1. Nils Barricelli, the father of research into digital life forms.

"Barricelli programmed some of the earliest computer algorithms that resemble real-life processes: a subdivision of what we now call “artificial life,” which seeks to simulate living systems—evolution, adaptation, ecology—in computers. Barricelli presented a bold challenge to the standard Darwinian model of evolution by competition by demonstrating that organisms evolved by symbiosis and cooperation."

2. Looking at our world through Google Earth can be discomfiting.

"Google Earth is more than the God’s-eye view – more than just us mortals seeing through the eyes of God. In Google Earth, we are God. We see over, under, inside and out. We see into the beyond, with a second sight unavailable to our mortal selves. We see ghosts of dead friends and dead strangers. We see ourselves. If the colonial God’s-eye view in Mercator maps is an uneasy settling of the planet (hoping the savages will stay in their place and not upset the prescribed order), then Google Earth, with its forking paths Google Maps and Google Street View, is a parallel world bleeding into this one."

3. A report from Iowa on the growing problem of herbicide-resistant weeds. 

"Critics blame farmers for creating herbicide-resistant weeds by overusing herbicides such as glyphosate and failing to diversify the crops they plant, relying on products such as Roundup Ready corn and soybeans year after year... 'Even though we warned them, you understand the economics behind it,' said Robert Hartzler, an ISU professor of agronomy... 'To make a reasonable living, you need to farm large acres, and to farm large acres, you need to cover acres quickly and that involves herbicides. Glyphosate was the best herbicide around.' Hartzler said. 'You couldn't sit down at a blackboard and come up with a better rotation than we have for weeds to thrive in,' he said."

+ Via one of America's greatest historians, Bill Cronon.

4. Darwin's little-known contribution to the study of child development.

"Darwin not only fathered ten children, but even more remarkably, he found time to be a wonderful, engaged dad in an age when fathers were typically distant. Darwin  kept detailed diaries of the observations he made as his kids grew, and as a result of these, we know that he may be the first person to ever notice a simple yet deeply puzzling phenomenon  that has tended to pass just about every other parent by:  the bafflingly long time it takes kids to learn the meanings of color words... The insight came to Darwin while using a playroom tapestry to play a naming game with a couple of his children."

5. The SF Chronicle scraped a day's worth of Airbnb listings. This is what they found.

"Although the company refuses to release numbers, a data analysis commissioned by The Chronicle found almost 5,000 San Francisco homes, apartments, and private or shared rooms for rent via Airbnb. Two-thirds were entire houses or apartments, showing how far Airbnb has come from its couch-surfer origins, and contradicting its portrayal as a service for people who rent out a spare room and interact with guests. And 160 entire homes or apartments seem to be rented full time, giving weight to arguments that the service is allowing landlords to flout strict rental laws."

Today's 1957 American English Usage Tip

buskin. For the buskin meaning the tragic stage &c. see BATTERED ORNAMENTS.

I had never heard this word. It refers to a boot mandal sometimes worn by Athenian actors, and became a way of referring to "the style or spirit of tragic drama."

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The Meanings of Color Words