; says the most ubiquitous invasion of privacy is drug testing, which is now required by 81 percent of large companies even though it turns out to be associated with a reduction rather than an enhancement of productivity (M)

How the Eggheads Cracked

Seeing Faster

Essay by James Gleick says man has developed ways to see better, then to see faster; says science has made it possible to observe speed and then to love it, dangers notwithstanding; says man chooses mania over boredom; photos (M)

Men, Women, Sex And Darwin

Article by Natalie Angier, adapted from her book Woman: An Intimate Geography, seeks to debunk accepted theories about differences between men and women; says hard-core evolutionary psychologists have got a lot wrong, especially when they describe yawning chasm that separates innate desires of women and men; says, for example, that in matter of sex, it is hard to insist that men naturally like greater amounts of sex, with more partners, than women do, until men are subjected to same severe standards and threat of censure as women are, and until men are given lower hand in so-called casual encounter from the start; drawings (L)

The Subversive

Michael Lewis profile of Sen John McCain and his drive for campaign finance reform; recalls how he survived years of torture in North Vietnamese prison camp and became involved in reform effort after facing ethics probe for accepting campaign funds from Charles Keating; photos (L)

Something's Got to Give

Big Brother Is Us

James Gleick article on privacy issues in technological age; notes information-gathering about individuals by Government and corporation computers has reached astounding level of completeness; holds peoples' concerns about such information compilation are greatest if they distrust Government (L)

I'll Take the Money, Thanks

James Gleick comments on movement to oppose extension of copyright law to electronic world; argues that on-line world can respect copyright, and eventually, it will; drawing (M)

Safe-Sex Lies

White Collars Turn Blue

Prof Paul Krugman article, written as though looking back from future, discusses economic transformations late 20th century economists failed to predict; cites virtual disappearance of white-collar workers, soaring prices of natural resources, key role of environmental protection, rebirth of big cities, eroding payoff of higher education and growing economic role of celebrity; drawing (L)

Another Battle of New Orleans: Mardi Gras

The little shotgun house is peeling and the Oldsmobile in front is missing a rear bumper, but Larry Bannock can glimpse glory through the eye of his needle. For almost a year he has hunkered over his sewing table, joining beads, velvet, rhinestones, sequins, feathers and ostrich plumes into a Mardi Gras costume that is part African, part Native American.

TERROR IN OKLAHOMA CITY: AT GROUND ZERO

In Shock, Loathing, Denial: 'This Doesn't Happen Here'

A Killer's Only Confidant: The Man Who Caught Susan Smith

The case of a lifetime is closed for Howard Wells. The reporters and the well-wishers have begun to drift away, leaving the Union County Sheriff at peace. He will try to do a little fishing when the police radio is quiet, or just sit with his wife, Wanda, and talk of anything but the murderer Susan Smith.

All She Has, $150,000, Is Going to a University

Oseola McCarty spent a lifetime making other people look nice. Day after day, for most of her 87 years, she took in bundles of dirty clothes and made them clean and neat for parties she never attended, weddings to which she was never invited, graduations she never saw.

Where Alabama Inmates Fade Into Old Age

Grant Cooper knows he lives in prison, but there are days when he cannot remember why. His crimes flit in and out of his memory like flies through a hole in a screen door, so that sometimes his mind and conscience are blank and clean.

Forget PCB's. Radon. Alar

First Born, Fast Grown: The Manful Life of Nicholas, 10

A fourth-grade classroom on a forbidding stretch of the South Side was in the middle of multiplication tables when a voice over the intercom ordered Nicholas Whitiker to the principal's office. Cory and Darnesha and Roy and Delron and the rest of the class fell silent and stared at Nicholas, sitting sober-faced in the back.