Fred Hapgood

Building beneath the earth’s surface makes increasing sense — and could become surprisingly affordable in the years ahead

The artist James Turrell is shaping Arizona earth so that an observer can listen to the sounds of the stars, be enveloped by the image of the moon, and think he is watching a seventy-five-story volcanic crater flatten into the desert floor

Over the years electroshock has been used to “treat" such disparate complaints as backache, ulcers, hysteria, grief, colitis, and homosexuality. Electroshock is still in use today in many leading psychiatric hospitals—despite the fact that patients fear this violent and dangerous therapy, and that the doctors who believe in it cannot explain what it does or how it works.

What’s the value of a human life? According to one government agency, the price is precisely $287,175. The figure is a by-product of the new science of risk-benefit analysis, which attempts to make social policy more rational, but which also poses chilling ethical problems.