The New York Times

Pigeon Wars

For 10 days this August,a fresh-faced 41-year-old named Jeffrey Traill trolled Hollywood in his Honda, videotaping pigeons. Pigeons lined the ArcLight theaters near the Walk of Fame, commandeered the roof at Big Lots!, perched along power lines like stolid chess pieces. ''Pigeons,'' Traill says in his video, shakily framing one roost. ''Pigeons,'' he says again, wrenching his camera toward another. The effect is nauseating. ''Over there,'' he says. ''Over there. Over there.''

Why Vote?

A Swiss Turnout-Boosting Experiment Within the economics departments at certain universities, there is a famous but probably apocryphal story about two world-class economists who run into each other at the voting booth.

Moses' Top Ten

The Ten Commandments have a shot at being named Time magazine's man of the year. This week, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll showed that 63 percent of the respondents want President Bush to appoint a Supreme Court nominee who supports ''allowing displays of the Ten Commandments on government property.'' The Conservative Caucus is even petitioning the president to appoint the former, as in fired, Alabama chief justice, Roy Moore, the legal whiz who defied a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the lobby of Montgomery's state judicial building. The Supreme Court's ruling last month upholding the right of the Texas State Capitol to keep a Ten Commandments sculpture -- sponsored by that great theologian Cecil B. DeMille to promote his Charlton Heston epic -- on its grounds as an historical artifact is arguable from a legal perspective. But to the amateur historian and professional ironist, it's a delight. Because I've been to the Texas State Capitol, and that granite Moses movie ad is one of the least offensive things there.

TV Makes You Smarter

Steven Johnson article says that today's popular television programs have complexity that makes greater cognitive demands on viewers than shows had 30 years ago and that this phenomenon, which he calls Sleeper Curve, is enhancing mental development of young people, not retarding it, as television has often been accused of doing; says this applies not only to highbrow dramas like 24, The Sopranos and The West Wing, but also to reality shows like Joe Millionaire, Survivor and The Apprentice; drawings (L)

The Lost Strudel

FOOD vanishes. I don't mean food as habit, food as memory, food as biography, food as metaphor, food as regret, food as love, or food as in those famous madeleines people like me are constantly referring to as if they've read Proust, which in most cases they haven't. I mean food as food. Food vanishes.

The Making of a Molester

Not long ago, Roy became a type of monster. The transformation took a year and a half, and now, one morning each week, he sits in a room of similar cases. The windowless room is plain, with a blue industrial carpet, a circle of brown cushioned office chairs, a blackboard, a pair of unused conference tables pushed to the rear wall and a faint hum from the air ducts. To reach it from the waiting area -- on the second floor of a probation building in Connecticut -- Roy and the other men walk down a series of corridors and around a series of turns that feel like a path through a maze. The room is wedged in a back corner. ''No one,'' a probation officer said, ''likes to think about what's back there.'' Roy wonders constantly how he wound up in this place, in the circle of 10 or 12 chairs, a circle of child molesters. His story begins on the beach and ends on the Internet. It seems to him that he was, only recently, a normal man, about 40, running a crew of technicians, repairing elaborate, computerized telecommunications equipment for Wall Street trading firms and in his off hours leading a wedding band, singing Frank Sinatra and Barry White at the Plaza. For a hobby, he flew kites -- kites bigger than most living rooms, brilliantly striped, with rippling streamers and ''space socks'' trailing more than a hundred feet behind, kites that could perform ballets when he held the lines. He recalls no history of longing for young girls. He had no criminal record of any kind. But then one summer, on vacation, his second wife pointed out her 11-year-old daughter's body. Roy and his wife were standing on the sand; his stepdaughter and her best friend played several yards in front of them at the edge of the surf. ''Look at those girls,'' Roy remembers his wife saying. ''They're changing already. You can see their bodies changing.''

After Life

1 Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. The question of self-pity.

Coach Fitz's Management Theory

Michael Lewis article on Billy Fitzgerald, Ne

The Genome in Black and White (and Gray)

Robin Marantz Henig article on research in which some scientists are studying genetic basis of race in order to develop better treatments; emerging field of race-based pharmacogenomics signals shift in perception, new approach that has as its core idea assumption that there are biological differences among races; frustrating gap in health status of different racial groups refuses to close or even to be adequately explained, and scientists remain split on very concept of race; pitfalls of research include possible misinterpretation of data that could lead to sweeping pronouncements and racial disharmony; drawing (L)

Germs, Germs Everywhere

Mary Roach, author of book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, essay dispels idea that environments need to be bacteria-free; holds that spate of new anti-bacterial products are driven by irrational fear by consumers; suggests that food poisoning is only serious bacterial health threat in average home; cartoon (M)

