Rowan Jacobsen:

With a passion that gives this exploration of colony collapse disorder real buzz, Rowan Jacobsen investigates why 30 billion honeybees—one-quarter of the northern hemisphere's population—vanished by the spring of 2007. He identifies the convergence of culprits—blood-sucking mites, pesticide buildup, viral infections, overused antibiotics, urbanization and climate change—that have led to habitat loss and the destruction of the beautiful mathematics of the hive. Honeybees are undergoing something akin to a nervous breakdown; they aren't pollinating crops as effectively, and production of commercial American honey, already undercut by cheap Chinese imports, is dwindling, even as beekeepers truck stressed honeybees cross-country to pollinate the fields of desperate farmers. Jacobsen pessimistically predicts that our breakfasts will become ... a lot more expensive as the supply of citrus fruits, berries and nuts will inevitably decrease, though he expresses faith that more resilient bees can eventually emerge, perhaps as North American honeybees are crossbred with sturdier Russian queen bees. The author, now tending his own hives, invests solid investigative journalism with a poet's voice to craft a fact-heavy book that soars.

Fruitless Fall: The Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis

Life is more varied near the equator. But making sense of that has confounded biologists for 200 years.

The Trouble with Biodiversity

We hear again and again from Washington that we have turned a corner in Iraq and are on the path to victory. If so, it is a strange victory.

George W. Bush has put the United States on the side of undemocratic Iraqis who are Iran's allies. John McCain would continue the same approach. It is hard to understand how this can be called a success -- or a path to victory.

Is This a 'Victory'?

Nicholson Baker:

Baker's irresistibly readable short novel presents the quirky -- and often hilarious -- inner life of a thoroughly modern office worker. With high wit and in precisely articulated prose, the unnamed narrator examines, in minute and comically digressive detail, the little things in life that illustrate how one addresses a problem or a new idea: the plastic straw (and its annoying tendency to float), the vacuous civilities of office chatter, doorknobs, neckties, escalators and the laughable evolution of milk delivery from those old-fashioned hefty bottles to the folding carton. Using the keenly observed odds and ends of day-to-day consciousness, Baker allows his narrator to re-create the budding perceptions of a child facing a larger mysterious world, as each event in his day conjures up memories of previous incidents. Through the elegant manipulation of time, and sharp, defining memories of childhood, the narrator dissects each item of apparent cultural flotsam with the thoroughness of a prosaic, though wacky, technical manual. The rambling "footnotes" alone are worth the price of this cheerfully original novel.

The Mezzanine

It could be argued that dramatizing the day by magnification conveys the real import.

But it is also fundamentally misleading.

Graphs that lie

A growing number of scientists argue that human culture itself has become the foremost agent of biological change.

How We Evolve

"Beware of geeks bearing formulas."

The Rise of the Machines

This essay makes the underlying assumption that scientific information is an economic commodity, and that scientific journals are a medium for its dissemination and exchange. While this exchange system differs from a conventional market in many senses, including the nature of payments, it shares the goal of transferring the commodity (knowledge) from its producers (scientists) to its consumers (other scientists, administrators, physicians, patients, and funding agencies). The function of this system has major consequences. Idealists may be offended that research be compared to widgets, but realists will acknowledge that journals generate revenue; publications are critical in drug development and marketing and to attract venture capital; and publishing defines successful scientific careers. Economic modeling of science may yield important insights.

Why Current Publication Practices May Distort Science

Lawrence Lessig, in WSJ:

Digital technology has made it easy to create new works from existing art, but copyright law has yet to catch up.

Adapted from his new book.

In Defense of Piracy

Only a few years after the invention of the first programming languages, the subject flourished and a whole flurry of languages appeared. Soon programmers had to make their choices among available languages. How were they selected; were there any criteria of selection, of language quality? What is truly essential in a programming language? In spite of the convergence to a few, wide-spread, popular languages in recent years, these questions remain relevant, and the search for a "better" language continues among programmers.

Subscription required for full text.

The Essence of Programming Languages