Cornell University

David T. Kung in American Scientist:

Carl Zimmer's new book excerpted in Discover:

Michael Dirda in the Washington Post:

The University of Michigan said Tuesday it is teaming up with Amazon.com Inc. to offer reprints of 400,000 rare, out-of-print and out-of-copyright books from its library. Seattle-based Amazon's BookSurge unit will print the books on demand in soft cover editions at prices from $10 to $45.

The Ann Arbor school said the books are in more than 200 languages from Acoli to Zulu and include a 1898 book on nursing by Florence Nightingale, "Notes on Nursing: What it is and What it is not."

John Markoff in the New York Times:

John Markoff in the New York Times:

For his birthday (today), Morgan Meis<

Brandon Keim in Wired:

Two decades ago, a 23-year-old Cornell University graduate student brought the Internet to its knees with a simple software program that skipped from computer to computer at blinding speed, thoroughly clogging the then-tiny network in the space of a few hours.

The program was intended to be a bit of cybernetic fungus that would unobtrusively wander the Net. However, a programming error turned it into a harbinger heralding the arrival of a darker cyberspace, more of a mirror for all of the chaos and conflict of the physical world than a utopian refuge from it.