Say No More

Jack Hitt article on how languages die and efforts to keep them alive; notes estimate that half of more than 6,000 languages currently spoken in world will become extinct by end of century; says working to stem tide range are graduate students heading into the field to compile dictionaries, charitable foundations devoted to the cause, like Endangered Language Fund, and transnational agencies, like European Bureau for Lesser Used Languages; describes scene in Puerto Eden, tiny fishing village on Wellington Island in Patagonia region of southern Chile, home of last six speakers of Kawesqar, language native to area since last ice age; photos (L)

When the House Starts Talking to Itself

The Futile Pursuit of Happiness

Jon Gertner article on research in burgeoning field of 'affectie

Love in the Time of No Time

Jennifer Egan article on explosion in world of Internet dating; in first half of 2003, Americans spent $214.3 million on personals and dating sites, with 40 million visiting at least one dating site in a month; some sites use complex algorithms to match people and others are simple listing services; first generation to come of age on Internet are now young adults and using Web to find everything they need, but fair number of people continue to feel stigma about online dating; key to sytem is personal profile, always available in queue of romantic prospects, and constantly being tweaked with newer, more flattering data and photos; search can lead to online flirting and perhaps in-person contact, where couple may or may not have chemistry, sometimes resulting in polite e-mail rejecting further dates; some sites exist simply for those who desire to meet for casual sexual encounters; people disillusioned with online dating say its promise of no-muss relationship attracts people with intimacy and commitment problems; issues of jealousy come up around people who continue to post profiles while they are dating; one couple's experience detailed; photos (L)

Tangled Up in Spam

James Gleick article on annoying unsolicited e-mail known as spam that is crammed into every electronic in-box and has grown to epidemic proportions; it is more than nuisance, as it absorbs bandwidth and overwhelms Internet service providers; online pioneer Brad Templeton believes he has pinpointed first spam, message typed in 1978 by Digital Equipment Corp salesperson announcing product presentation; it elicited small furor because Internet was seen by users as being emphatically noncommercial; yet people who hate spam believe it is protected as free speech even though Supreme Court has ruled that individuals may preserve threshold of privacy; suggestions to stem tide include making it illegal for forge Internet headers and forcing unsolicited bulk mail to carry mandatory tag; photos (L)

The Trading Desk

Michael Lewis article on Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, who has used statistics to make his job more science than art; by quantifying and assigning value to certain baseball stats, Beane has succeeded in developing excellent team for minimal money, in baseball terms; Beane acquires players that other teams reject or fail to utilize because he is impressed by their numbers, where other teams rely heavily on more traditional performance gauges; photo (L)

The Flight Of the Fluttering Swallows

Michael Paterniti profiles North Korean teenagers, who have joined swelling ranks of young people embarking on perilous journey to China, where they make their way to South Korean consulate to defect; those who make trip do so knowing they can be sent to prison camp or killed if they are caught; it is estimated that there are nearly 10,000 North Korean child refugees in China, but only about 100 of them have completed journey to South Korea in last five years; many who have arrived in South Korea live in terror of being found, and human rights groups say families of defectors are often severly punished; integration of refugees into South Korean society discussed; drawings (L)

George Divoky's Planet

Darcy Frey article on ornithologist George Divoky, who spends each summer on Cooper Island, off Alaska's northern coast, studying rare colony of black guillemots, pigeon-sized seabirds, observing changing climate and trying to warn world about global warming threat; notes scientists know surprisingly little about Arctic, which plays key role in managing earth's climate; photos (L)

What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?

Gary Taubes article says that American medical establishment may have caused nation's obesity epidemic by recommending low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet for last 25 years and that Dr Robert Atkins may well have been right all along in telling Americans that they can lose weight by eating all the fatty foods they want and skipping carbohydrates; says Americans' total calorie intake has risen considerably under government-recommended diet because of way carbohydrates affect blood sugar and insulin and thus appetite; notes research indicating that ketosis, hunger-reducing mechanism in Atkins diet, is safe, that Atkins-like diets can be more effective at weight reduction than low-fat diets and that they may even be better for the heart; welcomes NIH's belated decision to finance comparative studies of popular diets; photos (L)

Jonathan Lebed's Extracurricular Activities

Michael Lewis article on Jonathan Lebed, first minor ever to face proceedings for stock-market fraud, and murky questions case raises about what exactly constitutes illegal market manipulation; in September 2000, Securities and Exchange Commission settled case against 15-year-old, who used Internet to promote stocks from his bedroom in New Jersey suburb of Cedar Grove; Lebed agreed to hand over $285,000, but SEC did not go after additional $500,000 in profits Lebed accumulated in six months of trading; Lebed was accused of 'artificially' influencing market by posting hundreds of messages on Web touting stocks he had purchased; however, 'artificial' appears to mean whatever SEC says it means, or what it can persuade courts it means, highlighting illusion that stock prices are ever 'real' and fact that they are continuously influenced by media, professional analysts and companies themselves; photos (L)