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Below is today’s selection of the most interesting science analysis and commentary on the Web. For straight news reports, check out the news page. For Human Nature’s takes on some of these topics, visit the blog. (I generally post the link first and write the blog entry later, so check back.) To add your own take, open or join a discussion thread in the Fray—and please link to the original story so others can participate intelligently in the conversation.
April 18
Book for kids explains why mommy needs surgery to be “prettier”
(Jill Serjeant, Reuters)
What’s so unnatural about the pregnant man?
(Gregory Kaebnick, Bioethics Forum)
Requiring permits and microchip implants to buy exotic animals
(Joel Achenbach, Washington Post)
Do brain-controlled military weapons erase the moral line between thoughts and lethal acts?
(Stephen White, Cornell International Law Journal)
School metal detectors are for urban kids only
(Daniel de Vise, Washington Post)
April 17
“Women with cancer genes ’should have breasts removed’”
(Ben Farmer, Telegraph)
Scientists tell politicians to butt out of artificial egg and sperm creation
(Steve Connor, Independent)
Brazil’s president defends biofuel
(Agence France Presse)
Are men losing their sex drive?
(Telegraph)
April 16
Does money buy happiness?
(David Leonhardt, New York Times)
Kitty Dukakis touts electroconvulsive therapy for depression
(Carley Dryden, Los Angeles Daily News)
The neuroscience of sexual pleasure
(Martin Portner, Scientific American)
Four critiques of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth
(Eric Steig, John Nielsen-Gammon, David Legates, and Steven Quiring, GeoJournal)
April 15
“Faith in Prayer Kills Children”
(Benjamin Radford, LiveScience)
The logic of marrying a less attractive man
(Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience)
Sci Am shreds the new anti-evolution movie
(Steve Mirsky, John Rennie, and Michael Shermer, Scientific American)
Is the new speed-enhancing swimsuit “technological doping”?
(Martin Petty, Reuters)
The global backlash against biofuels
(Andrew Martin, New York Times)
April 14
Should illegal immigrants get tax-funded organ transplants while U.S. citizens wait?
(Anna Gorman, Los Angeles Times)
Are mildly demented people OK to drive?
(Brian Ott et al, Neurology / Joene Hendry, Reuters)
Clean track athletes lose their medals while dope-implicated baseball players go unpunished
(Katie Thomas / Michael Schmidt, New York Times)
Why you and your parents disagree about marrying somebody sexy
(Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post)
Doomsayers fear an imminent man-made black hole
(John Johnson, Los Angeles Times)
Get more organs by extracting them after heart stoppage instead of “brain-stem death”
(International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation)
April 10
Human-animal hybrids: pro and con
(Josephine Quintavalle and Robin Lovell-Badge, Telegraph)
Nobel winner dismisses concern over hybrids
(Roger Highfield, Telegraph)
Dispelling the hype about hybrids
(Roger Highfield, Telegraph)
“Boys and their toys? It’s biological, not social”
(Nic Fleming, Telegraph)
Promoting military technology as help for the disabled
(Yomiuri Shimbun)
The rise of mommy blogs
(Sue Shellenbarger, Wall Street Journal) ($)
