[the_why_of_y]

"On Understanding Types, Data Abstraction, and Polymorphism" (Luca Cardelli, Peter Wegner) http://lucacardelli.name/papers/onunderstanding.a4.pdf

Very nice intro to type systems.

"A Language-based Approach to Unifying Events and Threads" (Peng Li, Steve Zdancewic) http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~stevez/papers/LZ06b.pdf

For showing that if you have a sufficiently powerful programming language, the answer to the question "async events or multiple threads?" can be "the best of both worlds".

"The Private and Social Costs of Patent Trolls" (James Bessen, Jennifer Ford, Michael Meurer) http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1930272

If you ever wondered exactly how much wealth is destroyed by the US patent system, this paper provides some educated guesstimates.

[tel]

Koen Claessens's A Poor Man's Concurrency Monad [0] is perhaps easier reading than Li and Zdancewic here.

[0] http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.39.8...