Best, wisest and most cynical cartoon of the week, on the cover of the current North American edition of The Economist:

Cover, The Economist, North American edition, April 25-May 1, 2009; illustration by Jon Berkeley

For a week at least, you can get the story behind the cover for free, here.

THE rays are diffuse, but the specks of light are unmistakable. Share prices are up sharply. Even after slipping early this week, two-thirds of the 42 stockmarkets that The Economist tracks have risen in the past six weeks by more than 20%. Different economic indicators from different parts of the world have brightened. China’s economy is picking up. The slump in global manufacturing seems to be easing. Property markets in America and Britain are showing signs of life, as mortgage rates fall and homes become more affordable. Confidence is growing. A widely tracked index of investor sentiment in Germany has turned positive for the first time in almost two years.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

But, welcome as it is, optimism contains two traps, one obvious, the other more subtle. The obvious trap is that confidence proves misplaced—that the glimmers of hope are misinterpreted as the beginnings of a strong recovery when all they really show is that the rate of decline is slowing. The subtler trap, particularly for politicians, is that confidence and better news create ruinous complacency. Optimism is one thing, but hubris that the world economy is returning to normal could hinder recovery and block policies to protect against a further plunge into the depths.

The cover almost says it all, doesn’t it?  Week in and week out, The Economist has great covers, a phase of newsstand-oriented journalism that I hope never goes away, regardless the medium.

Borrowed in the entirety, with permission, from Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub.

From the University of Florida’s Prof. Robert Hatch comes this timeline of scientific advances and events that built much of the stuff we study in the Enlightenment. Use this timeline for study, and use it as a springboard for your own research into the history of science.

Read the timeline, and you’ll get a good sense of how active the field of science was in this time, how broad-based the advances in science, and how quickly change was accelerating.

Part of Sir Isaac Newton's experiment demonstrating white light is composed of colored light, with special properties. Scientists remember Newton's optics experiments, historians stress Newton's work on gravity. Image from the University of Tennessee - Knoxville

Dr. Hatch also provides a concise but thorough history of Sir Isaac Newton. If you’re interested in the history of science, that’s a good site to study.