Gifts of a well-flavored man

The three witches on the stormy heath had no trouble foretelling Macbeth’s kingly future. But seven or eight decades ago, those hags would have had a harder time choosing one storyline for a young Lawrence Kahn. He had a rich and complex life ahead of him.

Supreme Court decisions predicted by online computer program

Supreme Court cases are now predictable, thanks to new computer model.As the U.S. Supreme Court moves into its new term, litigants, attorneys and the public will be closely watching its docket and speculating about its decisions. Now, thanks to the Supreme Court Forecasting Project at Washington University in St. Louis, court watchers everywhere will be able to log on to the Internet and obtain a forecast of how individual cases are likely to be decided. The project accurately predicted decisions in 75 percent of the cases heard by the Court in its last term.