In most cases, police say the targets, perpetrators and beneficiaries of these "iCrimes" are young people.

Last weekend in Toronto's west end, four people with iPods were taken to hospital with cuts and bruises after being swarmed by a gang of youths wielding a metal mallet used to tenderize meat. Nine people were subsequently arrested and charged.

At least nine people in Toronto — most of them youths — have been mugged for their iPods since late October.
—Misty Harris, "Lure of iPods leads to hike in iCrime," Regina Leader Post, November 19, 2008

Democratic congressional candidate Darcy Burner ... followed her husband to Washington state in 1998 when he was hired at Microsoft; she landed a job there in 2000, working as a marketing manager dealing in network architecture for software developers. ...

What has made Burner different from other political newcomers is her ability to attract campaign contributions (she's outraised her opponent, a rarity for congressional challengers). And she owes a good part of her fundraising success to her links to the netroots.

"She's one of us," Seattle blogger David Goldstein, who has solicited contributions to Burner on his Web site, horsesass.org, said earlier this year. "Down deep, she's a geek."
—Gregory Roberts, "Darcy Burner's interest in service started early," The Seattle Post-Intelligencer," October 29, 2008

Chris Ball, chief executive of campaign group The Age and Employment Network ... called on employers to allow a larger number of older staff to either stay in work longer, or return to the workforce after retirement.

"The current economic situation where more and more older people are having to turn to credit to meet their everyday living expenses, and where fewer than four out of 10 people are contributing to an occupational pension, means that longer working and 'returnment' are two trends that are becoming well established," Ball said.
—Mike Berry. "Employment figures show older workers are on the increase," Personnel Today, April 22, 2008

Many people think of climate change as a gradual process that occurs over decades and centuries, but environment experts believe that the Earth's climate system can cross tipping points at which a small change can have a big and sudden impact on the fate of large areas. A research team at East Anglia has identified a shortlist of nine potential climate-system tipping elements so that scientists can monitor them with early-warning systems and help policymakers and the public avoid dangerous thresholds.
—Ann Mroz, "THE Awards 2008," The Times Higher Education Supplement, September 25, 2008

Police call iPod assaults an epidemic, not unlike the spate of violent swarmings in the 1990s where the prizes were expensive running shoes and jackets. But iPods are more valued because one size fits all.

"They're ubiquitous," Vancouver Police Constable Tim Fanning said. Nearly every young person has one or wants one. Users are easy to spot, sporting the white ear buds, often referred to as "mug me" earphones.

"For a thief, it's like a crow seeing something shiny," Constable Fanning said.
—Zosia Bielski and Jane Armstrong, "iPod loyalists: They'd rather fight than ditch," The Globe and Mail, November 15, 2008

Forty-seven years later, Mr. McFall and his surviving sister, Mary, 91, still share a second-floor suite, which is adorned with framed family photos and mementos. If evicted, the elderly siblings say they will likely have to go to a seniors home. So the tenants of the Seafield apartment building have banded together with the McFalls and refused to leave. They say they are victims of a new trend in B.C. — nicknamed "renoviction" — in which landlords evict tenants by announcing big renovation plans.
—Jane Armstrong, "Joining forces in face of 'renoviction'," The Globe and Mail, November 11, 2008

Much of the strength of the philanthrocapitalism movement lies in the effort to remodel the philanthropic paradigm, and to offer a new vocabulary, a new mind-set, and new mechanisms for approaching traditional work. Reform of the philanthropic sector was, no doubt, long overdue. But the risk of advocating philanthrocapitalism without skepticism is that the movement could devolve into something like Tom Lehrer's old joke about the new math: that it could become more important to "understand what you're doing rather than to get the right answer."
—Richard Tofel, "The New Face of Philanthropy," The New York Sun, September 26, 2008

When polls showed Obama leading in the weeks before the election, the same pundits crowed about how Obama could still lose because of the Bradley effect. That is the unproven hypothesis contesting that white voters will lie and say they are voting for a black candidate, then really support a white opponent. Again, because they supposedly hold unfavorable views of blacks, but don't want to appear racist.

Instead, if anything, we may have had a reverse Bradley effect. Obama's support among white voters across a broad socioeconomic spectrum was stunning. The coalition that swept Obama to power included some of everyone: whites, African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, young, middle-age, old, Jewish.
—Tammerlin Drummond, "Myths disproven on the way to victory," Contra Costa Times, November 9, 2008

What if there were a run on a bank and no one knew? In recent days some U.S. media have focused on a "silent run" on the deposits of Wachovia bank, which is now being taken over, after a bailout plan stalled and its rival Washington Mutual was seized.

Commentators including Nouriel Roubini, Professor of Economics at New York University's Stern School of Business, have highlighted the scope for quiet withdrawals by depositors whose assets exceed guaranteed levels.

But in Europe, another high-profile banking failure has drawn attention to a different 21st-century phenomenon: as homes and businesses increasingly manage their finances online, mass withdrawals may be invisible.
—Reed Stevenson and Steve Slater, "Bank savers run at the click of a mouse," Reuters, October 8, 2008

A tree-living fungus that manufactures diesel fuel has been discovered in South America.

Experts believe the organism, Gliocladium roseum, could potentially be a completely new source of green energy....

Scientists were amazed to find that it was able to convert plant cellulose directly into the biofuel, dubbed "myco-diesel' ...

Professor Gary Strobel, from Montana State University in Bozeman, US, said: "G. roseum can make myco-diesel directly from cellulose, the main compound found in plants and paper. This means if the fungus was used to make fuel, a step in the production process could be skipped.'
—John von Radowitz, "Fungus could offer green energy breakthrough," Press Association Newsfile, November 4, 2008

The Bradley Effect — a possible misleading of pollsters by voters explored in this space in September — was a phrase that received much thumb sucking among the punditariat during October and will either enter or permanently depart the political language this week.
—William Safire, "On Language: '08-isms," The New York Times, November 2, 2008

Cyclists aren't the only ones slowing down cars along rural roads with 45 mph limits. "Liquor-cycles," those two-wheelers that don't require drivers' licenses, also encourage motorists to dart in and out to pass.
—Gerald McLin, "DWIs aren't only problem these highway users cause," Charlotte Observer, August 19, 2008