July 24, 2005

TODAY'S BMW 3 Series descends from a line of compact sedans that arrived in the United States nearly 40 years ago. Here are some significant changes over the years: 1967 -- BMW, which had mostly built tiny cars in the postwar era, introduced a series of compact sedans in the 1960's. The sportiest was the 2002tii, which arrived here in 1972. 1977 -- The first 3 Series, known within BMW as E21, had two doors and four cylinders. It established styling traits like a forward-leaning grille, a tall cabin and a hockey-stick kink at the back of the side windows. 1984 -- The second-generation 3 Series, the E30, was slightly shorter than its predecessor. A six-cylinder engine was added, as was a four-door model; a convertible was introduced for 1987. The first M3, a hard-edged track-ready model, came to the United States in 1988. 1992 -- The next big makeover, the E36, was a substantial change in style. The wheelbase grew five inches, a multilink rear suspension replaced the dated trailing-arm layout and the design made a break with the car's boxy tradition. A twin-cam six-cylinder engine raised horsepower to 189. A hatchback, the 318ti, came in 1995. 1999 -- Introductions of various versions on the E46 were staggered, with the four-door arriving first. The wheelbase gained an inch and styling became more aerodynamic. Horsepower in the M3, available as coupe or convertible, increased to 333.

In the church of birds, where passions run high and prophets emerge from swamps and thickets with revelations, nothing can ruin a reputation like admitting that you have seen an ivory-billed woodpecker. Bobby Harrison, a large, gentle man with thinning hair and a soft Alabama drawl, knows this and can recite the casualties. Consider John V. Dennis, one of Mr. Harrison's heroes. He took the last accepted photograph of an ivory bill in Cuba in 1948. But when he testified to seeing one in the Big Thicket area of southeast Texas in 1966, he was ridiculed.

CHRIS JORDAN stood on a ladder, gazing down at 3,000 or so used cellphones in a pile on the warehouse floor. His 8 x 10 view camera was perched even higher, on a tripod 12 feet above them. He had spent the morning figuring out how to include every one of the phones in a single photograph, eventually sweeping them into a neat, trapezoidal-shaped mound, the shorter side closer to the camera, or what would be the bottom of the picture frame. Mr. Jordan had flown from Seattle, where he lives, to photograph at CollectiveGood, an electronics recycling center in the Atlanta suburbs. ''I want to give a concrete sense of our consumption, with the real quantities,'' Mr. Jordan said, from his perch on the ladder. Of course, for one image to represent the actual number of annually discarded cellphones -- 130 million, according to CollectiveGood -- he would have to reproduce the picture he was now getting ready to take about 43,000 times, creating a panorama that would stretch 61 miles if the photos were laid side by side.

''IT'S addictive,'' Meredith Balossini said. ''There's compassion. There's want. There's misery.'' Ms. Balossini, 28, an executive secretary from Prospect Park, N.J., wasn't describing a hot summer beach read but a blog about the trysts, triumphs and heartaches of a young New York City woman named Stephanie Klein.

STATEN ISLAND is perfect. It has a long, nondescript highway. It has strip malls. It has trailer parks. It has grass-covered landfills smeared with the kind of lush growth usually seen only in finger paintings.