A hell of a drug: bees on cocaine 'behave like humans.'

News roundup!

* Surprising sat: 2/3 of U.S. corporations pay no taxes at all.

* In the latest sign of trouble in the planet's chemistry, the number of oxygen-starved "dead zones" in coastal waters around the world has roughly doubled every decade since the 1960s, killing fish, crabs and massive amounts of marine life at the base of the food chain, according to a study released yesterday. More at Political Animal.

* 'Honeybee deaths reaching crisis point' in U.K.

* And they've finally, finally invented Mr. Fusion. For real this time. (We're saved.)

The bees are back—and they're angry.

Michael Pollan has an article in The New York Times today about sustainability, especially when it comes to agriculture and food production:

To call a practice or system unsustainable is not just to lodge an objection based on aesthetics, say, or fairness or some ideal of environmental rectitude. What it means is that the practice or process can’t go on indefinitely because it is destroying the very conditions on which it depends. It means that, as the Marxists used to say, there are internal contradictions that sooner or later will lead to a breakdown.

The article goes on to focus on two stories in the news this year that suggest a sustainability tipping point could be upon us, antibiotic-resistant staph infection and Colony Collapse Disorder. Via Pandagon, which gets this right, I think:

Pollan argues that the word “sustainability” is losing its meaning, and it’s clear why—it’s incompatible with capitalism, and openly arguing for economic systems to replace capitalism is simply verboten in our society. Taboo, unacceptable, off the table. And it will be until it’s too late to reverse the damage done by the need for unchecked growth for profit.

* When capitalism gets it right: a five-year retrospective on Philly CarShare.

"In this region, one million people get to work without a car," Lane says. Not always by choice, he notes. Car ownership, duh, is expensive. Once you own one, it's only rational to drive it. You've already sunk money into the purchase, tax, tags and insurance.

"With car sharing, you flip it around," Lane says. "If you don't need to use the car, you avoid the cost."

* Thirty illnesses sorted according to whether or not you can eat the victims. At McSweeney's.

* Crooks & Liars catches up with the missing honeybees and colony collapse disorder.

New Yorker roundup: Today I put aside an hour or so and caught up on the New Yorkers I hadn't been reading the last few weeks—which means I've now got a bunch of good articles to link to.

* Dept. of Entomology: Where have all the bees gone?
* Annals of Technology: A brief history of email Spam.
* The article everybody and their mother linked to, the look inside the CIA's "black sites."
* Shouts & Murmurs: Aesop In The City.
* The Lost Poems of Joe DiMaggio.

Enjoy.

Khaled Diab goes behind the Zion curtain, at the Guardian Online. (via MeFi)

Groovy Green says organic bees are doing just fine. (via my dad)

Literary bad timing: releasing a book about two people traversing a post-apocalyptic American landscape...now. Feel bad for Jim Crace, but even worse for me: I haven't even started my post-apocalyptic novel yet, and The Road's already out there sucking all the air from the room. (via Bookslut)