SwayBlog

Country diaryBirdsPerth, Scotland: We are blessed to see them at all, but in such great numbers, ranging across the silent city, is something else Many recall the white walls of hawthorn blossom which sang out this spring. Yet fewer perhaps will appreciate how they’re the source of a secondary display of beauty now. I’m not thinking of the current red-berry spectacular, but of the waxwings that have arrived to feed on it. The bird breeds in subarctic taiga (boreal forests), its range spreading as a tonsure around the planet’s northern crown.

OpinionMichael Jackson This article is more than 11 years oldIs Michael Jackson's Abortion Papers controversial? Let's look at his workThis article is more than 11 years oldKatherine St AsaphJackson's lyrics have been been political, explicit, violent and accusatory before – Abortion Papers is nothing newMichael Jackson remains among the most prolific generators of headlines the news cycle has got. Add abortion – another quite reliable traffic source – and the controversy creates itself.

ShortcutsWomen's shoesMink-lined versions, jewel-encrusted shoes or even just the standard open style – the classic sandal is going to be big this yearA flat sandal that looks like a Birkenstock but features a mink lining, which sells for around €700 (£600). It's not the sexiest-sounding shoe, but the design, by Céline's Phoebe Philo, is already on course to become this season's watercooler shoe. So will it have a knock-on effect on the humbler classic Birkenstock?

Lucy Lethbridge is the author of Servants: A Downstairs View of Twentieth Century Britain (Bloomsbury, March 2013). She has also written several history books for children, including Ada Lovelace, the Computer Wizard of Victorian Britain, which won the 2002 Blue Peter Non-Fiction Award. ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaKiipLOquMRoo66bqWK5psDHm6minJea

Life and styleMasha's choiceMasha Gessen was never close to her mother, but after her death she discovered they had more in common than she thought - a deadly genetic flaw. She tells Viv Groskop about blood, babies and the burden of knowing too much ...The life-changing decision faced by the Russian writer Masha Gessen is unimaginable and terrifying for anyone who hasn't been in the same situation. It is also a prospect that many of us - and almost certainly our children - will confront in future: the full knowledge of our genetic identity and an indication of the likely manner and timing of our death.

ShortcutsXFew things cause as much despair as the news, courtesy of online service Qwitter, that your Twitter following is abandoning youIf you are interested in testing your resistance to psychic pain, may I recommend Qwitter? This is a service that emails you daily to impart who has "unfollowed" you on Twitter in the last 24 hours – who, among all the new friends you have acquired online, has decided they no longer want to read your hilarious 140-character posts.

Multiple orgasms … what you need to know Illustration: Olimpia ZagnoliMultiple orgasms … what you need to know Illustration: Olimpia ZagnoliSexOn-screen depictions of sex show women coming again and again, yet in reality many women never climax during sex. Here’s what we know so far about the clitoris and G-spot I’ll set the scene. There will be a man and a woman and they are having sex. Up against a wall, in a bed, in a car, anywhere.

YESTERYEARWhy is Michaelangelo's famous DAVID not circumcised? Mr. R. F. Sharratt, Montreal, Canada Because it would have taken more time to chip off that extra bit of stone. Jim, Sydney, Australia As I remember, there was an interesting answer in Scientific American about 15-20 years ago. Michaelangelo's David actually is circumcised. He is circumsised in the old (former) way called the little millah in Hebrew, which is appropriate for the time at which David lived.

Book of the dayFictionReviewThe complex layers beneath interpersonal relationships are closely observed in this moving debut of friendship, transitioning and first love In the opening chapters of Nicola Dinan’s debut novel, Ming, an intelligent young playwright from Kuala Lumpur, is seen from the perspective of adorably awkward Tom. They fall for each other at a British university, where Ming presents as a fey boy with an air of self-possession. But the lovers wake in bedsheets drenched from night sweats, a side effect of the citalopram prescribed for Ming’s OCD.