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Human Nature: Science, Technology, and Life.
April 2008 - Posts
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I'm sitting here with four passports on my desk. They all have photos. The subject of one looks like a 9/11 hijacker. Another looks like a high-school boy delivering pizza. Another looks like a washed-out ex-kid TV star who's been busted for drugs. Another Read More...
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Wow. Chastity belts . Here's the report from Indonesia, courtesy of Paul Watson in Sunday's L.A. Times : In a bid to prevent any hanky-panky between masseuses and their clients, several massage parlors ... are insisting that the women wear padlocks across Read More...
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In Sunday's Washington Post , Rick Weiss detailed an important and underreported trend: the increasing role of genetics in legal disputes . His reporting illustrates how the march of science and the evolution of law are changing the way we think of ourselves. Read More...
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Another good story from this morning's batch : Ivan Oransky of the Wall Street Journal writes about the development of a " biological pacemaker ." He focuses on the work of researchers Ira Cohen and Michael Rosen: By inserting genes into rat heart cells Read More...
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This morning's news brings a face-slapping AFP story from the land of the mullahs: Iran is setting up vending machines to sell condoms and syringes . The country's drug czar tells its state news service that the machines will be in shelters for addicts: Read More...
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Six years ago, I wrote about the science and ethics of incest (" The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Surname "). At the time, a study showed that having a child with your first cousin raised the risk of a significant birth defect from about 3-to-4 percent Read More...
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One thing I hope to do more of, now that I've got this network of Web pages , is to integrate reader comments into the blog. Here's a good thread in response to yesterday's post on dog meat . Lid writes , I like pigs just fine but dogs share a place with Read More...
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I feel strangely obliged to say something about today's dog-food story. No, I'm not talking about food for dogs. I wish I were. I'm talking about making food from dogs —and serving it to people. Yes, this is happening. It's been happening for a long time. Read More...
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Last week I promised to start using this blog to highlight and explain the day's top stories. Unfortunately, scanning wires, papers, magazines, journals, and Web sites for the best stories (make sure to bookmark the Human Nature home page so you'll get Read More...
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My colleague Jack Shafer says the Pulitzers are a fraud. "There's no real science or even fairness behind the picking of winners and losers," he wrote in a piece published four years ago and reprinted last week, after this year's winners were announced. Read More...
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In yesterday's piece on nerd doping , I mentioned that I'm a skeptic of anti-doping policies for at least three reasons. One, many of the complaints tend to be based on harm (e.g. from steroids), but that harm can be mitigated or avoided through improved Read More...
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Here's my favorite news story from this morning's batch : The New York condo smoking suit has been settled. I did an introductory item on this two months ago when the suit was first reported . Basically, the plaintiffs accused the defendant of letting Read More...
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My wife gave me grief a couple of days ago for sending a link to Slate 's home page that, when clicked, took people to the Human Nature home page and ultimately to plain old headlines . She was expecting something I'd written instead of something I'd Read More...
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New piece this morning on the recession in cosmetic surgery. As I was writing it, I realized how completely it dovetails with the previous post about nipple rings. Both argue for a distinction between elective and necessary procedures. That's an old theme Read More...
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There's one more contrarian study I want to pick up on this morning: a paper in the Journal of Public Economics that links smoking bans to drunk-driving accidents. The authors, Scott Adams and Chad Cotti, report : "Using geographic variation in local Read More...
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Writing about contrarian research reminds me of a report I saw on EurekAlert this morning. The headline said , "New study shows children benefit from drinking chocolate/flavored milk." "Wow!" I thought. EurekAlert generally relays press releases from Read More...
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Impressive cluster of contrarian research in today's batch : Coffee can help prevent Alzheimer's ; trans fats can be good for you ; fat kids have fewer cavities ; and the alleged benefits of drinking lots of water are unfounded . I love reports like these. Read More...
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I'd like to start the blog on a high note. But it's hard to pass up the nipple-ring story. It brings up some topics I've addressed before , and, weirdly enough, it does raise the kinds of issues HN is designed to explore. Here are the basics, as outlined Read More...
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One thing I hope to do in this blog is to keep connecting news stories and trends to each other. It's not enough to mock the idea of a civil right to body piercings. The larger theme of today's earlier post was the difference between necessary and elective Read More...
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